Data Transfer Module Research Articles

High Time-Resolution Readout Integrated Circuit Using DLL for Portable Cosmic Ray Muon Detection

Ground-level cosmic ray muon detections have various potential applications in the predictions of space and Earth weather variations and muon tomography. However, in order to push its practical applications, a low-power, low-cost, high-accuracy, and portable ground-level cosmic ray muon detection system needs to be developed. In this article, we present a high time-resolution and low-power readout integrated circuit (ROIC) for portable ground-level cosmic ray muon detection. The ROIC comprises preamplifiers, comparators, encoding modules, a delay-locked loop (DLL), and a data transfer module. The preamplifiers amplify the weak signals produced by the muon detector. The comparators convert the amplified signals into digital signals. The encoding modules extract and store the time information of the input pulses produced by the comparator, and the data transfer module transmits them to a microcontroller unit (MCU). A pulse edge detecting method using DLL clocks is employed to improve the time-resolution and limit the power consumption of the ROIC. A 32-channel prototype of the ROIC was designed and fabricated in a 0.18- μm mixed-signal CMOS process. The main chip size is 11.4 mm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> . A one-channel double-layer plastic scintillator muon detector was used to test the performance of the ROIC. A time-resolution of 1.0 ns was achieved with a system clock of 50 MHz, and the ROIC power consumption was measured at 1.9 mW/channel. Compared with existing muon readout electronics systems, the system using the proposed ROIC achieves high time-resolution and accuracy, with low power consumption and a smaller size, making it suitable for portable real-time cosmic ray muon detection.

Development of a Smart Mobile Data Module for Fetal Monitoring in E-Healthcare.

The fetal heart rate (FHR) is a marker of fetal well-being in utero (when monitoring maternal and/or fetal pathologies) and during labor. Here, we developed a smart mobile data module for the remote acquisition and transmission (via a Wi-Fi or 4G connection) of FHR recordings, together with a web-based viewer for displaying the FHR datasets on a computer, smartphone or tablet. In order to define the features required by users, we modelled the fetal monitoring procedure (in home and hospital settings) via semi-structured interviews with midwives and obstetricians. Using this information, we developed a mobile data transfer module based on a Raspberry Pi. When connected to a standalone fetal monitor, the module acquires the FHR signal and sends it (via a Wi-Fi or a 3G/4G mobile internet connection) to a secure server within our hospital information system. The archived, digitized signal data are linked to the patient's electronic medical records. An HTML5/JavaScript web viewer converts the digitized FHR data into easily readable and interpretable graphs for viewing on a computer (running Windows, Linux or MacOS) or a mobile device (running Android, iOS or Windows Phone OS). The data can be viewed in real time or offline. The application includes tools required for correct interpretation of the data (signal loss calculation, scale adjustment, and precise measurements of the signal's characteristics). We performed a proof-of-concept case study of the transmission, reception and visualization of FHR data for a pregnant woman at 30weeks of amenorrhea. She was hospitalized in the pregnancy assessment unit and FHR data were acquired three times a day with a Philips Avalon® FM30 fetal monitor. The prototype (Raspberry Pi) was connected to the fetal monitor's RS232 port. The emission and reception of prerecorded signals were tested and the web server correctly received the signals, and the FHR recording was visualized in real time on a computer, a tablet and smartphones (running Android and iOS) via the web viewer. This process did not perturb the hospital's computer network. There was no data delay or loss during a 60-min test. The web viewer was tested successfully in the various usage situations. The system was as user-friendly as expected, and enabled rapid, secure archiving. We have developed a system for the acquisition, transmission, recording and visualization of RCF data. Healthcare professionals can view the FHR data remotely on their computer, tablet or smartphone. Integration of FHR data into a hospital information system enables optimal, secure, long-term data archiving.

Conceptual Design of a Portal System for International Shipping’s Greenhouse Gas Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification

In this paper, a portal system compatible with MRV regulation was designed to monitoring, reporting and verifying emission and fuel consumption data from an international ship. A portal system supports monitoring and reporting task of international shipping companies and calculates national greenhouse gas inventory. EU MRV law, MRV discussions of IMO, responses of international shipping companies to ship energy efficiency and greenhouse gas regulation, and greenhouse gas statistics on international shipping were analyzed to drive portal system requirements. For ship energy efficiency and emitted monitoring, a data collection module was designed based on on-board equipment, energy efficiency measuring device and navigation report. Data transfer module with easy management and minimized usage to transfer ship data to shore was designed. A portal system was designed to convert the collected data into the standard reporting format, perform monitoring, statical analysis, verification and auto report generation, and support national greenhouse gas inventory.

