Francesco Lamonaca | University of Calabria (original) (raw)

Papers by Francesco Lamonaca

Measurement, 2018

The paper presents the experimental assessment of an architecture of Analog-to-Information Conver... more The paper presents the experimental assessment of an architecture of Analog-to-Information Converter (AIC), based on Non-Uniform Wavelet Bandpass Sampling (NUWBS), for use in wideband signal acquisition. To this aim, a preliminary simulation analysis was carried out, with the aim of verifying the capability of the architecture of correctly reconstructing the compressively acquired signal and evaluating the Spurious Free Dynamic Range (SFDR) of the reconstructed signals, in presence of additive noise, quantization noise, and timing jitter of the sampling clock. Then, a modied hardware implementation for the NUWBS AIC architecture was realized, by using commercial otheshelf components, that uses a lowpass lter in the analog correlator block. The realized prototype was experimentally characterized by evaluating the SFDR of the reconstructed signals. The paper describes the realized prototype and discusses the results obtained in both the simulation and the experimental phase.

2018 IEEE International Symposium on Medical Measurements and Applications (MeMeA)

This paper proposes a new calibration method, based on stereo vision, for the position alignment ... more This paper proposes a new calibration method, based on stereo vision, for the position alignment of Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) sensors, used in human motion tracking systems. Compared to other methods, the proposed one does not rely on a movement, and therefore, it does not depend on the capability of the person of performing the movement properly. The method is based on the acquisition of a static stereo image of the person to be tracked, while he/she is wearing the IMU sensors and visual markers are placed on both the IMU sensors and some landmark points on the body joints. From the stereo image, the lengths of the body segments and the rotation matrices to align the sensor orientations to the body segments are evaluated. These values are used by the motion tracking algorithm to get the actual segment orientations from the IMU data. The presented calibration method is validated by comparing the obtained measurements with an inclinometer and a laser distance meter.

2019 II Workshop on Metrology for Industry 4.0 and IoT (MetroInd4.0&IoT), 2019

Time synchronization protocols assume a primary role in IoT era. Their design, implementation and... more Time synchronization protocols assume a primary role in IoT era. Their design, implementation and test often follow separate paths and they are not ensured with the same level of accuracy. Simulation validation exhibits unpredictable gap with real performance levels. According to these statements and in order to answer to the proposed open issues, the paper present a fine-grained controlled environment to perform custom validation test of time synchronization algorithms. The set-up is built by adopting widely known Raspberry development boards, exploiting the ad-hoc fiber optic links provided by Unicas-Net, taking advantage of NetEm built-in emulator in Raspbian Operating Systems, and finally developing a tailored user-friendly software to adequately control network link quality. Accordingly, synchronizing nodes can connect to one of the open points (provided by Raspberry devices) of the network ring and run their algorithms with other nodes that access to the set-up at 50 km distance. Finally, time synchronization performance can easily be assessed by exploiting GPS time provided by the GPS receiver and antenna, which complete each board equipment. First functionality tests are also reported in the paper.

Hypertension, 2017

The analysis of the PPG signal in the time domain for the evaluation of the blood pressure (BP) i... more The analysis of the PPG signal in the time domain for the evaluation of the blood pressure (BP) is proposed. Some features extracted from the PPG signal are used to train an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) to determine the function that fit the target systolic and diastolic BP. The data related to the PPG signals and BP used in the analysis are provided by the Multi-parameter Intelligent Monitoring in Intensive Care (MIMIC II) database. The pre-analysis of the signal to remove inconsistent data is also proposed. A set of 1750 valid pulse is considered. The 80% of the input samples is used for the training of the network. Instead, the 10% of the input data are used for the validation of the network and 10% for final test of this last. The results show as the error for both the systolic and diastolic BP evaluation is included in the range of ±3 mmHg. Tab.1 shows the results for 20 PPG pulses randomly selected analyzed together with the systolic and diastolic blood pressure furnished b...

