Indian Institute of Technology Palakkad&nbsp;(IIT Palakkad or IIT PKD) is a public autonomous&nbsp;engineering&nbsp;and&nbsp;research&nbsp;institute located in&nbsp;Palakkad,&nbsp;Kerala. It was&nbsp;one of the five new&nbsp;IITs&nbsp;proposed in the&nbsp;2014 Union budget of India. The campus was inaugurated on 3 August 2015. The institute has 94 faculty, 978 students, and 63 non-teaching staffs.

IT Palakkad currently offers four-year Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) and two years MS programmes in 8 different engineering disciplines including&nbsp;Computer Science, Electrical, Mechanical, Civil among others.

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IIT Palakkad

In this paper, we present a real-Time quality-Aware pulse waveform delineation and parameter extraction method for accurate and reliable measurements of pulse parameters from photoplethysmogram (PPG) signals. It consists of three major stages: The PPG signal quality assessment (PPG-SQA) using autocorrelation function (ACF) and number of threshold-crossings (NTC) features, the zero-frequency resonator (ZFR) based pulse onset and peak determination, and the pulse parameter extraction. The method is implemented on the Arduino Due with a 32-bit Atmel SAM3X8E ARM Cortex-M3 CPU, 512-kB flash memory, 96-kB SRAM, and 84-MHz clock speed. The method is evaluated on the recorded PPG signals and three standard PPG databases. The PPG-SQA algorithm achieves an average sensitivity (Se)=98.62%, specificity (Sp)=97.37%, and overall accuracy (OA)=98.09%. The algorithm achieves an average Se=99.88%, positive predictivity (Pp)=99.89, Se=99.82%, and Pp=99.95%, respectively with the delineation errors (mean ± standard deviation) of 8.45 ± 9.39 ms and 0.23 ± 1.33 ms for finding onsets and peaks, respectively. The statistical analysis demonstrates that the parameter measurement errors are minimum for most of the pulse cycles. Results show that our quality-Aware PPG analysis scheme can achieve a false alarm rate reduction (FARR) of 97.36% which outperforms the other existing SQA algorithms. It can lead to save transmission and processing energy from 8.33% to 95.63% and 8.33% to 59.77% for a duration from 5 to 60 s, respectively. The method has great potential for low-energy IoT and unsupervised health monitoring devices. © 2001-2012 IEEE.

World University root node

Department of Electrical Engineering

IEEE Sensors Journal

Real-Time quality-Aware ppg waveform delineation and parameter extraction for effective unsupervised and iot health monitoring systems

In this article, we propose a new real-time quality-aware quality-control data compression framework for maximizing the battery life of Internet of Things (IoT) and Smartphone based health monitoring devices. The proposed framework is implemented on Arduino Due with a 32-bit Atmel SAM3X8E ARM Cortex-M3 processor and validated using four standard databases and real-time signals obtained by using our sensing hardware. The proposed framework achieves compression ratios between seven and 28 with energy saving between 83% and 92%. Results demonstrate that our framework provides a promising energy saving solution by discarding the noisy photoplethysmogram (PPG) signals and pulse-free signals before performing data compression and compressing the noise-free PPG signals efficiently with very small feature parameter error. © 2019 IEEE.

IEEE Sensors Letters

A New Quality-Aware Quality-Control Data Compression Framework for Power Reduction in IoT and Smartphone PPG Monitoring Devices

Three-stage solid state transformer (SST) consists of a multilevel AC-DC converter in stage-l followed by dual active bridge (DAB) isolated DC-DC converters in stage-2 and a three-phase inverter in stage-3. The output filters of stage-l are designed to filter both switching frequency based harmonics and second harmonic ripple generated due to single-phase power processing. As a result, the use of less reliable electrolytic capacitors in stage-l is inevitable. In this paper, a new control scheme is proposed for the SST to transfer the second harmonic ripple current from the output of stage-l to the output of stage-2 in each phase. When the three phases are connected at the output of stage-2, the second harmonic ripple currents which are phase shifted by \frac2 \pi3 radians add to zero. As a result, the capacitive filter requirement at the medium voltage DC (MVDC) bus is reduced, which is realized using reliable film capacitors. The operating principles along with detailed mathematical analysis and simulation results are presented. © 2019 The Korean Institute of Power Electronics (KIPE).

ICPE 2019 - ECCE Asia - 10th International Conference on Power Electronics - ECCE Asia

A New Control Scheme to Process Ripple Power Through Isolation Stage of the Three-stage Solid State Transformer

In the present work, application of evolutionary algorithm and gradient-based optimisation techniques are extended towards obtaining minimum drag axisymmetric bodies in hypersonic flows. An attempt has been made to study the comparative performance of greedy and heuristic algorithm-based optimisation algorithm of interest with its application towards generating optimal shape configurations. We compare the performance of memetic meta-heuristic-based shuffled frog-leaping algorithm (SFLA), biological evolution-based genetic algorithm (GA), stochastic method-based simulated annealing (SA) and gradient-based steepest descent (SD) method. The suitability of each optimisation algorithm is analysed for a common test case of minimum drag axisymmetric body with the use of theoretical correlation as its flow solver. This is then followed by the implementation of a computationally expensive but accurate in-house Euler flow solver based on Immersed Boundary (IB) method, which results in a discrete solution space. This naturally results in greater computational cost per function evaluation. Results indicate that evolutionary algorithm-based optimisation technique requires much greater number of function evaluations as compared to gradient-based optimisation technique. Moreover, for a uni-modal problem considered in this work, the choice of gradient-based optimisation method proves to be quite robust and computationally efficient.

