This work copes with the design and implementation of a wireless sensors network architecture to automatically and continuously monitor, for the first time, the manufacturing process of Sardinian Carasau bread. The case of a traditional bakery company facing the challenge of the Food-Industry 4.0 competitiveness is investigated. The process was analyzed to identify the most relevant variables to be monitored during the product manufacturing. Then, a heterogeneous, multi-tier wireless sensors network was designed and realized to allow the real-time control and the data collection during the critical steps of dough production, sheeting, cutting and leavening. Commercial on-the-shelf and cost-effective integrated electronics were employed, making the proposed approach of interest for many practical cases. Finally, a user-friendly interface was provided to enhance the understanding, control and to favor the process monitoring. With the wireless senors network (WSN) we designed, it is possible to monitor environmental parameters (temperature, relative humidity, gas concentrations); cinematic quantities of the belts; and, through a dedicated image processing system, the morphological characteristics of the bread before the baking. The functioning of the WSN was demonstrated and a statistical analysis was performed on the variables monitored during different seasons. offered by Internet-of-Things (IoT) solutions to meet sustainability (or waste reduction) criteria [2]. The food industry is managing critical changes related to consumer needs, to health and safety concerns and to the demand of food products which should be differentiated and high-quality [5]. However, the quality of these products can change suddenly during the production process; thus, leading to the need for ad hoc, reliable and real-time strategies to monitor the manufacturing process [5,6]. Therefore, to satisfy customer demands, the digital monitoring of the supply chain is required to provide a deep knowledge of the crucial production steps, in order to detect the weaknesses of and permit the optimization of the whole process, to reduce the maintenance difficulties and lower the costs [5,6]. Moreover, this digitalization trend in food industry can favor the automatic data collection, the lowering of paperwork and the enabling the development of real-time, robust feedback strategies [2]. Furthermore, the challenge of ensuring acceptable adoption costs of new information and communication technologies (ICT) by small and medium size activities calls for a reasonable and effective answers [4].As a solution to these problems, the use of wireless senors networks (WSNs) was proposed [4]. WSNs are recognized as a relevant technology of the 21st century. A WSN can be defined as a low-cost platform which connects large networks of sensors [7][8][9]. They are systems which comprise radio-frequency (RF) transceivers, sensors, micro-controller or processor and power sources [5,6]. WSNs are a novel and interesting manifestation of the IoT technology [10][11][12]....

Abstract:A microstrip-to-waveguide transition has been realized for radio astronomy applications, designed to operate in the Q-band (33-50 GHz). As part of an array radio frequency (RF) receiver, the main requirement of such a transition is the reduction of transverse space occupation for the integration in the entire receiver chain, so an in-line configuration has been developed. Moreover, the high frequency band implies that an easy fabrication is a critical requirement if a good match between the two guiding structures is to be obtained in the desired band (with a relative bandwidth of 40%). The combination of CAD software and an optimization tool allows the device to achieve a good return loss over the entire band.

In this paper we present a blockchain based system for the supply chain management of a typical Italian bread. Goal of the system is to guarantee a transparent and auditable traceability of the Carasau bread in such a way that each actor of the supply chain can verify the quality of the products and the conformity to the normative about the hygienic-sanitary conditions along the chain. To realize this system we relied on the Blockchain and the Internet of Thing technologies in order to provide a trustless environment, in which trust is placed in cryptography, in mathematical operations and on the network, and not in public or private companies. Thanks to the use of digital technologies the system aims to reduce the data entry errors and the risk of tampering. Our system is designed in such a way that, along the supply chain, the nodes equipped with several sensors directly communicate their data to Raspberry Pi units that elaborate and transmit them to Interplanetary File System and to the Ethereum Blockchain. Furthermore, we designed ad hoc Radio Frequency Identification and Near Field communication tags to shortly supply the proposed system with information about the products and batches. The system will easily allow end consumers to have a transparent view on the whole journey from raw material to purchased final product and a supervisory authority to perform online inspections on the products' quality and on the good working practices.

