This paper presents presents a study on e ciency of Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) missions that has been carried out within the framework of the German research project I-LOV. After three years of development, first field tests have been carried out in 2011 by professionals such as the Rapid Deployment Unit for Salvage Operations Abroad (SEEBA). We present results from evaluating search teams in simulated USAR scenarios equipped with newly developed technical search means and digital data input terminals developed in the I-LOV project. In particular, USAR missions assisted by the "bioradar", a ground-penetrating radar system for the detection of humanoid movements, a semi-active video probe of more than 10 m length for rubble pile exploration, a snake-like rescue robot, and the decision support system FRIEDAA were evaluated and compared with conventional USAR missions. Results of this evaluation indicate that the developed technologies represent an advantages for USAR missions, which are discussed in this paper.

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This paper presents a simple, novel inertial sensor based indoor localization system which utilizes distance information between the top of the foot and the ground measured from ultrasonic rangefinder to detect the still-phase of the Zero Velocity Update (ZUPT) method. In this way, the computational consumption of the gyro-based ZUPT detection is avoided and one inertial sensor module is enough to extend the useful range of ZUPT method (both low-and high-speed human movements), thus the complexity of the system can be efficiently reduced.

accumulate with time. The errors associated with absolute sensors on the other hand are fixed. However, the update rates are generally low [2].Abstract-This paper presents a developed inertial navigation multi sensor node, along with an efficient calibration technique to improve the accuracy of the measurement acquired from a set of inertial sensors and magnetic encoder. The implemented node consists of a high resolution magnetic compass sensor, a distance sensor works as magnetic encoder, an accelerometer and a gyroscope to detect the linear and angular acceleration. The node is installed on an autonomous mobile vehicle as part of an inertial system to find the real-time position and direction of the vehicle. RF wireless transceivers and a microcontroller are installed to process and to send the measured data wireless to a central processing unit for more processing and evaluation. The whole hardware and software design of the system is presented. Accuracy and calibrations issues are also discussed. Errors caused by bias, scale factors and nonlinearities in the sensor readings which cause accumulations in navigation errors with time are considered.An extensive body of research on inertial navigation systems and theirs applications has been reported in the literature. The work of Beauregard [4] describes an approach for using shoe mounted sensors and inertial mechanization equation to directly estimate the displacement of the feet between footfalls. A pedestrian tracking framework based on particle filters is proposed in [3]. This framework is supposed to extend the typical WLAN -based indoor positioning systems by integrating a low cost MEMS accelerometer and map information. Different of these research contributions our approach concentrates more on the practical design concepts and inertial measurements integration aspects in order to get optimal navigation accuracy.The main contribution in this work has been on the development of a accurate inertial navigation system based on thorough characterization of the errors which inversely affect the navigation accuracy. Our goal is to achieve a minimum error of position and direction over a given travelled distance. A well designed recursive filter will be still needed to minimize the continuously accumulated heading error Index Terms-Indoor precise navigation, Inertial sensors Wireless sensor node, Sensor fusion.

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The use of the package as a radiating element is the optimal solution in term of robustness for wireless sensor network (WSN) applications such as infrastructure monitoring. A robust, 83 % efficient and 6.5 dBi gain slot antenna packaging (simulation values in air) for wireless sensor nodes working at 868 MHz is presented in this paper. A low power wake-up radio transceiver strategy allowing a current consumption of 3.8 µA is associated to the radiating package. The theoretical battery life time for a 3 V input voltage and a 220 mA/h battery capacity is more than 6 years using the proposed system. Therefore the combination between the antenna packaging and wake-up approach increases the wireless system life time. Finite Element Method (FEM) simulation and experimental results are presented to show the effects of different concrete supports on the antenna performances. Moreover, indoor and outdoor wake-up rate measurements show the coverage efficiency of the complete device. Using a transmission power of +10 dBm and a wake-up sensitivity of -51.8 dBm, a distance of 55 meters is reached in comparison to more than 250 meters for data transmission.

Energy consumption is the main concern in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). A node's life is prolonged by reducing idle listening and packet overhearing. The energy consumption poses a problem to the life span of a wireless node. A duty cycle approach reduces energy consumption of a node but increases latency of data delivery. The delay the node needs until it switch from receiving mode into transmitting mode can be solved through the use of wake-up receiver, where the node reacts only when it's woken up. This process eliminates the time spent waiting the transmission slot assigned through the scheduling procedure. In this paper, we present the wakeup radio transceiver and analyze the time demand of the wake-up system.