2B23 Condition diagnosis of railway tracks by a compact size onboard device(Condition Monitoring-Infrastructure)

This paper summarizes observations on a new development of a compact size onboard device for condition monitoring of railway tracks. Track irregularities are estimated from a vertical and a lateral accelerations and roll rate of a car body. Rail corrugation is detected by cabin noise according to spectral peak calculation. A GPS system and a map-matching algorithm are used to pinpoint the location of faults on tracks. The device is driven by a Li-ion battery for 6 hours or by outside power source. Accelerometers, rate gyroscope and GPS were designed to give higher performance. A microphone may be added outside if condition monitoring of rail corrugation is necessary. Collected data are usually kept in inside un-volatility memory (SSD) or an SD card. Data transfer module transfers the collected data to a data server via cellular phone. The compact size onboard device provides regular monitoring of tracks in order to sustain railway systems and secure the safety.

Control functionality of DAQ-Middleware

DAQ-Middleware is a software framework for a network-distributed data acquisition (DAQ) system that is based on the Robot Technology Middleware (RTM). The framework consists of a DAQ-Component, that is implemented as a data transfer module, a data gather module, a data record module, etc., and a DAQ-Operator, that is implemented as a control module of other components. The basic functionalities, that are necessary as a DAQ system, such as transferring data, starting and stopping the system, etc., are already prepared in the framework. But one of control functionalities, i.e., the functionality of changing parameter values on the DAQ-Components, wasn't provided yet. In order to implement the functionality, the framework has to have the communication method to transfer data from the DAQ-Operator to the DAQ-Component, and the new state to realize the functionality because it should be separated from a normal state to acquire data. Then we developed and added the new functionality in the DAQ-Middleware to transfer data from DAQ-Operator to DAQ-Components in the new state. The new DAQ-Middleware framework allows us to implement easily not only functionality of acquiring data but also that of controlling component modules.

Fasteners State Detection System Based on Wireless Data Transfer Module

The safety requirements demanded from rail traffic have risen above all in view of the rapid development of modern high-speed trains. Railway fastener is the important part of rail line. The normal state of the fastener is the guarantee of the rail transportation security. The missing or broken fastener may be the tremendous threaten to the security, or even cause the serious traffic accidents. This paper presents a new fully automatic and configurable wireless data transfer system able to detect the absence of the fastening bolts that fix the rails to the sleepers. The systems guarantee a high accurate detection for the missing or broken fastening elements in combination with the strain measurement of the rubber pad under rail.

Wearable acceleration sensor application in unilateral trans-tibial amputation prostheses

The availability of human walking gait data collected from the wearable acceleration sensors for trajectory control of an active artificial ankle joint in the unilateral trans-tibial prosthesis was investigated in this study. It is observed that the collected acceleration data can be used in the rulebased control of the prosthetic leg. A portable microprocessor-based data acquisition system, and data transfer module were designed for capturing the acceleration signals during walking. Flexionextension angle pattern of ankle joint was determined from acceleration signals of two tri-axial wearable accelerometers placed on the shank and foot segments. This pattern was utilized for control of the active artificial ankle joint in the trans-tibial prosthesis. This approach may have the potential of contributing the development of better prostheses.

A Control Path Design of Communications Processor

With the widespread popularity of wireless mobile devices, the demands of emerging applications have been proposed, such as video telephony and HD video play. The next generation of wireless mobile computing devices needs to have higher data transfer rate, more complex algorithms, as well as low power consumption. This paper gives out a variable-width SIMD processor architectures controller and data transfer module designing method. The controller designing focused on controlling the program flow and initializing the data transfer module. By simulating the architecture on Xilinx ISE Design Suite, the fundamental modules have been designed and tested. The results of simulation verify the correctness of the controller and data transfer module design.