Construction and Building Materials, 2021

Abstract The main aim of using the IoT paradigm is related to the possibility of a connectivity e... more Abstract The main aim of using the IoT paradigm is related to the possibility of a connectivity extension of several common SHM devices by means of Internet. The connected devices are thus able to transmit and process data, guaranteeing new scenarios in the design of acquisition systems in different fields of science and engineering. The innovations have led the researchers to extend the application of the IoT paradigm to the SHM of masonry structures making sure that the experiments conducted in this framework are able to ensure good results with promising future improvements. The main uses, to date, have been implemented, for example, to monitor individual structural elements, reducing the risks for users due to partial or total collapses of the structure, or for the identification, detection and characterization of damage and degradation of construction materials. The aim of this work is to expose a general overview of the SHM systems used by the authors for masonry structures belonging to historical and cultural heritage, arguing their use for the protection from earthquakes with related advantages. This will be shown thanks to two preliminary SHM systems designed and implemented by the authors on two case studies using IoT, described in the paper with their related cyber and physical parts.

On the occasion of the 2013 edition of ArcheoFOSS, the SITAR Project presented the first steps to... more On the occasion of the 2013 edition of ArcheoFOSS, the SITAR Project presented the first steps towards the setup of a Knowledge Base dedicated to the Archaeological Information System of Rome. After one year, it is interesting to present a summary of the progress of this platform. The SITAR Knowledge Base was created to promote collaboration among different partners and to facilitate the dialogue and the interaction of the users with the Information System. The project itself intends to be a meeting-point between the Institution, that has the objective to preserve, organize and represent archaeological data, and all the parties that need to use and reuse them. The dialogue is well-supported also by a wiki environment, a SITAR-glossary with official definitions of the specific terms of the project and with an open wiki for the contributions of specialized users. This paper intends to explore the perspectives of the SITAR Knowledge Base, as a system for open content management and as a dissemination instrument for archaeological and technical knowledge, creating constant two-way traffic for the construction of new archaeological knowledge while, at the same time, disclosing to the public the dataset represented through the webGIS encountering the communities that live in the city in a perspective of Public Archaeology.

Measurement, 2018

Abstract Radon is a dangerous pollutant causing lung cancer. The main protection against it is th... more Abstract Radon is a dangerous pollutant causing lung cancer. The main protection against it is the monitoring. Recent literature has highlighted that historical buildings and archeological sites could be polluted by Radon not only due to the geological site but also due to the building materials and usage. In this paper, measurement techniques for the evaluation of Radon’s concentration level (222Rn) are compared. This evaluation allows to determine most appropriate technique to be used in this type of buildings. The study is justified by the fact that the buildings are often attended not only by specialists but also by tourist that with their behaviour could misstate Radon gas measurement. The study is effectuated analyzing the situation of three old churches located in San Giovanni in Fiore (Cosenza, south of Italy). The measurement results are compared with the ones obtained by performing the same monitoring in public buildings attended by different kind of users. The monitored sites, churches and public buildings, are erected on the common granite massif of Sila (South Italy), by using local granite stone.

2016 IEEE International Symposium on Medical Measurements and Applications (MeMeA), 2016

Nowadays, monitoring the attention level of a driver is a useful tool for assuring a better degre... more Nowadays, monitoring the attention level of a driver is a useful tool for assuring a better degree of safety aboard motor vehicles. Recent literature reports different technologies that have been explored for evaluating various critical physical parameters of drivers. This paper presents an attempt to integrate different non-intrusive monitoring systems which include an eye-blink detection system which works by means of a camera and head-position monitoring system based on an ultrasonic transmitter/receiver network. The information retrieved by the comprehensive system will be of help either for the evaluation of the driver's condition or for boosting other devices often placed in the car such as an alcohol detection system which can pick up dangerous head positions. Two separate algorithms have been implemented and the experiment will be presented in order to validate the proposed systems and algorithms.

The paper deals with the non destructive monitoring of civil engineering structures by using the ... more The paper deals with the non destructive monitoring of civil engineering structures by using the time frequency representation. In particular the Acoustic Emission (AE) of the cracks that can occur inside structures can be evaluated for the study of damage growth. This analysis requires high sampling frequency and long time of observation. Therefore the proposed solution consists of two phases. The first one concerns the acquisition of the AE, the second one deals with the analysis of the acquired data by the Time Frequency Representations. The latter phase allows the identification of the frequencies connected to disaster events like the structural subsidence. The test validation in order to asses the effectiveness of the acquiring system set up is performed according with the standard for the AE in the concrete structures.

