scholarly journals A Mobile Cough Strength Evaluation Device Using Cough Sounds

Sensors ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (11) ◽  
pp. 3810 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yasutaka Umayahara ◽  
Zu Soh ◽  
Kiyokazu Sekikawa ◽  
Toshihiro Kawae ◽  
Akira Otsuka ◽  
...  

Although cough peak flow (CPF) is an important measurement for evaluating the risk of cough dysfunction, some patients cannot use conventional measurement instruments, such as spirometers, because of the configurational burden of the instruments. Therefore, we previously developed a cough strength estimation method using cough sounds based on a simple acoustic and aerodynamic model. However, the previous model did not consider age or have a user interface for practical application. This study clarifies the cough strength prediction accuracy using an improved model in young and elderly participants. Additionally, a user interface for mobile devices was developed to record cough sounds and estimate cough strength using the proposed method. We then performed experiments on 33 young participants (21.3 ± 0.4 years) and 25 elderly participants (80.4 ± 6.1 years) to test the effect of age on the CPF estimation accuracy. The percentage error between the measured and estimated CPFs was approximately 6.19%. In addition, among the elderly participants, the current model improved the estimation accuracy of the previous model by a percentage error of approximately 6.5% (p < 0.001). Furthermore, Bland-Altman analysis demonstrated no systematic error between the measured and estimated CPFs. These results suggest that the developed device can be applied for daily CPF measurements in clinical practice.

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. 1344
Author(s):  
Changlong Li ◽  
Zengyuan Li ◽  
Zhihai Gao ◽  
Bin Sun

Evapotranspiration (ET) is an important part of the water, carbon, and energy cycles in ecosystems, especially in the drylands. However, due to the particularity of sparse vegetation, the estimation accuracy of ET has been relatively low in the drylands. Therefore, based on the dry climate and sparse vegetation distribution characteristics of the drylands, this study optimized the core algorithms (canopy boundary resistance, aerodynamic resistance, and sparse vegetation coverage) and explored an ET estimation method in the Shuttleworth–Wallace two-layer model (SW model). Then, the Beijing–Tianjin sandstorm source region (BTSSR) was used as the study area to evaluate the applicability of the improved model in the drylands. Results show that: (1) The R2 value of the improved model results was increased by 1.4 and the RMSE was reduced by 1.9 mm, especially in extreme value regions of ET (maximum or minimum). (2) Regardless of the spatial distribution and seasonal changes of the ET (63–790 mm), the improved ET estimation model could accurately capture the differences. Furtherly, the different vegetation regions could stand for the different climate regions to a certain extent. The accuracy of the optimized model was higher in the semi-arid region (R2 = 0.92 and 0.93), while the improved model had the best improvement effect in the arid region, with R2 increasing by 0.12. (3) Precipitation was the decisive factor affecting vegetation transpiration and ET, with R2 value for both exceeding 0.9. The effect of vegetation coverage (VC) was less. This method is expected to provide a more accurate and adaptable model for the estimation of ET in the drylands.


Author(s):  
Xiao Chen ◽  
Zaichen Zhang ◽  
Liang Wu ◽  
Jian Dang

Abstract In this journal, we investigate the beam-domain channel estimation and power allocation in hybrid architecture massive multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) communication systems. First, we propose a low-complexity channel estimation method, which utilizes the beam steering vectors achieved from the direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation and beam gains estimated by low-overhead pilots. Based on the estimated beam information, a purely analog precoding strategy is also designed. Then, the optimal power allocation among multiple beams is derived to maximize spectral efficiency. Finally, simulation results show that the proposed schemes can achieve high channel estimation accuracy and spectral efficiency.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 803
Author(s):  
Lingchen Lin ◽  
Kunyong Yu ◽  
Xiong Yao ◽  
Yangbo Deng ◽  
Zhenbang Hao ◽  
...  

