- Date:
- 2006-
To develop an narrow-band RF-based Time-of-Flight (TOF) locationing system with sub-meter positioning resolution which can be used to location nodes within wireless sensor networks (WSNs). This will enable accurate locationing without the requirement of wired infrastructure and synchronisation between devices. Further development will involve the adaption of these techniques to relative locationing algorithms.
Primary investigator
- Bjorn Thorbjornsen
Secondary investigators
- Prof Neil White
- Prof Andrew Brown
- Dr Jeff Reeve
Associated research groups
- Electronic Systems and Devices Group
- Electronics and Electrical Engineering
- Date:
- 2006-2010
- Themes:
- Web Science, E-Business Technologies, Knowledge Technologies
- Funding:
- DTI (TP/5/DAT/6/I/H0410D)
MBI is a project with a clear objective of making a significant performance improvement in UK business to business (B2B) marketing activities in the 5-7 year timeframe. The project plans to aggregate a broad range of business information, providing unparalleled insight into UK business activity and develop rich semantic search and navigation tools to allow any business to 'place their sales proposition in front of a prospective buyer' confident of the fact that the recipient has a propensity to buy.
Primary investigators
Secondary investigators
- jd
- ms8
- lz
- hsmi
- br205r
Partners
- ParcelForce Worldwide, 3M, pH Group
- British Gas Business
- AXA
Associated research group
- Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group
- Date:
- 2008-2012
- Themes:
- Nanomaterials and Dielectrics, Novel Sensors, Systems Design
- Funding:
- EU
The Microflex project is a Framework program 7 EU funded project and was submitted to the FP7-NMP-2007-Large-1 call.
The Microflex project is concerned with flexible materials in the form of high added value smart fabrics/textiles which are able to sense stimuli and react or adapt to them in a predetermined way.
Microflex will exploit micro fabrication to produce, using custom printing process, active functions cost efficiently. We propose to develop fundamental micro fabrication production technologies for MEMS on fabrics/textiles using flagship demonstrator applications. This will result in a cheap, east to design, flexible, rapid way to manufacture multifunction smart textiles/garments for a large set of multi-sectorial applications.
Primary investigator
Secondary investigators
Partners
- Josef Stefan Institute
- Deutsche Institute fur Textil und Fasrforschung Denkendorf
- OVD Bonfort
- Klopman International
- Insensor
- Paul Boye Technologies
- University of Magdeburg
- Institut Francais du Textile et de l'Habillement
- Elasta
- Ardeje
- Saati
- Leitat
Associated research group
- Electronics and Electrical Engineering
- Date:
- 2006-
- Theme:
- Algorithms for Wireless Sensor Networks
This project aims to develop a narrow-band RF-based Time-of-Flight (ToF) ranging method with sub-meter ranging resolution which can be adopted in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) for the purpose of locationing sensor nodes. The use of RF will enable point-to-point ranging over larger distance (>50m) than current Ultra-wideband (UWB) based TOF systems with significantly less use of channel bandwidth.
Primary investigator
- bt05r
Secondary investigators
Associated research groups
- Electronic Systems and Devices Group
- Electronics and Electrical Engineering
- Date:
- 2008-2012
- Themes:
- High Voltage Engineering, Solid dielectrics, Space and surface charge
- Funding:
- EPSRC
The lifetime of polymeric insulation is an area of particular interest due to the large and growing use of underground power cables. Breakdown of this insulation is a heavily researched area and this project aims to develop a better understanding of the aging and breakdown processes, with the use of space charge and electroluminescence data.
Current progress is looking at the Space charge and Electroluminescence phenomena of UV aged Low Density Polyethylene (LDPE) films to identify changes in the oxidations effect on charge injection and trapping has on the Electroluminescence emission. (11-09-09)
Primary investigators
Secondary investigator
- dhm08r
Associated research groups
- Electrical Power Engineering
- Electronics and Electrical Engineering
- Date:
- 2008-2009
- Themes:
- Assessment, ELearning, Platforms and Tools, Learning Technologies
- Funding:
- JISC
The project and the resulting report will focus on four areas: ââ¬Â¢ the theoretical underpinning for quality assurance of e assessment; ââ¬Â¢ current practice in Higher Education (HE) contexts both in the UK and overseas; ââ¬Â¢ current practice in professional, commercial, and industrial contexts; and ââ¬Â¢ recommendations for future practice in UK HE.
Theoretical underpinning will be provided by an overview of current psychometric and test theory as it applies to the quality assurance of conventional and e-assessments carried out in HE, FE, professional, and training contexts.
Current practice in HE will be characterised and analysed through a set of case studies across representative institutions and academic domains, guided by expert consultants from Southampton University, the University of Plymouth, and the Institute of Education.
Current practice in professional accreditation, commerce, and industry and its relation to HE and FE will be described, guided by consultancy from Questionmark, the leading vendor to UK HE, and Question Tools, a significant commercial vendor to organisations including the British Computer Society and Network Rail.
Finally, the report will detail recommendations for UK HE (and FE) arising from psychometric theory, the case studies, and commercial and professional practice.
Primary investigators
Secondary investigators
- Dr Bill Warburton, iSolutions
- Veronica Gale, independent consultant
- Greg Pope, Questionmark
- John Kleeman, Questionmark
- Paul Booth, Abas UK Ltd.