Analytical Letters, 1986

A simple and rapid quantitative analytical method for the simultaneous detection of celecoxib and... more A simple and rapid quantitative analytical method for the simultaneous detection of celecoxib and its two main metabolites, hydroxycelecoxib (celecoxib-OH) and celecoxib carboxylic acid (celecoxib-COOH), in rat plasma using liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) was developed. The plasma sample was prepared through simple protein precipitation, and the reconstitution solution (0.1% formic acid in 50% methanol) was optimized to achieve the best peak shape and recovery. The analytes were separated using an Atlantis T3 column (2.1 mm × 100 mm, 3 m), and the mobile phase was composed of 10 mM ammonium formate in either 5% acetonitrile or 95% acetonitrile. The detection of the analytes was performed in alternating polarity switching mode using electrospray ionization. As celecoxib-OH and celecoxib-COOH were slightly unstable following freeze-thaw cycles and long-term storage at −80 • C in stability tests, every analysis was carefully conducted with one-freeze thaw cycle and a short storage duration (<1 week). Acceptable accuracy (<15%) and precision (<15%) were obtained in intra-and inter-day validations. The method was successfully applied to the pharmacokinetic study of celecoxib, celecoxib-OH and celecoxib-COOH following the oral administration of celecoxib in rats at a dose of 10 mg/kg. Comparing the related pharmacokinetic parameters of celecoxib and its metabolites, celecoxib was quickly metabolized into celecoxib-OH and subsequently converted to celecoxib-COOH in short intervals. The AUCs for the two metabolites were less than 10% of that for celecoxib, indicating that the rate of celecoxib metabolism was low.

Sensors, 2014

Cracks are an important indicator reflecting the safety status of infrastructures. This paper pre... more Cracks are an important indicator reflecting the safety status of infrastructures. This paper presents an automatic crack detection and classification methodology for subway tunnel safety monitoring. With the application of high-speed complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) industrial cameras, the tunnel surface can be captured and stored in digital images. In a next step, the local dark regions with potential crack defects are segmented from the original gray-scale images by utilizing morphological image processing techniques and thresholding operations. In the feature extraction process, we present a distance histogram based shape descriptor that effectively describes the spatial shape difference between cracks and other irrelevant objects. Along with other features, the classification results successfully remove over 90% misidentified objects. Also, compared with the original gray-scale images, over 90% of the crack length is preserved in the last output binary images. The proposed approach was tested on the safety monitoring for Beijing Subway Line 1. The experimental results revealed the rules of parameter settings and also proved that the proposed approach is effective and efficient for automatic crack detection and classification.

2018 Metrology for Archaeology and Cultural Heritage (MetroArchaeo)

The aim of this paper is to monitor the dynamic stresses in masonry historical constructions by S... more The aim of this paper is to monitor the dynamic stresses in masonry historical constructions by Structural Health Monitoring System (SHM). The integration of SHM systems into historical constructions is a very complex problem due to the heterogeneity of the raw materials, the geometric complexity of the building, the need of the simultaneous monitoring of many parts. Because to the complexity of the structures under monitoring, SHM system based on Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm can be a solution. IoT paradigm permits to spread heterogeneous sensors all over and each of them is able to acquire and elaborate data. Further interesting aspect is the managing of such data with genetic algorithm to identify the damage and the variation of the engineering constants. However, in the case of masonry historical constructions such algorithms could fail due to the complexity of the structures. Aim of this work is to overcome this problem by identifying the structural elements introducing high complexity and then causing the fail of the monitoring system and to propose their substitution with low complex equivalent models.

2016 IEEE International Symposium on Medical Measurements and Applications (MeMeA)

The recent literature proposes the smartphone's camera to evaluate the arterial blood oxygena... more The recent literature proposes the smartphone's camera to evaluate the arterial blood oxygenation (SpO2%) with the characteristic of friendly and ubiquitous measurement instrument. Some issues remain open, making difficult the compensation of artefacts causing error in the estimation of the photoplethysmogram signal (PPG) and not guarantying that the measurement of SpO2% is correctly executed. In the research, a method is proposed for setting-up the parameters to compensate the effects of the environmental light sources. Initially, the method evaluates the quality of the PPG signals by analysing the light intensity in the red and green colour channels of the video frames of the patient fingertip. Successively, a proper digital procedure sets the scale factor of the PPG to compensate the effects of external light for improving the accurate evaluation of the SpO2%. In order to assess the effectiveness of the proposed method, the experimental results are compared with the gas chromatography analysis.