As a key canopy structure parameter, the estimation method of the Leaf Area Index (LAI) has always attracted attention. To explore a potential method to estimate forest LAI from 3D point cloud at low cost, we took photos from different angles of the drone and set five schemes (O (0°), T15 (15°), T30 (30°), OT15 (0° and 15°) and OT30 (0° and 30°)), which were used to reconstruct 3D point cloud of forest canopy based on photogrammetry. Subsequently, the LAI values and the leaf area distribution in the vertical direction derived from five schemes were calculated based on the voxelized model. Our results show that the serious lack of leaf area in the middle and lower layers determines that the LAI estimate of O is inaccurate. For oblique photogrammetry, schemes with 30° photos always provided better LAI estimates than schemes with 15° photos (T30 better than T15, OT30 better than OT15), mainly reflected in the lower part of the canopy, which is particularly obvious in low-LAI areas. The overall structure of the single-tilt angle scheme (T15, T30) was relatively complete, but the rough point cloud details could not reflect the actual situation of LAI well. Multi-angle schemes (OT15, OT30) provided excellent leaf area estimation (OT15: R2 = 0.8225, RMSE = 0.3334 m2/m2; OT30: R2 = 0.9119, RMSE = 0.1790 m2/m2). OT30 provided the best LAI estimation accuracy at a sub-voxel size of 0.09 m and the best checkpoint accuracy (OT30: RMSE [H] = 0.2917 m, RMSE [V] = 0.1797 m). The results highlight that coupling oblique photography and nadiral photography can be an effective solution to estimate forest LAI.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (14) ◽  
pp. 4655
Author(s):  
Dariusz Czerwinski ◽  
Jakub Gęca ◽  
Krzysztof Kolano

In this article, the authors propose two models for BLDC motor winding temperature estimation using machine learning methods. For the purposes of the research, measurements were made for over 160 h of motor operation, and then, they were preprocessed. The algorithms of linear regression, ElasticNet, stochastic gradient descent regressor, support vector machines, decision trees, and AdaBoost were used for predictive modeling. The ability of the models to generalize was achieved by hyperparameter tuning with the use of cross-validation. The conducted research led to promising results of the winding temperature estimation accuracy. In the case of sensorless temperature prediction (model 1), the mean absolute percentage error MAPE was below 4.5% and the coefficient of determination R2 was above 0.909. In addition, the extension of the model with the temperature measurement on the casing (model 2) allowed reducing the error value to about 1% and increasing R2 to 0.990. The results obtained for the first proposed model show that the overheating protection of the motor can be ensured without direct temperature measurement. In addition, the introduction of a simple casing temperature measurement system allows for an estimation with accuracy suitable for compensating the motor output torque changes related to temperature.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 168781401879087 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lin Zhou ◽  
Qianxiang Yu ◽  
Daozhi Liu ◽  
Ming Li ◽  
Shukai Chi ◽  
...  

Wireless sensors produce large amounts of data in long-term online monitoring following the Shannon–Nyquist theorem, leading to a heavy burden on wireless communications and data storage. To address this problem, compressive sensing which allows wireless sensors to sample at a much lower rate than the Nyquist frequency has been considered. However, the lower rate sacrifices the integrity of the signal. Therefore, reconstruction from low-dimension measurement samples is necessary. Generally, the reconstruction needs the information of signal sparsity in advance, whereas it is usually unknown in practical applications. To address this issue, a sparsity adaptive subspace pursuit compressive sensing algorithm is deployed in this article. In order to balance the computational speed and estimation accuracy, a half-fold sparsity estimation method is proposed. To verify the effectiveness of this algorithm, several simulation tests were performed. First, the feasibility of subspace pursuit algorithm is verified using random sparse signals with five different sparsities. Second, the synthesized vibration signals for four different compression rates are reconstructed. The corresponding reconstruction correlation coefficient and root mean square error are demonstrated. The high correlation and low error result mean that the proposed algorithm can be applied in the vibration signal process. Third, implementation of the proposed approach for a practical vibration signal from an offshore structure is carried out. To reduce the effect of signal noise, the wavelet de-noising technique is used. Considering the randomness of the sampling, many reconstruction tests were carried out. Finally, to validate the reliability of the reconstructed signal, the structure modal parameters are calculated by the Eigensystem realization algorithm, and the result is only slightly different between original and reconstructed signal, which means that the proposed method can successfully save the modal information of vibration signals.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dengqing Tang ◽  
Lincheng Shen ◽  
Xiaojiao Xiang ◽  
Han Zhou ◽  
Tianjiang Hu