- Harvey Mellar, London Knowledge Lab
- Chris Ricketts, University of Plymouth
- Denise Whitelock, The Open University
Associated research groups
- Electronic and Software Systems
- Learning Societies Lab
- Date:
- 2009-2013
- Themes:
- Agent Based Computing, Decentralised Information Systems
- Funding:
- Industrially Funded (Hampshire Company)
This project aims to explore the issues associated with the decentralised control, operation and management of future generation electricity networks. It is targetted at scenarios in which micro-generation and storage capabilities are ubiquitous, where intelligent sensing devices allow users to make informed choices about the control of devices in their home, and where producers and consumers are connected via a series of dynamically negotiated supply contracts. This is an industrially funded project from a Hampshire-based company.
Initially, work in this project will have 3 main foci, corresponding to 3 main application settings:
Home Setting
This setting will consider the intelligent use of energy within a single home. It will develop algorithms and methodologies that will enable intelligent appliances and energy storage devices (such as plug-in hybrid electric vehicles) to autonomously negotiate and coordinate for optimal energy use. In particular, it will address the need for algorithms that can continuously adapt the behaviour of the home in response to information such as weather, energy prices, energy carbon content and the lifestyle and preferences of the home owners.
Neighbourhood setting
The neighbourhood setting aims to study the optimization of energy for the homes in a local neighbourhood. Each of these homes in a neighbourhood follows some electricity consumption pattern, based on the preferences of the residents. Also, some of these homes could also have a local (green) electricity generator, such as PV solar panels or a wind turbine. Furthermore, there may be some local storage capability of produced energy, which can be either local (e.g. a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle), or a shared neighbourhood storage facility (e.g. a redox flow battery).
Given this setting, we envisage that intelligent sensing devices could not only optimize the local demand in each home, but also buy the required electricity, or trade the locally produced energy, on a neighbourhood energy market. The grid company is also a player in this market. The main concern on the grid side is the reduction of the so-called ``peak demand" (i.e. demand in periods of time when the network is overloaded).
Therefore, the performance criteria in designing such a market are two- fold: it should reduce as much as possible the costs for each home owner, subject to satisfying his/her constraints. But it should also balance loads within the neighbourhood, so as to reduce peak-time demand on the grid side of the system.
Grid setting
Building on the home and neighbourhood setting, in this part of the project we aim to look at the implications of Decentralised Energy (DE) on the coordination of energy production, transmission and distribution. In particular, the coordination of switches (when there is a surge in demand or breakage of transmission lines) is important in building robustness into the network. Moreover, the fact that energy production can take various forms (e.g. from batteries, green energy sources, or coal power stations) and the fact that consumers may express preferences on the type of energy source referred means that transmission and distribution needs to be coordinated to ensure effective delivery of electricity. Against the above background, we aim to study the applicability of various multiagent system tools and techniques.
Primary investigators
- Nick Jennings
- acr
Secondary investigators
- Sarvapali Ramchurn
- wtlt
- vr2
- tdv
Partner
- Hampshire Company
Associated research groups
- Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group
- Agents, Interaction and Complexity
- Date:
- 2007-2008
- Themes:
- Applied Electromagnetism, Modelling and Simulation
Each mobile phone has a large number of small antennas for communication over several GSM and WCDMA bands, for Bluetooth and WLAN, and more mobile phones are also using integrated GPS, DVB-H, etc. The number of products using wireless communication is growing from having mainly been mobile phones, WLAN routers and laptops to now also include cameras, wireless TV game controllers, mp3-players, RFID tags, etc. One of the differences of small antennas compared to large antennas is that they are much harder to model accurately with software. This is mainly due to the fact that large antennas normally are used in an open environment without any neighbouring objects to disturb the antenna function. Small antennas on the other hand are usually integrated in a chassis containing materials that absorb radiation or in different ways disturb the antenna function. In a mobile phone there are furthermore a number of antennas that all affect each other. For small antennas the most important parameter is its antenna efficiency, i.e. the parameter that directly influences how much of the transmitter power is radiated into space, or how much of the radiation incident on the antenna reach the receiver. By optimizing the antenna function to as high antenna efficiency as possible it is possible to directly influence such important parameters as coverage, battery life time and bit rate in the up and down link. In this project the possibility of miniaturizing Dielectric Resonator Antennas (DRA) is explored. DRA have certain advantage such as high radiation efficiency, simply feeding and high resistance to detuning. These characteristics are required for small antennas that are integrated into mobile phones.
Primary investigator
- mr
Associated research group
- Electronics and Electrical Engineering
- Date:
- 2008-2011
- Theme:
- Microfluidics and Lab-on-a-chip
- Funding:
- EPSRC
The design and construction of a micro-flow system capable of the anaylsis of phytoplankton, (microscopic algae that live in the sea). Using the technique of impedance spectroscopy data will be collected to enable anyalsis and identification of the sample. Due to the varying dielectric properties of different types of phytoplankton such an analysis will be able to uniquely identify different types, further due to the compact size of the system the analysis can be conducted at the source thus eliminating the problems associated with bringing up samples from depth. The system will employ novel electrode designs as well as employing novel techniques for hydrodynamic flow focusing.
Primary investigators
- Hywel Morgan
- Dr Matt Mowlem
Secondary investigator
Associated research groups
- Nano Research Group
- Southampton Nanofabrication Centre