ALBERT

Description: Measuring respiratory parameters like the breathing frequency or the tidal volume is essential in intensive care to ensure an optimal and lung protecting ventilation. A common practice in artificial ventilation of sensitive patients like infants or neonates is the use of uncuffed endotracheal tubes in combination with continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP). This comes with the disadvantage of an unknown leakage making it difficult to detect spontaneous breathing or to measure the tidal volume reliable. A novel non-obstructive method to determine respiratory parameters as well as dynamic changes of thoracic parameters has recently been presented and uses a pair of coupled UHF (ultra high frequency) antennae. In this paper, a respective setup is investigated numerically using finite difference time domain method and experimentally using an artificial lung phantom. Both approaches show that the investigated method seems capable of allowing a contactless triggering to synchronize natural and artificial breathing. The results are compared to derive a better understanding of influencing factors and opportunities for an optimisation.

Description: Near-field measurements are commonly performed in anechoic chambers which limits the flexibility of the measurements and requires high precision equipment to achieve exact results. In this contribution, we investigate a simple near-field measurement setup which does not use any sophisticated positioning system nor operates in a controlled environment. Instead, the probe antenna is moved by an operator person while the probe position is measured by a laser tracker. This implies that the measurement results will have a higher error level in comparison with antenna chamber measurements. However, excellent error levels are not always necessary, especially when it comes to on-site testing of the principle functionality of antennas. Measurement results are shown to illustrate the performance of the system.

Description: In this study, we report on the occurrence of solar Type III radio bursts recorded by radio and plasma wave experiment (RPWS) experiment onboard Cassini spacecraft. This instrument is designed to investigate the Saturn's plasma environment and sub-auroral radio missions. RPWS/Cassini experiment allows to measure electric field over a frequency range from 1 Hz to 16 MHz (Gurnett et al., 2004). The essential observed emission is associated to the Saturnian Kilometric Radiation (SKR) which is generated in the sub-auroral regions of the magnetosphere. The capability of this experiment leads to detect Solar Type III radio bursts recorded during the increase phase of the solar activity, i.e. January 2008 to December 2014. Hence we have found more than 300 Type III solar bursts when the distance of Cassini to the Sun was about 10 AU. Observational parameters like the time occurrence, the emission frequency and the relative intensity are considered in this analysis. Those features lead us to characterize the detection conditions and to estimate the occurrence variabilities of Type III bursts.

Description: This paper treats Characteristic Mode Analyses of three-dimensional test objects in the context of EMC. Based on computed Characteristic Modes and mode-specific physical quantities, series expansions for HIRF- and DCI-induced surface currents are deduced. The contribution of single Characteristic Modes to surface currents at different test frequencies is analyzed. HIRF- and DCI-excitations are compared with regard to their surface current distributions in their resonance region determined by Characteristic Mode Analysis.

Description: The susceptibility of interference victims can significantly be influenced by the presence of nonlinear circuit elements. In addition to the well known occurrence of intermodulation-frequencies, other effects can be observed as well. Recently, a nonlinear energy storage effect has been discovered which is due to the presence of nonlinearly loaded loop antennas if excited by an HPEM-excitation. In this contribution, this effect is further studied by experiment. It is seen that the nonlinear energy storage effect can be reproduced by means of a rather simple experimental setup. This allows to straighforwardly study parameter variations in order to attain an improved understanding of the considered effect.

Description: We introduce a new tunable reflectarray element for an operation frequency of 26 GHz in the k-band. It is shown that a 340∘ continuous tunning range of the reflected wave can be accomplished by using an aperture-coupled patch antenna with only one single varactor diode. The simplified design and the small needed space make it usable for k-band reflectarrays with many elements. The functionality of the reflectarray element is explained and the crucial parts are analyzed. The approach to get a full phase shift is discussed in detail. A bias-T is developed to provide the control voltage to the varactor diode without interfering with the high frequency path. The high frequency path and the DC-path are decoupled by 39 dB using a bias-T. A commercial off-the-shelf varactor diode is selected and its functionality at 26 GHz is verified. Therefore, a test printed circuit board with through, reflect, line standards is developed to de-embed the varactor diode and to evaluate it with a vector network analyzer. The reflectarray is simulated in a unit cell with plane wave excitation and periodic boundary condition using the simulation software package CST Microwave Studio™.