Department of Mechanical Engineering

Soft Computing for Problem Solving

Application of greedy and heuristic algorithm-based optimisation methods towards aerodynamic shape optimisation

The objective of this research study was to evaluate the performance of Reacted and Activated Rubber (RAR) modified gap-graded asphalt mixtures, and compare the results with gap-graded asphalt mixtures modified with crumb rubber prepared through the dry mixing process. Further, the performance characteristics were compared with those of the RAR dense-graded asphalt mixtures. The scope of the study included conducting performance tests on RAR gap-graded mixtures, namely: resilient modulus test at various temperature-frequency combinations for initial stiffness evaluation; Indirect Tensile Fatigue Test for fatigue characterization; and Tensile Strength Ratio test for moisture sensitivity. Based on this research study, it was understood that RAR is a promising modifier for use in asphalt mixtures, which not only improves the strength properties, but also enhances the elastic behavior of the modified mixtures. Further, RAR content of 3% by weight of the total mixture is recommended as the optimum RAR dosage with gap aggregate gradation. It is envisioned that this study will help provide essential understanding towards the application of RAR gap-graded asphalt mixtures as superior performing pavements that are anticipated to outperform dense-graded asphalt mixtures, including RAR dense mix. &nbsp;

Department of Civil Engineering

Rubberized Asphalt Rubber (RAR) 2018

Performance Characterization of Reacted and Activated Rubber Modified Gap Graded Asphalt Mixtures

Memory-safety attacks have been one of the most critical threats against computing systems. Although a wide-range of defense techniques have been developed against these attacks, the existing mitigation strategies have several limitations. In particular, most of the existing mitigation approaches are based on aborting or restarting the victim program when a memory-safety attack is detected, thus making the system unavailable. This might not be acceptable in systems with stringent timing constraints, such as cyber-physical systems (CPS), since the system unavailability leaves the control system in an unsafe state. To address this problem, we propose CIMA -- a resilient and light-weight mitigation technique that prevents invalid memory accesses at runtime. CIMA manipulates the compiler-generated control flow graph to automatically detect and bypass unsafe memory accesses at runtime, thereby mitigating memory-safety attacks along the process. An appealing feature of CIMA is that it also ensures system availability and resilience of the CPS even under the presence of memory-safety attacks. To this end, we design our experimental setup based on a realistic Secure Water Treatment (SWaT) and Secure Urban Transportation System (SecUTS) testbeds and evaluate the effectiveness and the efficiency of our approach. The experimental results reveal that CIMA handles memory-safety attacks effectively with low overhead. Moreover, it meets the real-time constraints and physical-state resiliency of the CPS under test.

Department of Computer Science and Engineering

Taming the War in Memory: A Resilient Mitigation Strategy Against Memory Safety Attacks in CPS

This chapter discusses the basis for ongoing work in global-scale pastureland yield gap and energy crop analyses, paired with landscape-scale process-based modeling and remote sensing analyses that use Brazil as a case study. It introduces the potential role of pasture intensification in sustainably meeting rising demands for food and bioenergy feedstock. Combining pastureland intensification with increased bioenergy production requires land use change as well as changes in agricultural management practices. This raises the possibility of negative impacts on soil carbon and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, important metrics for agroecosystem sustainability. These concerns are highly relevant in Brazil, which is undergoing pastureland intensification alongside the expansion of sugarcane production to meet growing global demands for sugar and biofuels. The chapter also presents the basis for the research approach of the GSB Geospatial project, and a review of pathways to address key uncertainties.

Environmental Sciences and Sustainable Engineering Centre (ESSENCE)

Sugarcane Bioenergy for Sustainable Development: Expanding Production in Latin America and Africa

Integrating pasture intensification and bioenergy crop expansion

Multi-port curved surface burners are used in industrial boilers, preheating of large diameter pipes, textile industries, preheating of cylindrical metal billets and other industrial applications. The present work reports the heat transfer characteristics of convex shaped burner with 49 inline ports arranged in an array of 7 each. The methane-air premixed flame jets are impinged on the concave surface of a curved plate placed with radial spacing of 12 mm. Two different burners with port diameters of 2 mm and 3 mm with pitch to diameter ratio of 2.33 are used. The flame jet is studied for Reynolds number (Re) ranging from 75 to 200 and equivalence ratio of 0.9–1.5. The characterisation is done by impinging the pre-characterised air jets of various flow rates on the rear surface and capturing the wall temperature. The wall temperature is analysed to get the distributions of Nusselt number and effectiveness. The variation of coefficient of variance of Nusselt number, average Nusselt number and thermal efficiency is reported in the present work. The Nusselt number and effectiveness distributions increase with the increase in mixture Reynolds number. For a fixed mixture Reynolds number, the optimum heat transfer is obtained for stoichiometric flame. The thermal efficiency and average heat transfer of 2 mm port diameter is observed to be 18–25% higher as compared with burner with port diameter of 3 mm. Correlations are developed to predict the average Nusselt number, average effectiveness, coefficient of variance (COV) of Nusselt number distribution and thermal efficiency.

Applied Thermal Engineering

Heat transfer investigations on impinging flame jets of a multi-port convex burner

International Conference on Desalination (InDACON-2018)

Efficiency in Chromium removal from metal plating industry effluent by Electrodialysis

Dynamical systems with abrupt changes or several structures or interruptions to communications between subsystems can be effectively modelled by random jump linear systems. Random jump linear systems are a kind of stochastic hybrid systems, which consists of a set of linear systems, also called multiple modes, and the switching among them is governed by a random jump process. In particular, we consider that the underlying random jump process is time inhomogeneous. Roughly, a time inhomogeneous random jump process is one that has time varying transition probabilities (or rates) among its modes. It is a practical consideration, because, in general, the physical systems are time inhomogeneous across its different properties and transition probabilities (or rates) among its modes can also be viewed as a time inhomogeneous phenomenon.