Applications for Wireless Sensor Networks can be updated dynamically by means of wireless upgrade mechanisms. Current research efforts in wireless upgrade mechanisms for WSN have focused on transmitting application packets for upgrades via wireless medium. However, these schemes require significant overhead involved in sending and receiving application packets that affect the sensor operation, in addition to bringing the nodes down to reprogram and restart them. By designing applications in a way that allows dynamic functionality changes during operation, the overhead and sensor delays can be eliminated. Dynamically Controllable Application (DCA) is a novel scheme for designing WSN applications whose behavior can be rapidly and dynamically changed during operation. The results indicate that a veritable functionality change is achieved in a span of a few milliseconds.

During and after earthquakes, occupants inside a damaged building should be evacuated rapidly and safely whereas related units outside the buildings (e.g. first responders) should know the current condition of the building. Obviously, this information should be as accurate as possible and accessed timely in order to speed up the evacuation. Unfortunately, absence of such information during evacuation and emergency response operations results in increased number of casualties. Hence, there arises a need for an approach to make rapid damage and blockage assessment in buildings possible. This study focuses on sensor-based, real-time blockage assessment of buildings during earthquakes and it is based on the idea that / the blocked units of a building (e.g. corridors) can be assessed with the help of different types of sensors. The number and locations of these sensors are arranged in such a way that it becomes possible to picture the current condition of the building. Sensors utilized in this study can be listed as accelerometer, ultrasonic range finder, gyro sensor, closed cable circuit and video camera. The research steps of this thesis include (1) examination of the damage indicators which can cause blockage, (2) assessment of the monitoring devices, (3) expression of the conducted experimental studies in order to assess blokage condition of a corridor unit, (4) proposing an sensor fusion approach, and (5) presentation of the performed case study as an implementation of the blockage assessment. The findings of this research can be made use of in future studies on sensor-based blockage assessment.

Plataformas móveis, como smartphones, tablets e também veículos, têm cada vez mais possibilitado a coleta e análise de dados de seu entorno. Essa oportunidade de sensoriamento de diferentes fenômenos oferece maior cobertura espaço-temporal a menor custo em relação às técnicas tradicionais. O dinamismo dessa abordagem traz desafios relacionados ao posicionamento desses sensores e ao georreferenciamento das informações coletadas. Desta forma, a presente pesquisa tem como objetivo propor método orientativo de especificação de técnicas de posicionamento no contexto do uso do veículo enquanto sensor. Inicialmente, a partir de levantamento bibliográfico, caracteriza-se a evolução do conceito de veículo-sensor e seu emprego no sensoriamento da fluidez do tráfego, das condições do pavimento, de qualidade do ar, entre outras variáveis. Descreve-se o estado da arte nesse campo de pesquisa, identificando lacunas e pontos a serem mais bem estudados. Em um segundo momento, identificando o posicionamento como tópico pouco discutido nesse contexto, o trabalho dedica-se à definição de método orientativo de especificação de sistemas de posicionamento para veículossensores, tendo em conta os requisitos associados às diferentes variáveis a serem sensoriadas. Ao fim, apresenta-se estudo de campo referente ao uso de veículos na identificação de ocorrência de lombadas, empregando as ferramentas estabelecidas nessa dissertação e pormenorizando a discussão do sistema de posicionamento. Dessa forma, o trabalho contribui para a caracterização dos sistemas de sensoriamento baseados em veículos e a identificação do posicionamento como parâmetro fundamental para a qualidade desses sistemas. / Mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets and also vehicles have increasingly enabled gathering and analysing data from its environment. This opportunity of sensing different phenomena offers greater spatiotemporal coverage at less cost when compared to the traditional techniques. The dynamics of this approach has challenges related to the positioning of this sensors and the georeferencing of sensed data. Thus, this research aims to propose an orientative method to specify the positioning system for use with vehicles working as mobile sensors. Firstly, by doing a literature review, the purpose is to characterize the evolution of the concept of vehicle as a mobile sensor and its use in sensing traffic conditions, road conditions, air quality and other variables. The state of the art in this research field is described and the gaps and open questions are identified. In a second moment, after identifying the positioning in this context as an understudied area, this research will work on discussing an orientative method to specify the positioning system considering specificities and requirements associated with the different sensored phenomena. At the end, this work describes an exploratory study using a vehicle to identify road bumps, applying the tools defined in the method and detailing the discussion about the positioning system. Therefore, this work contributes to the characterization of sensing systems based on vehicles and the identification of the vehicular positioning as a fundamental parameter for the quality of these systems.