Description: When a disaster strikes, response teams can nowadays rely on recent advances in technology. This approach improves the definition of a disaster management strategy. The use of autonomous systems during rescue operations allows, for example, to reach places that may be inaccessible or dangerous to human rescuers. In this context, both the design and the configuration of an autonomous system, including its embedded instruments (e.g. sensors), play a very important role in the overall outcome of the rescue mission. An incorrect configuration can lead to the acquisition of inaccurate or erroneous data and may result in incorrect information provided to rescuers. How can we ensure that the configuration of the autonomous systems is correct for a target mission? We propose to validate this configuration by testing the behaviour of the autonomous systems and their equipment in a virtual environment. To do this, system, sensors, space environment (geometry, etc.), prevailing conditions at the intervention site (weather, etc.) and mission scenario must be modelled in a 3D simulation system. The results of these simulations allow to apply in real time the modifications required to better adapt the configuration to the objectives of the mission. These simulations must be performed prior to the deployment of rescue teams to speed the development of a rescue management strategy. In this contribution, we propose a protocol to enhance an existing simulation environment to make it adapt to support disaster management. Then, we validate it through a case study in which we show the approach to correctly configure a LIDAR for a realistic mission. Such simulations allowed us to quantitatively configure the parameters of the LIDAR mounted on an existing disaster management rover, in order to keep the energy consumption limited while guaranteeing a correct functioning of the system. Resuming, the expected results are: (i) the assessment of the suitability of system for the mission, (ii) the choice of the quantitative features which characterize such equipment, (iii) the expectation of mission success and (iv) the probability which the system survives and completes the mission.

Description: Reverberation chambers show transient behaviour when excited with a pulsed signal. The field intensities can in this case be significantly higher than in steady state, which implies that a transient field can exceed predefined limits and render test results uncertain. Effects of excessive field intensities of short duration may get covered and not be observable in a statistical analysis of the field characteristics. In order to ensure that the signal reaches steady state, the duration of the pulse used to excite the chamber needs to be longer than the time constant of the chamber. Initial computations have shown that the pulse width should be about twice as long as the time constant of the chamber to ensure that steady state is reached. The signal is sampled in the time domain with a sampling frequency according to the Nyquist theorem. The bandwidth of the input signal is determined using spectral analysis. For a fixed stirrer position, the reverberation chamber, wires, connectors, and antennas can jointly be considered as a linear time-invariant system. In this article, a procedure will be presented to extract characteristic signal properties such as rise-time, transient overshoot and the mean value in steady state from the system response. The signal properties are determined by first computing the envelope of the sampled data using a Hilbert transform. Subsequent noise reduction is achieved applying a Savitzky–Golay filter. The point where steady state is reached is then computed from the slope of the envelope by utilising a cumulative histogram. The spectral analysis is not suitable to examine the transient behaviour and determine the time constants of the system. These constants are computed applying the method of Prony, which is based on the estimation of a number of parameters in a sum of exponential functions. An alternative to the Prony Method is the Time-Domain Vector-Fit method. In contrast to the first mentioned variant, it is now also possible to determine the transfer function of the overall RC system. Differences and advantages of the methods will be discussed.

Description: A new multipole solution in plane-polar coordinates for the scattering of an arbitrary TE- or TM-polarized incident field by an infinitely extended slit in a plane screen is derived. To this end a classical three-domain problem with a complete multipole expansion in each of the domains is formulated. The unknown multipole amplitudes are found from the continuity conditions of the tangential electric and magnetic field components. Finally an infinite system of linear equations is derived which can be approximated by a numerically tractable finite one leading to a solution with an arbitrary accuracy. The results are numerically successfully compared to those ones obtained by classically solving the strip problem using Mathieu functions and by a subsequent application of the rigorous form of the Babinet principle. Numerical results include the comparison of the scattered fields obtained for an incident uniform complex-source beam and for an incident plane wave.

Description: Radar systems for contactless vital sign monitoring are well known and an actual object of research. These radar-based sensors could be used for monitoring of elderly people in their homes but also for detecting the activity of prisoners and to control electrical devices (light, audio, etc.) in smart living environments. Mostly these sensors are foreseen to be mounted on the ceiling in the middle of a room. In retirement homes the rooms are mostly rectangular and of standardized size. Furniture like beds and seating are found at the borders or the corners of the room. As the propagation path from the center of the room ceiling to the borders and corners of a room is 1.4 and 1.7 time longer the power reflected by people located there is 6 or even 10 dB lower than if located in the center of the room. Furthermore classical antennas in microstrip technology are strengthening radiation in broadside direction. Radar systems with only one single planar antenna must be mounted horizontally aligned when measuring in all directions. Thus an antenna pattern which is increasing radiation in the room corners and borders for compensation of free space loss is needed. In this contribution a specification of classical room sizes in retirement homes are given. A method for shaping the antenna gain in the E-plane by an one-dimensional series-fed traveling wave patch array and in the H-plane by an antenna feeding network for improvement of people detection in the room borders and corners is presented for a 24 GHz digital beamforming (DBF) radar system. The feeding network is a parallel-fed power divider for microstrip patch antennas at 24 GHz. Both approaches are explained in theory. The design parameters and the layout of the antennas are given. The simulation of the antenna arrays are executed with CST MWS. Simulations and measurements of the proposed antennas are compared to each other. Both antennas are used for the transmit and the receive channel either. The sensor topology of the radar system is explained. Furthermore the measurement results of the protoype are presented and discussed.