2020 IEEE International Instrumentation and Measurement Technology Conference (I2MTC), 2020

In this paper, a procedure for the estimation of the harmonic signal components of a signal with ... more In this paper, a procedure for the estimation of the harmonic signal components of a signal with continuous time-varying carrier frequency it is proposed. The procedure in a first phase estimates the coarse trend of the time-varying carrier frequency and then the coarse values of the harmonic components. In particular, the harmonic components are estimated by using the modified three parameters MultiSine Fitting Algorithm (MSFA), here proposed. To take into consideration the frequency offset that can be introduced in the frequency estimation phase, an iterative procedure is also proposed to minimize the difference between the estimated parameters and those of the original signal. The iterative procedure is based on a modified four parameters MSFA. Both the three and four parameters MSFA are modified to operate with the time varying frequency. The main advantages of the proposed procedure are: (i) a reduced sampling frequency is required, and (ii) the spectral leakage is avoided.

2017 IEEE International Instrumentation and Measurement Technology Conference (I2MTC), 2017

The usefulness of drones for professional and research activities is justified by the fact that t... more The usefulness of drones for professional and research activities is justified by the fact that the embedded sensors and data acquisition systems convert drones in flexible and portable measurement instruments. On the other hand, the drone operation introduces sources of uncertainty and accuracy degradation often not taken into account in traditional courses on drones. This paper aims to fulfil this education lack to prepare the next generation of professionals and scientists in the critical use of this new kind of measurement instrument. To reach this goal, in the paper a course on “Measurement for and by drones” to be held at the PhD School in Information Technology for Engineering at University of Sannio — Benevento, Italy, is presented.

2016 IEEE International Symposium on Medical Measurements and Applications (MeMeA), 2016

In the mineral part of the teeth the calcium phosphates and calcium carbonates are combined in a ... more In the mineral part of the teeth the calcium phosphates and calcium carbonates are combined in a collagen with the mucopolysaccharides of the organic matrix. The infection on the tooth surface caused by bacteria can modify the tooth structures resulting in the tooth decay. In order to determine the modification on the tooth structure the use of thermal analysis technique is proposed. With this aim is fundamental the definition of an experimental protocol for the preparation of the sample under examination that does not modify the structure of the tooth. Preliminary experimental results confirm the capability of the measurement technique pointed out to correctly classify the modification of the tooth structure due to the aging or the carious.

Measurement, 2018

The paper presents the experimental assessment of an architecture of Analog-to-Information Conver... more The paper presents the experimental assessment of an architecture of Analog-to-Information Converter (AIC), based on Non-Uniform Wavelet Bandpass Sampling (NUWBS), for use in wideband signal acquisition. To this aim, a preliminary simulation analysis was carried out, with the aim of verifying the capability of the architecture of correctly reconstructing the compressively acquired signal and evaluating the Spurious Free Dynamic Range (SFDR) of the reconstructed signals, in presence of additive noise, quantization noise, and timing jitter of the sampling clock. Then, a modied hardware implementation for the NUWBS AIC architecture was realized, by using commercial otheshelf components, that uses a lowpass lter in the analog correlator block. The realized prototype was experimentally characterized by evaluating the SFDR of the reconstructed signals. The paper describes the realized prototype and discusses the results obtained in both the simulation and the experimental phase.

2018 IEEE International Symposium on Medical Measurements and Applications (MeMeA)

This paper proposes a new calibration method, based on stereo vision, for the position alignment ... more This paper proposes a new calibration method, based on stereo vision, for the position alignment of Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) sensors, used in human motion tracking systems. Compared to other methods, the proposed one does not rely on a movement, and therefore, it does not depend on the capability of the person of performing the movement properly. The method is based on the acquisition of a static stereo image of the person to be tracked, while he/she is wearing the IMU sensors and visual markers are placed on both the IMU sensors and some landmark points on the body joints. From the stereo image, the lengths of the body segments and the rotation matrices to align the sensor orientations to the body segments are evaluated. These values are used by the motion tracking algorithm to get the actual segment orientations from the IMU data. The presented calibration method is validated by comparing the obtained measurements with an inclinometer and a laser distance meter.

