APS Technology (United States)

<div class="section abstract"><div class="htmlview paragraph">Road noise caused by road excitation is a critical factor for vehicle NVH (Noise, Vibration, and Harshness) performance. However, assessing the individual contribution of components, particularly bushings, to NVH performance is generally challenging, as automobiles are composed of numerous interconnected parts. This study describes the application of Component Transfer Path Analysis (CTPA) on a full vehicle to provide insights into improving NVH performance. With the aid of Virtual Point Transformation (VPT), blocked forces are determined at the wheel hubs; afterward, a TPA is carried out. As blocked forces at the wheel hub are independent of the vehicle dynamics, these forces can be used in simulations of modified vehicle components. These results allow for the estimation of vehicle road noise. To simulate changes in vehicle components, including wheel/tire and rubber bushings, Frequency-Based Substructuring (FBS) is used to modify the vehicle setup in a simulation model. In this process, analytic springs were added in parallel to the actual rubber mounts, which were also measured using VPT on the actual vehicle. These springs simulate positive or negative changes in stiffness, allowing the study of how changes in the rubber mounts affect the vehicle's NVH performance. In this study, a sensitivity analysis was conducted using the FBS model to observe changes in road noise resulting from variations in bushing stiffness and blocked force. Based on the results of this analysis, the optimal combination of components was proposed for reducing the road noise. This approach provides an efficient and accurate method for analyzing the effects of rubber mount modifications on NVH performance.</div></div>

Airborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) systems have been widely used in the last decades, especially for research purposes, offering higher revisiting time, better spatial resolution, and flexible acquisition geometry compared to satellite radar systems. In recent years, the rapid technological evolution of Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) has opened up the possibility of integrating SAR systems into these agile platforms, allowing the community to explore the new possibilities that they can offer. The present paper introduces the interferometric capabilities of a new Ku-Band SAR system, called SARDrone, that has been completely developed and integrated into an RPA by DARES Technology. The document aims to present the first results obtained with the SARDrone system that demonstrate the inherent potential of multicopter platforms applied to SAR interferometry.

There is an increasing interest in Internet of Things (IoT) enabled smart buildings over the past decades. However, the development of smart buildings is impeded by the high installation/maintenance cost and the difficulty of large-scale evaluation in the wild. In this paper, we report the design, implementation, and deployment of an emergency light-based smart building solution. The key advantage of the system is that it is built on the top of the existing facilities in the building (i.e., emergency light). As a case study, we have implemented and deployed our system in nine production smart buildings of different types including residential, commercial office, and warehouse of multiple level building complexes. Using real data from four typical buildings, we show the proposed system can achieve >97% average packet delivery rate. Evaluation results also demonstrate the stability and robustness of the system to environmental changes. The results of this paper provide practical insights to facilitate the development of smart building systems.

This paper presents an unsupervised flood monitoring approach developed by DARES TECHNOLOGY using Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) space-borne images in order to improve disaster management and coordinate response activities in front of flood crisis events. The methodology developed combines SAR pre-processing, histogram thresholding in blocks with bi-modal behavior and unsupervised segmentation approaches. The use of interferometric parameters, such as the coherence is also employed to refine results. The challenge of this detection approach is working towards an unsupervised approach, i.e., training data is no required and, therefore, information or ground-truth about the class statistics within the area of interest are not necessary. The methodology proposed will be validated over the floods occurred in Mumbai city on August 29, 2017 produced by heavy rain events. 4 Sentinel-1 SAR images will be employed for this purpose.

Land subsidence is a common natural hazard striking extensive areas worldwide, with severe impacts on economy and environment. Subsidence has been recognized as one of geohazards needing research efforts and knowledge transfer at international level, especially when urban fabrics and infrastructures are directly involved in the land settling. Policies and solutions for land subsidence management can be different. Despite this variability, where mitigation methods need to be adopted, mapping, monitoring and simulation of subsidence have to precede their design and implementation. In this framework, Earth Observation (EO) and remote sensing have a major role to play. Satellite Synthetic Aperture Radar Interferometry, thanks to its wide spatial coverage and its millimeter accuracy, provides a valuable contribution in the management of hazard posed by subsidence-related deformation. The ESA-GMES Terrafirma project (2003–2014) has worked for the promotion of the persistent scatterer interferometry, a family of techniques ideally suited for the assessment of magnitude of surface deformations associated with subsidence phenomena. Within the Terrafirma Project a series of products, based on the integration of EO technologies and in situ data, has been established and delivered to a wide community of end user. Three case studies, outcomes of the Terrafirma project, are presented: the wide area of Rome (Italy), the Anthemountas basin and the Kalochori village (Greece). These case studies have been selected with the purpose of showing the essential contribution of interferometric data during the main activities that must be covered when dealing with geohazard investigations (i.e., mapping, monitoring and modeling). These three case studies are meant to be representative of the suite of services delivered by the Terrafirma project to specific end users with the legal mandated to manage the geohazard.

A novel band stop filter with mutually coupled dual spiral configuration on conductor-backed coplanar waveguide (CBCPW) is proposed and investigated. A circuit model is introduced to investigate the characteristics of proposed circuits. The model-based results, full-wave EM simulation results and the experiment results are matched well. The periodic band stop filters are designed and fabricated by using thin-film technology. The size of filter is only 2.3 mmtimes1.0 mm.

The use of automatic license plate recognition systems for vehicle traffic flow monitoring in congested areas, both metropolitan and state/interstate highway, is the most effective method of determining traffic flow patterns today. The infrared camera image capture systems are robust and the resulting data is fed to a central computer server that calculates travel time across monitored segments in real time. Results are posted within a network environment and can be made available to anyone interested via Internet access to the results. This paper reviews the infrared camera technology in use today, discusses its application to travel time monitoring and reviews a case study documenting the results of a specific travel time study.