Accurate and Low-Complexity Auto-Fingerprinting for Enhanced Reliability of Indoor Localization Systems.

Indoor localization is one of the most important topics in wireless navigation systems. The large number of applications that rely on indoor positioning makes advancements in this field important. Fingerprinting is a popular technique that is widely adopted and induces many important localization approaches. Recently, fingerprinting based on mobile robots has received increasing attention. This work focuses on presenting a simple, cost-effective and accurate auto-fingerprinting method for an indoor localization system based on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology and using a two-wheeled robot. With this objective, an assessment of the robot's navigation is performed in order to investigate its displacement errors and elaborate the required corrections. The latter are integrated in our proposed localization system, which is divided into two stages. From there, the auto-fingerprinting method is implemented while modeling the tag-reader link by the Dual One Slope with Second Order propagation Model (DOSSOM) for environmental calibration, within the offline stage. During the online stage, the robot's position is estimated by applying DOSSOM followed by multilateration. Experimental localization results show that the proposed method provides a positioning error of 1.22 m at the cumulative distribution function of 90%, while operating with only four RFID active tags and an architecture with reduced complexity.

Early motor deficits in the phalangeal fine movements induced by chronic AMPA infusion in the rat spinal cord assessed by a novel method: Phalangeal tension recording test.

Motor behavior alterations are a shared hallmark of neurodegenerative diseases affecting motor circuits, such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Parkinson's, and Huntington's diseases. In patients and transgenic animal models of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis fine movements controlled by distal muscles are the first to be affected, but its study and knowledge remain poorly understood, mainly because most of the tests used for describing the motor alterations are focused on the function of proximal muscles and gross movements. In this study we demonstrate that alterations of phalangeal fine movements can be quantitatively evaluated using a novel procedure designed by us, phalangeal tension recording test, which showed high sensitivity to detect such alterations. The evaluation was carried out during the motor neuron (MN) degenerative process induced by the acute and chronic overactivation of AMPA receptors in the lumbar rat spinal cord, using previously described models. The new method allowed the quantification of significant alterations of the fine movements of the hindpaws phalanges when AMPA was infused in the lumbar segment controlling the distal muscles, but not when a more rostral spinal segment was infused, and these alterations were not detected by the rotarod or the stride tests. These changes occurred before the paralysis of the hindlimbs. Studying the early distal motor alterations before the total paralysis at late stages is essential for understanding the initial consequences of MN degeneration and therefore for designing new strategies for the control, treatment and prevention of MN diseases.

Performance, Accuracy and Generalization Capability of RFID Tags' Constellation for Indoor Localization.

Indoor localization has recently witnessed an increase in interest due to its wide range of potential services. Further, the location information is very important in many applications, such as the Internet of Things, logistics, library management and so on. Hence, different technologies and techniques have been proposed in the literature for indoor localization systems. Most of these systems present the disadvantages of a poor performance, low accuracy and high cost. However, thanks to its low cost, high accuracy and non-line-of-sight detection, radio frequency identification (RFID)-based localization has increasingly become the most used technology for indoor localization. In this paper, we propose an innovative approach based on the multiple input single output (MISO) protocol to improve the accuracy of a low-cost RFID localization system. Whereas most traditional systems use a single tag for localization, the proposed architecture encourages the use of a group of RFID tags named as a constellation. According to experimental results and based on the signals' diversity, the location accuracy is improved to get an estimated position error of 81 cm at the cumulative distribution function of 90%.