Smart Visual Sensing for Overcrowding in COVID-19 Infected Cities Using Modified Deep Transfer Learning

Currently, COVID-19 is circulating in crowded places as an infectious disease. COVID-19 can be prevented from spreading rapidly in crowded areas by implementing multiple strategies. The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as sensing devices can be useful in detecting overcrowding events. Accordingly, in this article, we introduce a real-time system for identifying overcrowding due to events such as congestion and abnormal behavior. For the first time, a monitoring approach is proposed to detect overcrowding through the UAV and social monitoring system (SMS). We have significantly improved identification by selecting the best features from the water cycle algorithm (WCA) and making decisions based on deep transfer learning. According to the analysis of the UAV videos, the average accuracy is estimated at 96.55%. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach is capable of detecting overcrowding based on UAV videos' frames and SMS's communication even in challenging conditions. © 2005-2012 IEEE.

Development of Pandemic Monitoring System Based on Constellation of Nanosatellites

Covid-19 is a global crisis and the greatest challenge we have faced. It affects people in different ways. Most infected people develop a mild to moderate form of the disease and recover without hospitalization. This presents a problem in spreading the pandemic with unintentionally manner. Thus, this paper provides a new technique for COVID-19 monitoring remotely and in wide range. The system is based on satellite technology that provides a pivotal solution for wireless monitoring. This mission requires a data collection technique which can be based on drones' technology. Therefore, the main objective of our proposal is to develop a mission architecture around satellite technology in order to collect information in wide range, mostly, in areas suffer network coverage. A communication method was developed around a constellation of nanosatellites to cover Saudi Arabia region which is the area of interest in this paper. The new proposed architecture provided an efficient monitoring application discussing the gaps related to thermal imaging data. It reached 15.8 min as mean duration of visibility for the desired area. In total, the system can reach a coverage of 5.8 h/day, allowing to send about 21870 thermal images. © 2023 CRL Publishing. All rights reserved.

Dual-Polarized COVID-19 Microstrip Antenna Array for 5G Applications

This paper presents a novel unique single-layer dual-polarized microstrip patch antenna array with a COVID-19 shape designed for building a Base Station (BS) for sub-6 GHz applications at the resonant frequency 3.16 GHz. Furthermore, it is easy to fabricate and compact, which makes it suitable for 5G applications. Firstly, a single-element fractal shape antenna with a gain of 3 dB is discussed. Secondly, an 8-element 2x4 antenna array is designed with a gain of 8 dB. The antenna is fabricated using an FR4-epoxy double-sided copper board with a thickness of 1.6 mm. It is optimized by performing parametric studies of the dimensions using the finite element method (FEM) software program HFSS. The printed prototype measurements including S-parameters, polarization, and radiation pattern show a good agreement with simulation results. © 2022 IEEE.

To IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society Members [President's Message]

It is my deep honor and pleasure to serve as the 2023 president of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society (AP-S). I would like to thank all IEEE AP-S members for their support for my election. After the difficult period of COVID-19, the situation is gradually returning to normality. We are again back to conferences in person and live meetings. This simplifies my job with respect to the one of my predecessors, Prof. Yahia Antar (president in 2021) and Gianluca Lazzi (president in 2022). They have done an incredible job in the past years leading the Society during an anomalous period. I thank Yahia for his encouragement and advice and for the work he is continuing to do in promoting the Society all over the world through new initiatives. A special thanks to Gianluca for his outstanding leadership, for his work and service, for the excellent ideas and initiatives he carried out during his term, and mostly for helping me in understanding the various aspects of the Society. I am very thankful for his support, suggestions, and friendship.

TRANSLATED SKIP CONNECTIONS - EXPANDING THE RECEPTIVE FIELDS OF FULLY CONVOLUTIONAL NEURAL NETWORKS

The effective receptive field of a fully convolutional neural network is an important consideration when designing an architecture, as it defines the portion of the input visible to each convolutional kernel. We propose a neural network module, extending traditional skip connections, called the translated skip connection. Translated skip connections geometrically increase the receptive field of an architecture with negligible impact on both the size of the parameter space and computational complexity. By embedding translated skip connections into a benchmark architecture, we demonstrate that our module matches or outperforms four other approaches to expanding the effective receptive fields of fully convolutional neural networks. We confirm this result across five contemporary image segmentation datasets from disparate domains, including the detection of COVID-19 infection, segmentation of aerial imagery, common object segmentation, and segmentation for self-driving cars. © 2022 IEEE.

