Because power requirements for hand-held applications vary widely with product use, no single "best" power source exists for these applications. A device used intermittently is more concerned with no-load quiescent current than with full-load efficiency, and so may operate satisfactorily with alkaline batteries. Cell phones, on the other hand, must contend with high peak loads and frequent use....

The demand of high-resolution spatial information such as geo-referenced images and realistic 3D models is rapidly increasing. Most existing systems to acquire such information involve expensive platforms such as manned or unmanned, air or ground vehicles to obtain high-resolution images and GPS/IMU data. Thanks to the availability of small image acquisition devices and light-weighted MEMS GPS/...

The performance of many electronic systems is often limited by the performance of the clocks they use. For example, a receiver in the Global Positioning System (GPS) works by attempting to align an internally generated pseudorandom signal to an identical signal sent by a satellite and measuring the phase difference between the two. The receiver then calculates the time required for the satellit...

Typical commercial Raman micro-spectroscopic systems do not offer much flexibility to the end user, thus limiting potential research applications. We present a design of a simple, highly flexible and portable confocal Raman microscope with a detailed list of parts. The system can perform spectral acquisition in different modes: single-point spectroscopy, hyperspectral point mapping or hyperspec...

This paper describes a system called PDS, a forward chaining, rule-based architecture designed for the online, realtime diagnosis of machine processes. Two issues arise in the application of expert systems to the analysis of sensor-based data: spurious readings and sensor degradation. PDS implements techniques called retrospective analysis and metadiagnosis as solutions to these problems. These...

Paper deals with design and implementation of portable data acquisition unit based on 8-bit microcontroller Freescale 68HC908GP32 in process control and supervision applications. Its hardware design is adopted to fulfill high reliability and immunity against industrial environment, high precision and compact dimensions. Communication with supervision system is performed via standard RS232 inter...