An Analysis on the Performance of a Mobile Platform with Gas Sensors for Real Time Victim Localization.

This work concerns the performance analysis of the sensors contained in a victim detection system. The system is a mobile platform with gas sensors utilized for real time victim localization in urban environments after a disaster has caused the entrapment of people in partially collapsed building structures. The operating principle of the platform is the sampling of air from potential survival spaces (voids) and the measurement of the sampled air's temperature and concentration of CO2 and O2. Humans in a survival space are modelled as sources of CO2 and heat and sinks of O2. The physical openings of a survival space are modelled as sources of fresh air and sinks of the internal air. These sources and sinks dynamically affect the monitored properties of the air inside a survival space. In this paper, the effects of fresh air sources and internal air sinks are first examined in relation to local weather conditions. Then, the effect of human sources of CO2 and sinks of O2 in the space are examined. A model is formulated in order to reliably estimate the concentration of CO2 and O2 as a function of time for given reasonable entrapment scenarios. The input parameters are the local weather conditions, the openings of the survival space, and the number and type of entrapped humans. Three different tests successfully verified the presented theoretical estimations. A detection system with gas sensors of specified or measured capabilities, by utilizing this model and based on the expected concentrations, may inform the operator of the minimum required presence of humans in a survival space that can be detected after "some time".

A compact hybrid-multiplexed potentiostat for real-time electrochemical biosensing applications.

The architecture and design of a compact, multichannel, hybrid-multiplexed potentiostat for performing electrochemical measurements on continuously-biased electrode arrays is presented. The proposed architecture utilises a combination of sequential and parallel measurements, to enable high performance whilst keeping the system low-cost and compact. The accuracy of the signal readout is maintained by following a special multiplexing approach, which ensures the continuous biasing of all the working electrodes of an array. After sampling the results, a digital calibration technique factors out errors from component inaccuracies. A prototype printed circuit board (PCB) was designed and built using off-the-shelf components for the real-time measurement of the amperometric signal of 48 electrodes. The operation and performance of the PCB was evaluated and characterised through a wide range of testing conditions, where it exhibited high linearity (R(2)>0.999) and a resolution of 400pA. The effectiveness of the proposed multiplexing scheme is demonstrated through electrochemical tests using KCl and [Fe(CN)6](3-) in KCl solutions. The applicability of the prototype multichannel potentiostat is also demonstrated using real biosensors, which were applied to the detection of IgA antibodies.