Plataformas móveis, como smartphones, tablets e também veículos, têm cada vez mais possibilitado a coleta e análise de dados de seu entorno. Essa oportunidade de sensoriamento de diferentes fenômenos oferece maior cobertura espaço-temporal a menor custo em relação às técnicas tradicionais. O dinamismo dessa abordagem traz desafios relacionados ao posicionamento desses sensores e ao georreferenciamento das informações coletadas. Desta forma, a presente pesquisa tem como objetivo propor método orientativo de especificação de técnicas de posicionamento no contexto do uso do veículo enquanto sensor. Inicialmente, a partir de levantamento bibliográfico, caracteriza-se a evolução do conceito de veículo-sensor e seu emprego no sensoriamento da fluidez do tráfego, das condições do pavimento, de qualidade do ar, entre outras variáveis. Descreve-se o estado da arte nesse campo de pesquisa, identificando lacunas e pontos a serem mais bem estudados. Em um segundo momento, identificando o posicionamento como tópico pouco discutido nesse contexto, o trabalho dedica-se à definição de método orientativo de especificação de sistemas de posicionamento para veículossensores, tendo em conta os requisitos associados às diferentes variáveis a serem sensoriadas. Ao fim, apresenta-se estudo de campo referente ao uso de veículos na identificação de ocorrência de lombadas, empregando as ferramentas estabelecidas nessa dissertação e pormenorizando a discussão do sistema de posicionamento. Dessa forma, o trabalho contribui para a caracterização dos sistemas de sensoriamento baseados em veículos e a identificação do posicionamento como parâmetro fundamental para a qualidade desses sistemas. / Mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets and also vehicles have increasingly enabled gathering and analysing data from its environment. This opportunity of sensing different phenomena offers greater spatiotemporal coverage at less cost when compared to the traditional techniques. The dynamics of this approach has challenges related to the positioning of this sensors and the georeferencing of sensed data. Thus, this research aims to propose an orientative method to specify the positioning system for use with vehicles working as mobile sensors. Firstly, by doing a literature review, the purpose is to characterize the evolution of the concept of vehicle as a mobile sensor and its use in sensing traffic conditions, road conditions, air quality and other variables. The state of the art in this research field is described and the gaps and open questions are identified. In a second moment, after identifying the positioning in this context as an understudied area, this research will work on discussing an orientative method to specify the positioning system considering specificities and requirements associated with the different sensored phenomena. At the end, this work describes an exploratory study using a vehicle to identify road bumps, applying the tools defined in the method and detailing the discussion about the positioning system. Therefore, this work contributes to the characterization of sensing systems based on vehicles and the identification of the vehicular positioning as a fundamental parameter for the quality of these systems.

The word “Perception” seems to be intuitive and maybe the most straightforward problem for the human brain because as a child we have been trained to classify images, detect objects, but for computers, it can be a daunting task. Giving intuition and reasoning to a computer which has mere capabilities to accept commands and process those commands is a big challenge. However, recent leaps in hardware development, sophisticated software frameworks, and mathematical techniques have made it a little less daunting if not easy. There are various applications built around to the concept of “Perception”. These applications require substantial computational resources, expensive hardware, and some sophisticated software frameworks. Building an application for perception for the embedded system is an entirely different ballgame. Embedded system is a culmination of hardware, software and peripherals developed for specific tasks with imposed constraints on memory and power. Therefore, the applications developed should keep in mind the memory and power constraints imposed due to the nature of these systems.Before 2012, the problems related to “Perception” such as classification, object detection were solved using algorithms with manually engineered features. However, in recent years, instead of manually engineering the features, these features are learned through learning algorithms. The game-changing architecture of Convolution Neural Networks proposed in 2012 by Alex K, provided a tremendous momentum in the direction of pushing Neural networks for perception. This thesis is an attempt to develop a convolution neural network architecture for embedded systems, i.e. an architecture that has a small model size and competitive accuracy. Recreate state-of-the-art architectures using fire module’s concept to reduce the model size of the architecture. The proposed compact models are feasible for deployment on embedded devices such as the Bluebox 2.0. Furthermore, attempts are made to integrate the compact Convolution Neural Network with object detection pipelines.