2019 II Workshop on Metrology for Industry 4.0 and IoT (MetroInd4.0&IoT), 2019

Time synchronization protocols assume a primary role in IoT era. Their design, implementation and... more Time synchronization protocols assume a primary role in IoT era. Their design, implementation and test often follow separate paths and they are not ensured with the same level of accuracy. Simulation validation exhibits unpredictable gap with real performance levels. According to these statements and in order to answer to the proposed open issues, the paper present a fine-grained controlled environment to perform custom validation test of time synchronization algorithms. The set-up is built by adopting widely known Raspberry development boards, exploiting the ad-hoc fiber optic links provided by Unicas-Net, taking advantage of NetEm built-in emulator in Raspbian Operating Systems, and finally developing a tailored user-friendly software to adequately control network link quality. Accordingly, synchronizing nodes can connect to one of the open points (provided by Raspberry devices) of the network ring and run their algorithms with other nodes that access to the set-up at 50 km distance. Finally, time synchronization performance can easily be assessed by exploiting GPS time provided by the GPS receiver and antenna, which complete each board equipment. First functionality tests are also reported in the paper.

Hypertension, 2017

The analysis of the PPG signal in the time domain for the evaluation of the blood pressure (BP) i... more The analysis of the PPG signal in the time domain for the evaluation of the blood pressure (BP) is proposed. Some features extracted from the PPG signal are used to train an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) to determine the function that fit the target systolic and diastolic BP. The data related to the PPG signals and BP used in the analysis are provided by the Multi-parameter Intelligent Monitoring in Intensive Care (MIMIC II) database. The pre-analysis of the signal to remove inconsistent data is also proposed. A set of 1750 valid pulse is considered. The 80% of the input samples is used for the training of the network. Instead, the 10% of the input data are used for the validation of the network and 10% for final test of this last. The results show as the error for both the systolic and diastolic BP evaluation is included in the range of ±3 mmHg. Tab.1 shows the results for 20 PPG pulses randomly selected analyzed together with the systolic and diastolic blood pressure furnished b...

Construction and Building Materials, 2021

Abstract The main aim of using the IoT paradigm is related to the possibility of a connectivity e... more Abstract The main aim of using the IoT paradigm is related to the possibility of a connectivity extension of several common SHM devices by means of Internet. The connected devices are thus able to transmit and process data, guaranteeing new scenarios in the design of acquisition systems in different fields of science and engineering. The innovations have led the researchers to extend the application of the IoT paradigm to the SHM of masonry structures making sure that the experiments conducted in this framework are able to ensure good results with promising future improvements. The main uses, to date, have been implemented, for example, to monitor individual structural elements, reducing the risks for users due to partial or total collapses of the structure, or for the identification, detection and characterization of damage and degradation of construction materials. The aim of this work is to expose a general overview of the SHM systems used by the authors for masonry structures belonging to historical and cultural heritage, arguing their use for the protection from earthquakes with related advantages. This will be shown thanks to two preliminary SHM systems designed and implemented by the authors on two case studies using IoT, described in the paper with their related cyber and physical parts.

On the occasion of the 2013 edition of ArcheoFOSS, the SITAR Project presented the first steps to... more On the occasion of the 2013 edition of ArcheoFOSS, the SITAR Project presented the first steps towards the setup of a Knowledge Base dedicated to the Archaeological Information System of Rome. After one year, it is interesting to present a summary of the progress of this platform. The SITAR Knowledge Base was created to promote collaboration among different partners and to facilitate the dialogue and the interaction of the users with the Information System. The project itself intends to be a meeting-point between the Institution, that has the objective to preserve, organize and represent archaeological data, and all the parties that need to use and reuse them. The dialogue is well-supported also by a wiki environment, a SITAR-glossary with official definitions of the specific terms of the project and with an open wiki for the contributions of specialized users. This paper intends to explore the perspectives of the SITAR Knowledge Base, as a system for open content management and as a dissemination instrument for archaeological and technical knowledge, creating constant two-way traffic for the construction of new archaeological knowledge while, at the same time, disclosing to the public the dataset represented through the webGIS encountering the communities that live in the city in a perspective of Public Archaeology.

Measurement, 2018

Abstract Radon is a dangerous pollutant causing lung cancer. The main protection against it is th... more Abstract Radon is a dangerous pollutant causing lung cancer. The main protection against it is the monitoring. Recent literature has highlighted that historical buildings and archeological sites could be polluted by Radon not only due to the geological site but also due to the building materials and usage. In this paper, measurement techniques for the evaluation of Radon’s concentration level (222Rn) are compared. This evaluation allows to determine most appropriate technique to be used in this type of buildings. The study is justified by the fact that the buildings are often attended not only by specialists but also by tourist that with their behaviour could misstate Radon gas measurement. The study is effectuated analyzing the situation of three old churches located in San Giovanni in Fiore (Cosenza, south of Italy). The measurement results are compared with the ones obtained by performing the same monitoring in public buildings attended by different kind of users. The monitored sites, churches and public buildings, are erected on the common granite massif of Sila (South Italy), by using local granite stone.