Study on the Simultaneous Measurement of Multiple Positions of the Human Body Using Two-Dimensional Millimeter-Wave Array Radar

Radar-based non contact measurement of physiological signals and vital signs has been of great interest, partly because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Existing studies reported that different physiological signals can be extracted from different positions of the human body. In this study, we demonstrate the measurement of multiple positions of the human body using a radar system with a two-dimensional antenna array. Using a 79-GHz 48-channel multiple-input multiple-output antenna array, we image multiple body parts of participants and separate the echoes using array signal processing. We present experimental results to show the feasibility of the proposed approach. © 2022 The Institute of Electronics Information and Communication Engineers (IEICE) of Japan.

Simulation and Development of an Autonomous Drone for Delivery of Medicines during COVID-19

The main goal of this research paper is to develop an autonomous medicine delivery quadcopter and validate a simulator model for it. It is intended to use this drone in crisis of COVID-19 due to restriction of social distancing and unavailability of regular hospital facilities. A simulator is then modified and used as a pre-mission tool to predict mission outcome and after validation, it will be used to predict complex missions without actually risking the expensive drone. An efficient payload system is designed and constructed for the quadcopter to fulfill its delivery purpose. Once the drone is assembled along with the payload mechanism, its physical parameters are calculated using SolidWorks. The same parameters such as performance coefficients and moments of inertia are then updated in the simulator's quadcopter properties. The equations of motions model used is improved by including physical theoretical effects. In the end, same autonomous delivery mission tests have been done for the real quadcopter and the simulator in order to compare the results and show the effect of improved equations of motion and physical parameters. © 2022 IEEE.

Joint Resource Scheduling for UAV-Enabled Mobile Edge Computing System in Internet of Vehicles

The sudden outbreak of COVID-19 brings many unpredictable situations to human travel, such as temporarily closed highways, parking lots, etc. The scenarios mentioned above will lead to a large backlog of vehicles, and the requirements of Internet of vehicle (IoV) applications increase sharply in a period of short time correspondingly. Mobile edge computing (MEC) is a key enabling technology that can guarantee the diverse requirements of IoV applications through the optimization of resource scheduling. However, the sharp increasing in requirements of IoV applications caused by the congestion of highways or parking lots still bring great challenges to the deployment of traditional MEC. Therefore, in this paper, we construct an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) enabled MEC system, in which the data generated from IoV applications is processed by offloading to UAVs with MEC servers to ensure the efficiency of data processing and the response time of IoV applications. In order to approximate real-world UAV enabled MEC system, we consider the stochastic offloading and downloading processing time. Moreover, the priority constraints of sensors from the same vehicle are taken into consideration since they have different importance degrees. Then, we propose an Markov network-based cooperative evolutionary algorithm (MNCEA) to search out the optimal UAV scheduling solution to guarantee the shortest response time, in which the solution space is divided into multiple sub-solution spaces with the help of MN structure and parameters. Finally, we construct multiple simulation experiments with different probability distributions to simulate uncertainty factors. The simulation results verify the validity of MNCEA compared with the state-of-the-art methods, which is reflected by the shortest response time of requirements of IoV applications IEEE

A multi-population immune plasma algorithm for path planning of unmanned combat aerial vehicle

Autonomous flight of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or its weaponized variant named unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV) requires a route or path determined carefully by considering the optimization objectives about the enemy threats and fuel consumption of the system being operated. Immune Plasma algorithm (IP algorithm or IPA) is one of the most recent optimization techniques and directly models the fundamental steps of a medical method also used for the COVID-19 disease and known as convalescent or immune plasma treatment. In this study, IP algorithm for which a promising performance has already been validated with a single population was first extended to a multi-population domain supported by a migration schema. Moreover, the usage of the donor as a source of plasma for the treatment operations of a receiver was remodeled. The new variant of the IPA empowered with the multi-population and modified donor usage approach was called Multi-IP algorithm or MULIPA. For investigating the solving capabilities of the MULIPA as a UCAV path planner, different battlefield scenarios and algorithm specific parameter configurations were used. The results obtained by the MULIPA were compared with the results of other meta-heuristic based path planners. The comparative studies between MULIPA and other techniques showed that newly proposed IPA variant is capable of finding more secure and fuel efficient paths for a UCAV system. © 2022 Elsevier Ltd

Around the Circuit

The article presents the discussion on world news briefs. Topics include Infinite Electronics Inc., a global supplier of electronic components serving the needs of customers through a family of highly recognized and trusted brands;and Pharrowtech, a growing market leader in mmWave solutions for next-generation wireless applications.

