Smart sensors have become and will continue to constitute an enabling technology to wirelessly connect platforms and systems and enable improved and autonomous performance. Automobiles have about two hundred sensors. Airplanes have about eight thousand sensors. With technology advancements in autonomous vehicles or fly-by-wireless, the numbers of these sensors is expected to increase significantly. The need to conserve water and energy has led to the development of advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) as a concept to support smart energy and water grid systems that would respond to emergency shut-offs or electric blackouts. Through the Internet of things (IoT) smart sensors and other network devices will be connected to enable exchange and control procedure toward reducing the operational cost and improving the efficiency of residential and commercial buildings in terms of their function or energy and water use. Powering these smart sensors with batteries or wires poses great challenges in terms of replacing the batteries and connecting the wires especially in remote and difficult-to-reach locations. Harvesting free ambient energy provides a solution to develop self-powered smart sensors that can support different platforms and systems and integrate their functionality. In this dissertation, we develop and experimentally assess the performance of harvesters that draw their energy from air or water flows. These harvesters include centimeter-scale micro wind turbines, piezo aeroelastic harvesters, and micro hydro generators. The performance of these different harvesters is determined by their capability to support wireless sensing and transmission, the level of generated power, and power density. We also develop and demonstrate the capability of multifunctional systems that can harvest energy to replenish a battery and use the harvested energy to sense speed, flow rate or temperature, and to transmit the data wirelessly to a remote location. / PHD / Smart sensors are an essential part of planned connected communities, smart cities and buildings, structural health and pollution monitoring, and autonomous systems including air and ground vehicles. For example, these sensors can be used to monitor different buildings functions such as water flow rates, pressure and temperature, smoke detectors, HVAC and fire alarms systems. Most of the current smart sensors are powered by batteries or connected to a power source with wires. Batteries will need to be replaced frequently. Wires will add a cost and weight to the system. On the other hand, energy can be harvested locally from different sources to power these sensors. In this dissertation, we develop and experimentally assess the performance of energy harvesters that draw power from air or water flows. These devices include centimeter-scale micro wind turbines, piezo aeroelastic harvesters, and micro hydro generators. The level of generated power, and power density of these devices and their capability to support wireless sensing and transmission are evaluated. We also develop and demonstrate the capability of using one device to harvest energy to replenish a battery over specified time periods and use the harvested energy and the same device to sense speed, flow rate or temperature, and to transmit the data wirelessly to a remote location over other time periods.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 27-30, 1997 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / Flight Safety concerns increase proportionally with increasing missile performance. These concerns are greatest in the near launch arena where a missile has the greatest potential energy. Systems such as radar, GPS tracking systems, and optics are normally of limited use in this arena for a number of reasons. A system was required that would provide useful tracking data in the first few seconds of a missile launch. This system has met that requirement providing nominal path deviation data from the launcher out to as much as 120 seconds. The tracking system described herein uses the principle of radio interferometry to derive phase difference measurements between carefully spaced antennas. These measurements are transmitted to the Operational Display Facility and converted to a usable angular deviation plot for use by Flight Safety Personnel. This paper provides an elementary radio interferometer system background and discusses this particular system setup and use. Some detail is provided on the premission simulation and setup of the system as well as the real-time display setup and output of the final data product.

Remote data collection systems are widely used. One of the area is also data collection in energetics, where the energy consumption can be collected daily and presented to users on-line. The advantage of the remote data collection is possibility of frequent readings without a physical presence at the electrometers. The data transmission over the Internet can be subject of various attacks, which is the disadvantage. The understanding of attack method is the most important thing. The protection against the hackers is not complicated, but requires lot of attention. This master's thesis is focused on testing security of the communication unit LAN of remote data acquisition against attacks from the Internet. The next aim of this thesis is to describe algorithm of particular attack, needed recourses for their realization and method of their measurement and evaluation. Communication unit and component composition for attacks simulation is described in the first part of this thesis. The next part is focused on scanning for hosts and ports. The main part of this thesis is focused on the denial of service attacks and man in the middle attacks. In the end of my thesis is described selection of cryptographic system for remote data acquisition and is showed possibility of authentication mirroring. Problems of physical security are described too. The result of this thesis is script implementing all attacks, which are described.