2016 IEEE International Symposium on Medical Measurements and Applications (MeMeA), 2016

Nowadays, monitoring the attention level of a driver is a useful tool for assuring a better degre... more Nowadays, monitoring the attention level of a driver is a useful tool for assuring a better degree of safety aboard motor vehicles. Recent literature reports different technologies that have been explored for evaluating various critical physical parameters of drivers. This paper presents an attempt to integrate different non-intrusive monitoring systems which include an eye-blink detection system which works by means of a camera and head-position monitoring system based on an ultrasonic transmitter/receiver network. The information retrieved by the comprehensive system will be of help either for the evaluation of the driver's condition or for boosting other devices often placed in the car such as an alcohol detection system which can pick up dangerous head positions. Two separate algorithms have been implemented and the experiment will be presented in order to validate the proposed systems and algorithms.

The paper deals with the non destructive monitoring of civil engineering structures by using the ... more The paper deals with the non destructive monitoring of civil engineering structures by using the time frequency representation. In particular the Acoustic Emission (AE) of the cracks that can occur inside structures can be evaluated for the study of damage growth. This analysis requires high sampling frequency and long time of observation. Therefore the proposed solution consists of two phases. The first one concerns the acquisition of the AE, the second one deals with the analysis of the acquired data by the Time Frequency Representations. The latter phase allows the identification of the frequencies connected to disaster events like the structural subsidence. The test validation in order to asses the effectiveness of the acquiring system set up is performed according with the standard for the AE in the concrete structures.

Analytical Letters, 1986

A simple and rapid quantitative analytical method for the simultaneous detection of celecoxib and... more A simple and rapid quantitative analytical method for the simultaneous detection of celecoxib and its two main metabolites, hydroxycelecoxib (celecoxib-OH) and celecoxib carboxylic acid (celecoxib-COOH), in rat plasma using liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) was developed. The plasma sample was prepared through simple protein precipitation, and the reconstitution solution (0.1% formic acid in 50% methanol) was optimized to achieve the best peak shape and recovery. The analytes were separated using an Atlantis T3 column (2.1 mm × 100 mm, 3 m), and the mobile phase was composed of 10 mM ammonium formate in either 5% acetonitrile or 95% acetonitrile. The detection of the analytes was performed in alternating polarity switching mode using electrospray ionization. As celecoxib-OH and celecoxib-COOH were slightly unstable following freeze-thaw cycles and long-term storage at −80 • C in stability tests, every analysis was carefully conducted with one-freeze thaw cycle and a short storage duration (<1 week). Acceptable accuracy (<15%) and precision (<15%) were obtained in intra-and inter-day validations. The method was successfully applied to the pharmacokinetic study of celecoxib, celecoxib-OH and celecoxib-COOH following the oral administration of celecoxib in rats at a dose of 10 mg/kg. Comparing the related pharmacokinetic parameters of celecoxib and its metabolites, celecoxib was quickly metabolized into celecoxib-OH and subsequently converted to celecoxib-COOH in short intervals. The AUCs for the two metabolites were less than 10% of that for celecoxib, indicating that the rate of celecoxib metabolism was low.

Sensors, 2014

Cracks are an important indicator reflecting the safety status of infrastructures. This paper pre... more Cracks are an important indicator reflecting the safety status of infrastructures. This paper presents an automatic crack detection and classification methodology for subway tunnel safety monitoring. With the application of high-speed complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) industrial cameras, the tunnel surface can be captured and stored in digital images. In a next step, the local dark regions with potential crack defects are segmented from the original gray-scale images by utilizing morphological image processing techniques and thresholding operations. In the feature extraction process, we present a distance histogram based shape descriptor that effectively describes the spatial shape difference between cracks and other irrelevant objects. Along with other features, the classification results successfully remove over 90% misidentified objects. Also, compared with the original gray-scale images, over 90% of the crack length is preserved in the last output binary images. The proposed approach was tested on the safety monitoring for Beijing Subway Line 1. The experimental results revealed the rules of parameter settings and also proved that the proposed approach is effective and efficient for automatic crack detection and classification.