AP-S Young Professionals Activities at the 2022 IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation [Young Professionals]

This year, the annual IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation and U.S. National Committee for the International Union of Radio Science Radio Science Meeting was held in Denver, CO, USA, on 10–15 July. This conference was special because it was the first in-person conference after the two virtual conferences, in 2020 and 2021, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many students, Young Professionals (YPs), engineers, researchers, and professors met in person. The IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society (AP-S) YPs Committee (YPC) [1] conducted important educational and networking activities at the conference. AP-S YPs ambassadors [2] led the way in the development of several new YPs activities, establishing them as an inspirational influence for the Society. Highlights of the YPs activities ( Figure 1 ) are summarized in the following.

Enhancing Post-Covid Student Proficiency and Confidence in Using Laboratory Test Equipment

Because of the Covid-19 Pandemic during academic year 2020-2021, many of the classes and laboratories in our undergraduate Electrical Engineering (EE) program were conducted remotely, making tremendous use of videoconferencing technologies such as Microsoft Teams, and simulation engines such as National Instruments' MultiSimTM. As we began to move back to “in person” learning for the Fall of 2021, our EE faculty observed some early weaknesses in student achievement of ABET EE student outcome #6 (an ability to develop and conduct appropriate experimentation, analyze and interpret data, and use engineering judgment to draw conclusions). We found that while students demonstrated excellent proficiency in using modern tools such as MATLABTM and MultiSimTM (which had been used extensively during remote classes), they appeared considerably weaker in making independent measurements using laboratory hardware such as oscilloscopes, dynamic signal analyzers (FFT analyzers), RF analyzers, and even commonly used voltage and current meters (which had not been used much during remote learning). Here we highlight specific student shortcomings we observed in laboratory skills as students began their in-person lab experiences during the Fall 2021 semester. We then discuss our approaches to remedy these shortcomings during the Fall 2021 semester to improve student confidence and proficiency in the use of laboratory instrumentation. We also highlight the improvements we saw in achievement of ABET student outcomes. While computer simulation has its place in undergraduate education, practical testing and measurement of electronic systems does require physical measurement and interaction using modern test equipment, and we identified some areas for timely improvement. Our focus in this paper is on improved student performance in using laboratory test equipment in Linear Circuits and Antennas courses. In the Linear Circuits course, students use the Oscilloscope and Dynamic Signal Analyzer to identify the characteristics of several op-amps and circuits (e.g, op-amp open-loop frequency response, gain-bandwidth product, slew rate, output impedance, closed-loop frequency response of an inverting amplifier), and in the in the Antennas course students use the RF analyzer to characterize the behavior of RF circuits, transmission lines and antennas. We show how our increased emphasis on lab skills for the Fall 2021 semester, coupled with unique assessment tools, significantly improved achievement of student outcome #6. More specifically we share the successes we experienced in using oral individual quizzes during lab meetings, group classroom quizzes, individual student observation of setup and measurement, and adding questions related to lab skills and experiences on hourly examinations. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2022

Work in Progress: Development of UAS Module in Laboratory Class for a Senior Engineering Core Course