Electronic Integrated Disease Surveillance System and Pathogen Asset Control System

Electronic Integrated Disease Surveillance System (EIDSS) has been used to strengthen and support monitoring and prevention of dangerous diseases within One Health concept by integrating veterinary and human surveillance, passive and active approaches, case-based records including disease-specific clinical data based on standardised case definitions and aggregated data, laboratory data including sample tracking linked to each case and event with test results and epidemiological investigations. Information was collected and shared in secure way by different means: through the distributed nodes which are continuously synchronised amongst each other, through the web service, through the handheld devices. Electronic Integrated Disease Surveillance System provided near real time information flow that has been then disseminated to the appropriate organisations in a timely manner. It has been used for comprehensive analysis and visualisation capabilities including real time mapping of case events as these unfold enhancing decision making. Electronic Integrated Disease Surveillance System facilitated countries to comply with the IHR 2005 requirements through a data transfer module reporting diseases electronically to the World Health Organisation (WHO) data center as well as establish authorised data exchange with other electronic system using Open Architecture approach. Pathogen Asset Control System (PACS) has been used for accounting, management and control of biological agent stocks. Information on samples and strains of any kind throughout their entire lifecycle has been tracked in a comprehensive and flexible solution PACS.Both systems have been used in a combination and individually. Electronic Integrated Disease Surveillance System and PACS are currently deployed in the Republics of Kazakhstan, Georgia and Azerbaijan as a part of the Cooperative Biological Engagement Program (CBEP) sponsored by the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA).

클라우드 컴퓨팅 환경을 위한 WAN 스토리지 이주 기법 성능평가

본 논문에서는 클라우드 컴퓨팅 환경에서 WAN 스토리지 복제 모델의 성능평가를 위한 시뮬레이터를 설계하고 구현한다. 이 시뮬레이터의 각 클라우드는 가상머신의 역할을 수행하는 가상머신 에뮬레이터와 스토리지의 역할을 수행하는 스토리지 에뮬레이터로 구성된다. 가상머신 에뮬레이터는 R/W 작업비율 설정모듈, R/W 순서 조합모듈, R/W 요청모듈로 구성한다. 스토리지 에뮬레이터는 스토리지 관리모듈, 데이터 전송모듈, R/W 수행모듈, 오버헤드 처리모듈로 구성된다. 이 시뮬레이터를 이용하여 스토리지에 대한 R/W 비율, 네트워크 지연, 네트워크 대역폭 등의 변화에 따른 두 이주 방법의 성능을 평가한다. 그 결과 read 작업이 증가 할수록 선 복제 모델의 평균이 주시간은 감소 하지만 후 복제 모델의 평균이주시간은 증가한다. 또한, 네트워크 지연이 증가할수록 후 복제 모델의 평균이주시간은 증가 하였지만, 선 복제 모델의 평균이주시간은 일정함을 보인다. 따라서 네트워크의 지연이 증가 하는 경우 후 복제 모델보다 선 복제 모델의 성능이 우수함을 알 수 있었다. 네트워크 대역폭의 변화에 따른 평균이 주시간은 두 모델이 유사하였기 때문에 스토리지 복제 모델을 선정함에 있어 네트워크 대역폭은 중요한 요소가 아님을 알 수 있었다. In this paper, we design and implement the simulator for WAN storage replication model performance evaluation in cloud computing environment. Each cloud of simulator is composed of virtual machine emulator and storage emulator. The virtual machine emulator is composed of read/write ratio module, the read/write sequence combination module, and the read/write request module. The storage emulator is composed of storage management module, data transfer module, read/write operations module, and overhead processing module. Using the simulator, we evaluate performance of migration scheme, pre-copy and the post-copy, considering about read/write ratio, network delay, and network bandwidth. Through simulation, we have confirmed that the average migration time of pre-copy was decreased proportional to the read operation. However, average migration time of post-copy was on the increase. Also, the average migration time of post-copy was increased proportional to the network delay. However, average migration time of pre-copy was shown uniformly. Therefore, we show that pre-copy model more effective to reduce the average migration time than the post-copy model. The average migration time of pre-copy and post-copy were not affected by the change of network bandwidth. Therefore, these results show that selects the storage replication model to be, the network bandwidth know not being the important element.