Recently, there has been an increasing interest in the electronics world for those aspects related to semiconducting gas sensor (SGS) materials. In view of the increasingly strict legal limits for pollutant gas emissions, there is a great interest in developing high performance gas sensors for applications such as controlling air pollution and exhaust gases in automotive industry. In this way, semiconductor gas sensors offer good advantages with respect to other gas sensor devices, due to their simple implementation, low cost and good stability and sensitivity. The first part of the thesis is dedicated to the synthesis, film structural and sensitivity study of the Tin Oxide film deposited by RF sputtering, doped with noble metal Palladium (Pd). Effects on the Gas Sensitivity due to the deposition parameters like thickness of the film, Substrate temperature, Ar /O2 ratio of the sputtering environment, annealing temperature and duration and doping metal weight % into the Tin Oxide films are studied and the results are shown in detail. The sensitivity and selectivity of the gas sensing film is decided by the operating temperature i.e. the temperature of the gas sensing film while it is in the target gas ambience, Microheaters happen to be the very important component in the gas sensor especially with wide band gap semiconducting metal oxides films such as tin oxide, gallium oxide or indium oxides. Other than gas sensing microheater also finds applications in many areas like thermal dip pen nanolithography, polymerase chain reaction (PCR), fluid pumping with bubbles, in vitro fertilization etc. So in this report due importance was given for the design and fabrication of the microheater. Microheaters are the most power consuming element of the integrated Gas sensors. This is also an important reason for the extensive microheater work in this research. Six different heater patterns were simulated by considering low power and temperature uniformity as an important goals. Among them the best three patterns named Double spiral, “Fan” Shape and “S” shape were chosen for fabrication and both thermal and electrical characterization results of them were presented in detail in the Microheater section of the thesis. It is believed that the intelligent design and integration of the electronic circuitry (for drive, signal conditioning/compensation, and read-out) with the gas sensing element can mitigate some of the significant issues inherent in solid-state gas sensors, such as strong temperature and humidity dependence, signal drift, aging, poisoning, and weak selectivity. The sensitivity of the gas sensors which has been indicated as the dynamic change of resistance in wide range should be read out properly. Towards this aim a low cast high efficient readout circuit is designed and implemented. Temperature monitoring and controlling is a key phenomenon in the metal Oxide based gas sensors since the selectivity mainly depends on the operating temperature of the sensing film. So focus was also shown on the design and implementation of the temperature monitoring and control unit, which been presented in the last part of this thesis.

<p><strong>The Energy Monitoring Framework</strong>, designed and developed by IAC, IUPUI, aims to provide a cloud-based solution that combines business analytics with sensors for real-time energy management at the plant level using wireless sensor network technology.</p> <p>The project provides a platform where users can analyze the functioning of a plant using sensor data. The data would also help users to explore the energy usage trends and identify any energy leaks due to malfunctions or other environmental factors in their plant. Additionally, the users could check the machinery status in their plant and have the capability to control the equipment remotely.</p> <p>The main objectives of the project include the following:</p> <ul> <li>Set up a wireless network using sensors and smart implants with a base station/ controller.</li> <li>Deploy and connect the smart implants and sensors with the equipment in the plant that needs to be analyzed or controlled to improve their energy efficiency.</li> <li>Set up a generalized interface to collect and process the sensor data values and store the data in a database.</li> <li>Design and develop a generic database compatible with various companies irrespective of the type and size.</li> <li> Design and develop a web application with a generalized structure. Hence the database can be deployed at multiple companies with minimum customization. The web app should provide the users with a platform to interact with the data to analyze the sensor data and initiate commands to control the equipment.</li> </ul> <p>The General Structure of the project constitutes the following components:</p> <ul> <li>A wireless sensor network with a base station.</li> <li>An Edge PC, that interfaces with the sensor network to collect the sensor data and sends it out to the cloud server. The system also interfaces with the sensor network to send out command signals to control the switches/ actuators.</li> <li>A cloud that hosts a database and an API to collect and store information.</li> <li>A web application hosted in the cloud to provide an interactive platform for users to analyze the data.</li> </ul> <p>The project was demonstrated in:</p> <ul> <li>Lecture Hall (https://iac-lecture-hall.engr.iupui.edu/LectureHallFlask/).</li> <li>Test Bed (https://iac-testbed.engr.iupui.edu/testbedflask/).</li> <li>A company in Indiana.</li> </ul> <p>The above examples used sensors such as current sensors, temperature sensors, carbon dioxide sensors, and pressure sensors to set up the sensor network. The equipment was controlled using compactable switch nodes with the chosen sensor network protocol. The energy consumption details of each piece of equipment were measured over a few days. The data was validated, and the system worked as expected and helped the user to monitor, analyze and control the connected equipment remotely.</p> <p><br></p>