Designing a senior-level course that involves problem-based learning, including project completion task, is laborious and challenging. A well-designed project motivates the students to be self-learners and prepares them for future industrial or academic endeavors. The COVID-19 pandemic brought many challenges when instructions were forced to move either online or to a remote teaching/learning environment. Due to this rapid transition, delivery modes in teaching and learning modalities faced disruption making course design more difficult. The senior level Flight Controls course AME - 4513 is designed with Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) related projects for the students to have a better understanding of UAS usage on various applications in support of Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program. The purpose of this paper is to present the UAS lab modules in a junior level robotics lab, AME - 4802, which preceded the Flight Controls course in the school of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Oklahoma. Successfully completing the course project requires independent research and involves numerical simulations of UAS. The Robotics Lab course focuses on hands-on projects of robotic systems with an emphasis on semi-autonomous mobile robots, including an UAS introduction module. • The UAS module in the Robotics Lab class is introduced in Spring 2020. Therefore, most of the students enrolled in the Spring 2020 Robotics Lab course have introductory knowledge about the UAS system when taking the Fall 2020 Flight Control course. In addition, Spring 2020 Robotics Lab was affected due to COVID-19. • The UAS module was not introduced in 2019 Spring Robotics lab. Thus, the students enrolled in Fall 2019 Flight Controls course did not have prior knowledge on the UAS system. • We thus present the implementation of UAS module in a junior level robotics lab which preceded the senior level Flight Controls course in following Fall semester, when the same instructor taught the course. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2022.

Soil Moisture Active Passive: Flying A Spacecraft From Home

During the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic, the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) spacecraft was flown almost entirely from the homes of operations personnel. SMAP is a science spacecraft mission, measuring soil moisture, its freeze/thaw state, and other parameters on a global scale to support weather forecasting, disaster response and climate research. Institutional pandemic response protocols at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) prescribed that only mission critical and mission essential work may be performed on-site. Fortuitously, automation is a defining characteristic of SMAP operations. Ground systems are used to automate routine tasks but not to replace or replicate the technical expertise of human operators. Nominal operations are repetitive, occur around the clock, and automation allows them to be low cost. Potential contingency scenarios were assessed. Consequences of lost or degraded capability of major mission system elements were evaluated. In particular, the impacts of progressively reduced availability of ground antenna stations were considered. Operational adjustments were made to conduct nearly all functions remotely. Naturally, all meetings were conducted online, and chat rooms were set up. For the infrequent real-time operations, an uplink team of two was deployed to the mission ops center, and all other participants remotely monitored the telemetry and systems. The project policy that all manual uplinks must be performed on-site by two persons was retained. Maneuvers, normally performed on-site with support from several system and sub-system operators, were now performed completely remotely by activating one of a set of pre-loaded maneuver sequences. Despite the situation, significant non-routine activities were accomplished to address anomalies and programmatic needs. A major upgrade of the ground data system was performed, replacing aging hardware and updating obsolete software, although on a longer timeline than originally planned. An innovative parallel operations architecture was used to validate functionality and performance of the upgraded system, while still operating on the legacy system. Similarly, the flight system testbed needed to be upgraded, with the configuration swapped multiple times to accommodate testing and other programmatic needs. The spacecraft experienced a significant corruption of the non-volatile memory. Diagnosis and recovery using new tools were performed almost entirely from home. In summary, SMAP remote operations during the pandemic have been and continue to be highly successful. These experiences have demonstrated that much of the operations may actually be conducted remotely. © 2022 IEEE.

Difficulties in patch antenna production & prototyping in Turkey

In recent years monetary narrowing impact more on Turkey and developing countries. Therefore, the importance of industrial policy and technology management in developing countries has widely increased. Production and design strategies have to be planned carefully. Thus, evidently monetary narrowing and undesired exchange rate fluctuation affected investment and the cash flow in numerous sectors such as finances, funding, industry, service industry, agribusiness, livestock, building trade, research, and development, etc. In this context, this situation broadly hit the research, prototyping, manufacturing, and testing phase of the microstrip patch antennas. Today, patch antennas have widely utilized in telecommunication systems. Hence, this growth has increased interest in studies. As it is in every project, cost and efficiency are an essential part of the project design. Therefore, the ratio of cost is more important for Turkey and developing countries due to undesired exchange rate fluctuation, tax, financial obligations, and unexpected world events (e.g. COVID-19 pandemic). Commonly, the microstrip patch antenna comprises particular parts such as a radiating patch on top of the double-sided laminate and ground plane and feeding point located below the double-sided laminate. Therefore, microstrip patch antenna components play a significant role in patch antenna radiation characteristics. Moreover, specifications of the double-sided laminate, such as relative permittivity (or dielectric constant) and real physical thickness are essential elements of the patch antenna's radiation characteristics. Generally, high-quality dielectric substrates are developed and manufactured by western originated companies. Thus, the dielectric substrate with high-grade characteristics is hard to find for Turkey and developing countries. Importing is the only option and quite costly. Choosing a domestic dielectric substrate is inevitable, however insufficient for many cases. In this study, difficulties in microstrip patch antenna production and prototyping in Turkey are analyzed.