A technique of automatic optimization for guiding structures at microwave range is presented. Geometrical parameters have been optimized taking into account conflicting requirements (high bandwidth, high power handling capability and low attenuation constant) with PSO algorithm. Propagation performances are computed with a FDFD technique

Nowadays, the use of CubeSats for telecommuni-1 cations and interplanetary missions is ever-increasing, thanks 2 to their appealing low-cost character, as well as the space 3 environment, which poses challenging multiphysics constraints 4 on the antenna design. In this framework, the use of Ka-band 5 for communication is explored. We present the design of a 6 stacked patch antenna working across the down-and uplink 7 Ka-bands. Materials and geometry of the radiator have been 8 selected by accounting for the trade-off between electromagnetic, 9 thermal and mechanical requirements. The design of the antenna 10 is performed with a particle swarm optimization algorithm 11 developed to control the bandwidth and matching. A bandwidth of 5.53@33.185 GHz has been obtained, with a gain around 8 13 dB. Furthermore, a multiphysics thermal analysis is performed 14 to verify the operational stability of the optimized array, mounted 15 on a 1U satellite, in a case-study mission. The temperature 16 patterns in the array are evaluated during the orbital period, 17 and the influence of the operative temperature on the antenna 18 responses and gain was considered. We found that the thermal 19 loads can affect the antenna matching. However, thanks to the optimized design, the proposed stacked antenna can operate from 21 -100 • C to 100 • C, with an almost constant gain. Finally, following 22 a damage-tolerant approach, the level of mechanical deformation, 23 which could be induced on the communication system, was 24 studied. The stress analysis reveals that the stacked geometry 25 can be used in a space mission. From the investigation of the 26 strain and displacement field, we found a negligible impact on 27 the antenna performances. 28 Index Terms-CubeSat, multiphysics, Particle Swarm Opti-29 mization, stacked antenna, thermal stresses, Ka-band 30 I. INTRODUCTION 31 CubeSats are low-cost, cube-shaped (10 cm x 10 cm x 10 cm) 32 nano-satellites (1-10 kg) used for remote sensing, telecommu-33 nications, deep-space communication and interplanetary mis-34 sions [1]-[6]. Despite being firstly conceived for educational 35 purposes, the cost-effective features of CubeSats lead to the 36 wide adoption of these spacecraft systems [1], [2], [4]. In the

An in-line transition between a coaxial cable and rectangular waveguide operating in Q-band (33–50 GHz) is presented. The aim of the work is to minimize the modifications in the waveguide to the strictly necessary to overcome the manufacturing issues due to the high frequencies involved. In addition, the transition is compact and it does not increase the space occupation on the transverse section, this suggests its application in horn antennas clusters arrangement. The operating principle consists of both a modal conversion and an impedance matching between the devices. The modal conversion is realized in an intermediate region, where the coaxial penetrates in the waveguide: the device geometry is designed so that the electric field in the transition is a trade-off between the TEM mode of the coaxial and the TE10 of the guide. A shaped waveguide backshort and a reactive air gap in the coaxial cable co-participate to achieve the matching. An optimized Chebyshev stepped transformer completes the transition to fulfil the impedance mismatch with the full waveguide. The design issues and technological aspects are considered. The influences of the feeding pin misalignment, the presence of groove is included in the analysis and these practical aspects are discussed and numerically validated via the scattering parameters analysis of the proposed design. The return loss is higher than 25 dB over the whole Q-band.

We present here the design and analysis of a microwave resonant cavity to evaluate the effect of RF electromagnetic field on enzyme reactions. The cavity has been first designed using CST Microwave Studio. Then, its behaviour in the actual use has been evaluated using the COMSOL multiphysics. The presented results show that such cavity can be quite effective

We describe here a High Order Finite Difference Frequency Domain approach to the cut-off frequency and mode computation in rectangular and circular waveguide with use of a single grid for both TE and TM modes. The proposed technique has been assested against a commercial FEM-based general-purpose EM solver