To comply with the increase in luminosity of the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) in the next decades, the electronics of the ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC Apparatus) experiment is being upgraded. Included in the upgrade is the interfacing and control electronics system of the HVOpto/HVRemote cards in the TileCal (Tile Calorimeter) detector, which provides high voltages to about 104 photomultipliers (PMTs). This paper presents the new interfacing architecture for the system and details the design of a prototype control board (HVRemote-Ctrl) used for test and validation of the new architecture. The tests evaluate the system multiplexing capabilities needed to monitor all the TileCal PMTs in real time. The communication channels involved, supported in Ethernet and SPI interfaces/protocols, have been fully tested. Some results from the tests already completed are presented.

Characteristics of tunable wavelength filters based on a-SiC:H multilayered stacked cells are studied both theoretically and experimentally. Curves of gain vs. wavelength illustrate the optical filter characteristics. A capacitive active band-pass filter model supports experimental data. Results show that the use of a double pi’n/pin a-SiC:H heterostructure as active capacitive filters depends on the wavelength and modulated frequency of the trigger light and on the wavelength of the additional optical bias. The devices combine three indispensable functions of transceivers, amplification, detection and wavelength filtering. Experimental and simulated results show the device combines the properties of active short-pass and long-pass filter sections into a capacitive active band-pass filter.

This article is build on the experience of using Google Earth Engine as a development framework for a previous work by the same authors.Being primarily a distributed parallel computing platform, it is designed around a functional language pattern, even though supported on an object model, and a map / reduce distributed workload paradigm.Leveraging the sheer computing power delivered by the Google infrastructure and a multi petabyte remote sensing data repository, GoogleEarth Engine is an efficient development framework that presents itself in two basic flavors: one online integrated development environment which uses the browser Javascript engine; two APIs that can be deployed to a Python or a NodeJS environment.This work emphasizes the comparison between the Javascript browserbased implementation and the Python environment packages.

Seamless access to updated information about mobility options is a key factor for sustainable economic development. In this context, the adoption of information systems, with innovative features, meet these needs by stimulating the interest and curiosity of end users. There are well known difficulties, even for regular travelers, to get the most suitable mobility options combining available transport modes. Also, the sustainable mobility has become the new imperative for transport policy. In this paper we present a collaborative platform that supports a Social Network, in which users can search and share sustainable mobility experiences. This platform includes a reputation and a recommender systems specially designed to deal with mobility options.

The Internet of Things (IoT) promotes interconnectivity between devices and these keep appearing in larger quantities throughout the years, with the evolution of communication technologies. However, scalability comes with a price, since for a higher quantity of devices comes the need for better transmission channels, with higher reach, availability and improved security capabilities. The infrastructure that comes with this ubiquitous network is very expensive so there is a need for finding low-cost solutions for the transmission of data, benefiting from the qualities of the optical fibers.Wireless technologies already provide a way to solve these issues, but the use of optical fibers would give to the IoT their own unique features, such as high bandwidth, long reach, signal integrity and high security. But IoT devices should not be power hungry nor have very limiting electrical-to-optical conversions, so a passive optical communications module based of fiber Bragg gratings for long reach and for the upload of information with low data rates should be implemented. This module would be integrated in the IoT ecosystem by connecting it to the existent dark fibers all over the world.A simulator of this module was implemented, capable of reproducing its characteristics for the transmission of information modulated in Frequency-Shift Keying and On-Off Keying modulation schemes. The study of the system performance for these schemes was made by estimating the Bit Error Rate using the Error Vector Magnitude metric, in relation to the received optical power.

In this paper, we address the problem of minimizing the total water consumption over the period of a year used to supply different fields with different types of crops.We start by recalling a previous study, where the authors developed an optimal control model for this problem by minimizing the water flowing into a reservoir and where the water from the precipitation can be collected. The numerical solution obtained using such model is analyzed.The main result in this paper is the theoretical validation of the numerical solution via a verifications that such solution satisfies the necessary conditions of optimality in the form of a Maximum Principle. This way, we are giving further evidence of the optimality of the numerical solution found.

Abstract: This paper presents an architecture for wireless sensor networks (WSN) operating in the 2.4GHz RF band for implementation in environments of small tunnels. The study begins with an objective description of the RF architecture and with the implementation of a RSSI analysis in real scenarios. The designed modules are using directional and omnidirectional antennas for each test scenario. In initial experiment is included a test on the 433Mhz band. The developed WSN architecture provides a higher degree of reliability at environments with denser structures (tunnels) and enables the use of directional and omnidirectional antennas for better signal behavior considering the structure of environment to propagation.

Current mobile devices (e.g., smartphones) are equipped with several sensors that allow different forms of userinteraction. They also offer several connectivity options and a growing computing power which supports itsuse in new Human Computer Interaction (HCI) scenarios. This paper presents the mobileWheel, a system thatexploits the capabilities of current mobile devices as a means of interaction with a real-time graphical drivingsimulation running on a desktop computer. The application on the mobile device performs data acquisitionfrom various sensors (focusing on the 3D accelerometer) and also provides different types of feedback tothe user. This system represents a ubiquitous, simple and affordable alternative approach to the traditionalcontrol of virtual vehicles in driving simulators and could also be applied in other similar architectures. Toevaluate and validate this approach several tests were conducted with volunteer users. The control mode wherethe virtual vehicle is fully controlled by the accelerometer had the highest acceptance and produced the bestresults.

The so called Internet of Things (IoT) is progressivelybecoming a normal thing in everyone daily lives. Thedesire of connecting everyday objects to the internet and to eachother, to interact with other users and machines, is increasinglybecoming a reality. In this context, where billions of connectedobjects are expected to be ubiquitously deployed worldwide, thefrequent battery maintenance of wireless nodes is undesirableor even impossible. The growth of the devices will be madepossible only if the sensors battery needs are eliminated orreduced significantly. For low power sensors and devices, carefulpower management and power conservation are critical to devicelifetime and effectiveness. One of the possible solutions is tochange completely the paradigm of the radio transceivers in thewireless nodes of the IoT system. The new paradigm should beable to communicate and to enhance the power to the sensor byusing only electromagnetic waveforms transmitted over the air,in order to make the Wireless Power Transfer (WPT) concept areality.

Today optical systems are more and more important in data communications (optical fibers) and are also becoming important in data processing (optical and quantum computing) allowing for a fully optical communication  network where all signals will be processed and transmitted in the optical domain. This paper gives an overview of optical fiber communications and analyses some optical devices and applications such as optical computing, holographic memory and optical pattern recognition.