SWCNT Based On-Body Antenna For Detecting COVID-19 Affected Lung Using 5G-Band

In this paper, a 5G on-body patch has been designed for detecting COVID-19 affected lung. A new material Single Wall Carbon Nanotube (SWCNT) is used to design the patch of the antenna. Copper is used to designing the ground and FR-4 (lossy) is used in the substrate. The antenna has a total thickness of 5.5 mm where the patch thickness is 0.5 mm, the substrate thickness is 4.5 mm, and the ground thickness is 0.5 mm. The total volume (length x width x thickness) of this antenna is 80 mm x 80 mm x 5.5 mm (35200 mm3). For detecting COVID-19, designed two human lung phantom body models such as a COVID-19 affected lung model and a non-affected normal lung model. The patch antenna and all the models were designed in CST Microwave Studio. All the dielectric properties and other valuable parameters of the antenna materials and lung phantom models were collected and used for designing the antenna and phantom lung models. The antenna's return loss (S1,1) is -27.498894 dB, gain is 3.007 dB, VSWR is 1.0880641, directivity is 6.007 dB, resonant frequency is 6.296 GHz, SAR 1.19 W/Kg, bandwidth is 1.8174 GHz and the efficiency is 61% in free space. In this pandemic situation, this antenna can be given a new step for detecting COVID-19 affected lung. © 2022 IEEE.

A Low Cost Yagi Log-periodic Antenna for 4G/LTE

This paper presents the design of a low cost Yagi log-periodic antenna to extend the coverage of 4G/LTE reception. In recent times, there has been an overwhelming demand for such solutions due to the COVID-19 pandemic as a good internet connection was essential for online teaching/learning activities and for employees working from home. This paper presents the design of a single low cost antenna solution covering common frequency bands used in 4G/LTE networks to the problem without increasing the number of base stations to improve coverage. The performance of the designed antenna is analyzed using the high frequency structure analyzer (HFSS) software from ANSYS and results are presented. © 2021 IEEE.

Towards AI-based Air Traffic Control

Air traffic, despite the recent dip due to Covid, is expected to grow 30-40% year on year. With the potential inclusion of UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) into controlled airspace over the next decade, it is anticipated that the congestion levels in airspace will increase 10 fold. This paper presents an AI-based approach to air traffic control, with the aim of alleviating the load and improving the efficiency of human agents (air traffic controllers). One of the primary goals of air traffic control is to safely navigate an aircraft through controlled airspace using real-time control actions - such as changes to speed, heading (direction of travel) and altitude of an aircraft. The safety critical nature of this environment calls for precise explanations (why take an action) and counterfactual (why not take an action) explanations, real-time responsiveness, the ability to present succinct actions to a human agent, while simultaneously optimizing for air traffic delays, fuel burn rates, and weather conditions. This paper presents algorithms and a system architecture for anticipating separation losses (conflicts in airspace) and a lattice-based search space exploration AI planner to recommend actions to avoid such conflicts. The key contributions of the paper include: (i) fast detection (prediction) of conflicts in a controlled airspace, and (ii) fast lattice space exploration based AI solver to produce a set of feasible resolutions for the detected conflicts. Additionally, this paper discusses how to weight the different resolutions and how future work on optimisation techniques could improve the efficiency of the algorithm and address various known limitations of the current approach from both technical and human-agent perspective. The evaluations are conducted against an air traffic simulator, Narsim, showing the ability to avoid separation losses, while minimizing the number of actions even at 3 x normal capacity. © ATM 2021. All rights reserved.

COPE Projects [Cope Corner]

The year 2022 has been one of hybrid events all over the world, as we emerge from the effects and aftereffects of COVID-19. With the repercussions still lingering, there are many aspects that need to be addressed before announcing any event. We are geared up to attend the 2022 IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society (AP-S) International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation/U.S. National Committee–International Union of Radio Science Meeting in Denver, Colorado, from 10 to 15 July 2022. In August, when you will be reading this issue’s “COPE Corner” column, we hope that we will have met in person at the IEEE symposium and will have many more topics to share.