2018 Metrology for Archaeology and Cultural Heritage (MetroArchaeo)

The aim of this paper is to monitor the dynamic stresses in masonry historical constructions by S... more The aim of this paper is to monitor the dynamic stresses in masonry historical constructions by Structural Health Monitoring System (SHM). The integration of SHM systems into historical constructions is a very complex problem due to the heterogeneity of the raw materials, the geometric complexity of the building, the need of the simultaneous monitoring of many parts. Because to the complexity of the structures under monitoring, SHM system based on Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm can be a solution. IoT paradigm permits to spread heterogeneous sensors all over and each of them is able to acquire and elaborate data. Further interesting aspect is the managing of such data with genetic algorithm to identify the damage and the variation of the engineering constants. However, in the case of masonry historical constructions such algorithms could fail due to the complexity of the structures. Aim of this work is to overcome this problem by identifying the structural elements introducing high complexity and then causing the fail of the monitoring system and to propose their substitution with low complex equivalent models.

2016 IEEE International Symposium on Medical Measurements and Applications (MeMeA)

The recent literature proposes the smartphone's camera to evaluate the arterial blood oxygena... more The recent literature proposes the smartphone's camera to evaluate the arterial blood oxygenation (SpO2%) with the characteristic of friendly and ubiquitous measurement instrument. Some issues remain open, making difficult the compensation of artefacts causing error in the estimation of the photoplethysmogram signal (PPG) and not guarantying that the measurement of SpO2% is correctly executed. In the research, a method is proposed for setting-up the parameters to compensate the effects of the environmental light sources. Initially, the method evaluates the quality of the PPG signals by analysing the light intensity in the red and green colour channels of the video frames of the patient fingertip. Successively, a proper digital procedure sets the scale factor of the PPG to compensate the effects of external light for improving the accurate evaluation of the SpO2%. In order to assess the effectiveness of the proposed method, the experimental results are compared with the gas chromatography analysis.

2020 IEEE International Instrumentation and Measurement Technology Conference (I2MTC), 2020

In this paper, a procedure for the estimation of the harmonic signal components of a signal with ... more In this paper, a procedure for the estimation of the harmonic signal components of a signal with continuous time-varying carrier frequency it is proposed. The procedure in a first phase estimates the coarse trend of the time-varying carrier frequency and then the coarse values of the harmonic components. In particular, the harmonic components are estimated by using the modified three parameters MultiSine Fitting Algorithm (MSFA), here proposed. To take into consideration the frequency offset that can be introduced in the frequency estimation phase, an iterative procedure is also proposed to minimize the difference between the estimated parameters and those of the original signal. The iterative procedure is based on a modified four parameters MSFA. Both the three and four parameters MSFA are modified to operate with the time varying frequency. The main advantages of the proposed procedure are: (i) a reduced sampling frequency is required, and (ii) the spectral leakage is avoided.

2017 IEEE International Instrumentation and Measurement Technology Conference (I2MTC), 2017

The usefulness of drones for professional and research activities is justified by the fact that t... more The usefulness of drones for professional and research activities is justified by the fact that the embedded sensors and data acquisition systems convert drones in flexible and portable measurement instruments. On the other hand, the drone operation introduces sources of uncertainty and accuracy degradation often not taken into account in traditional courses on drones. This paper aims to fulfil this education lack to prepare the next generation of professionals and scientists in the critical use of this new kind of measurement instrument. To reach this goal, in the paper a course on “Measurement for and by drones” to be held at the PhD School in Information Technology for Engineering at University of Sannio — Benevento, Italy, is presented.

2016 IEEE International Symposium on Medical Measurements and Applications (MeMeA), 2016

In the mineral part of the teeth the calcium phosphates and calcium carbonates are combined in a ... more In the mineral part of the teeth the calcium phosphates and calcium carbonates are combined in a collagen with the mucopolysaccharides of the organic matrix. The infection on the tooth surface caused by bacteria can modify the tooth structures resulting in the tooth decay. In order to determine the modification on the tooth structure the use of thermal analysis technique is proposed. With this aim is fundamental the definition of an experimental protocol for the preparation of the sample under examination that does not modify the structure of the tooth. Preliminary experimental results confirm the capability of the measurement technique pointed out to correctly classify the modification of the tooth structure due to the aging or the carious.