Nutrition Therapy System for elderly with Diabetes

This research aimed to create a Nutrition Therapy System (NTS) using Internet Technology for monitoring and controlling the nutrition for elderly with diabetes. The system's basic functions include a patient management subsystem, an electronic logbook, a nutrition module, a dictionary for diabetes-related terminology, a diabetic-physician data transfer module and an on-line help capability. NTS provides a data capturing capability, trend analysis, and nutrition decision support to improve the monitoring and maintenance of diabetes. It was designed to be used by both a physician and a patient and can also serve as a useful knowledge aid for a new diabetic. Its basic advantages lie in its comprehensiveness and flexibility. It is also user-friendly, easy to operate, and does not require any previous computer experience. The NTS was highly acceptable: 85% patients found it easy to operate while 83% found it useful. The NTS was thus a feasible model of computer-based in diabetes care and it is warranted the cost-effectiveness.

Multi-Agent System for Search Engine based Web Server: A Conceptual Framework

Existing Web Servers supporting any standard Search Engine follow all possible combinations of the search keywords as an input by the user to a Search Engine. As a result, a huge number of Web-pages are shown in the Web browser. This type of search result is confusing for the user to understand which documents are necessary. It will take a lot of time to go through all the Web-pages. As a result, a user needs more specific search. This paper proposes a system for user specific data mining over World Wide Web (WWW). Learning & testing methodology has been applied to the system for managing the characteristic behavior of the user. The proposed solution comprises of several agents which are capable of working separately & intelligently to achieve their individual goal. The following modules & agents are covered within this paper: User Module, Data Transfer Module, Group Agent, Analyzer Agent, Search Agent & Retrieval Module. Among these agents “Group Agent” is the most important part, since the classification of groups can't be done using conventional numerical analysis. The main reason behind it is the frequent change in profile of the user. All the required information to illustrate user account is acquired through a registration form submission. “Analyzer Agent” is being used to develop the analyzing strategy. Finally, “Search Agent” searches the Web to find the desired result for the specific type of user.

New data acquisition system for the focal plane polarimeter of the Grand Raiden spectrometer

This paper describes a new data acquisition system for the focal plane polarimeter of the Grand Raiden spectrometer at the Research Center for Nuclear Physics (RCNP) in Osaka, Japan. Data are acquired by a Creative Electronic Systems (CES) Starburst, which is a CAMAC auxiliary crate controller equipped with a Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) J11 microprocessor. The data on the Starburst are transferred to a VME single-board computer. A VME reflective memory module broadcasts the data to other systems through a fiber-optic link. A data transfer rate of 2.0 Mbytes/s between VME modules has been achieved by reflective memories. This rate includes the overhead of buffer management. The overall transfer rate, however, is limited by the performance of the Starburst to about 160 Kbytes/s at maximum. In order to further improve the system performance, we developed a new readout module called the Rapid Data Transfer Module (RDTM). RDTM's transfer data from LeCroy PCOS III's or 4298's, and FERA/FERET's directly to CES 8170 High Speed Memories (HSM) in VME crates, the data transfer rate of the RDTM from PCOS III's to the HSM is about 4 Mbytes/s.

RCCS: Rebar CAD/CAM System

Abstract: A CAD/CAM system that automates the design and manufacturing of rebars is described. The CAD‐based design module of the system permits a semiautomated design alongside the conventional one. The uniqueness of the system resides in its ability to extract automatically the data needed for manufacturing from the graphic design database, process these data, and transfer them to the rebar‐manufacturing machine. Thus all the manual data manipulation stages of traditional rebar design and production (detailing, documentation, data extraction, etc.) are avoided. In many cases the multistage manual data manipulation is a source of errors and is moreover labor‐intensive. Consequently, the CAD/CAM system described here leads to cost reduction together with increased quality. This paper describes the principles underlying the development of the system and the system's structure, which is based on a design module, a data extraction module, and a data processing and transfer module.

DMSS--a computer-based diabetes monitoring system.

This paper describes a microcomputer-based decision support system (DSS) for diabetes monitoring. The system's basic functions include a patient management subsystem, an electronic logbook, a nutrition and exercise module, a dictionary for diabetes-related terminology, a diabetic-physician data transfer module and an on-line help capability. DMSS (Diabetes Monitoring Support System) provides a data capturing capability, trend analysis, and nutrition/exercise decision support to improve the monitoring and maintenance of diabetes. It was designed to be used by both a physician and a patient and can also serve as a useful teaching aid for a new diabetic. Its basic advantages lie in its comprehensiveness and flexibility. It is also user-friendly, easy to operate, and does not require any previous computer experience.