<p>We propose a learning-type anchors-driven real-time pose estimation method for the autolanding fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The proposed method enables online tracking of both position and attitude by the ground stereo vision system in the Global Navigation Satellite System denied environments. A pipeline of convolutional neural network (CNN)-based UAV anchors detection and anchors-driven UAV pose estimation are employed. To realize robust and accurate anchors detection, we design and implement a Block-CNN architecture to reduce the impact of the outliers. With the basis of the anchors, monocular and stereo vision-based filters are established to update the UAV position and attitude. To expand the training dataset without extra outdoor experiments, we develop a parallel system containing the outdoor and simulated systems with the same configuration. Simulated and outdoor experiments are performed to demonstrate the remarkable pose estimation accuracy improvement compared with the conventional Perspective-N-Points solution. In addition, the experiments also validate the feasibility of the proposed architecture and algorithm in terms of the accuracy and real-time capability requirements for fixed-wing autolanding UAVs.</p>


2014 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 669-680
Author(s):  
Susan G. Lakkis ◽  
Mario Lavorato ◽  
Pablo O. Canziani

Six existing models and one proposed approach for estimating global solar radiation were tested in Buenos Aires using commonly measured meteorological data as temperature and sunshine hours covering the years 2010-2013. Statistical predictors as mean bias error, root mean square, mean percentage error, slope and regression coefficients were used as validation criteria. The variability explained (R2), slope and MPE indicated that the higher precision could be excepted when sunshine hours are used as predictor. The new proposed approach explained almost 99% of the RG variability with deviation of less than ± 0.1 MJm-2day-1 and with the MPE smallest value below 1 %. The well known Ångström-Prescott methods, first and third order, was also found to perform for the measured data with high accuracy (R2=0.97-0.99) but with slightly higher MBE values (0.17-0.18 MJm-2day-1). The results pointed out that the third order Ångström type correlation did not improve the estimation accuracy of solar radiation given the highest range of deviation and mean percentage error obtained.  Where the sunshine hours were not available, the formulae including temperature data might be considered as an alternative although the methods displayed larger deviation and tended to overestimate the solar radiation behavior.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Hao Li ◽  
Weijia Cui ◽  
Bin Ba ◽  
Haiyun Xu ◽  
Yankui Zhang

The performance of direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation for sparse arrays applied to the distributed source is worse than that applied to the point source model. In this paper, we introduce the coprime array with a large array aperture into the DOA estimation algorithm of the exponential-type coherent distributed source. In particular, we focus on the fourth-order cumulant (FOC) of the received signal which can provide more useful information when the signal is non-Gaussian than when it is Gaussian. The proposed algorithm extends the array aperture by combining the sparsity of array space domain with the fourth-order cumulant characteristics of signals, which improves the estimation accuracy and degree of freedom (DOF). Firstly, the signal-received model of the sparse array is established, and the fourth-order cumulant matrix of the received signal of the sparse array is calculated based on the characteristics of distributed sources, which extend the array aperture. Then, the virtual array is constructed by the sum aggregate of physical array elements, and the position set of its maximum continuous part array element is obtained. Finally, the center DOA estimation of the distributed source is realized by the subspace method. The accuracy and DOF of the proposed algorithm are higher than those of the distributed signal parameter estimator (DSPE) algorithm and least-squares estimation signal parameters via rotational invariance techniques (LS-ESPRIT) algorithm when the array elements are the same. Complexity analysis and numerical simulations are provided to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method.


2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (11) ◽  
pp. 155014771881069 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ying He ◽  
Xiafu Peng ◽  
Xiaoli Zhang ◽  
Xiaoqiang Hu

Estimation and compensation for hull deformation is an indispensable step for the ship to establish a unified space attitude. The existing hull deformation measurement methods are dependent on the pre-established deformation model, and an inaccurate deformation model will reduce the deformation estimation accuracy. To solve this problem, a hull deformation estimation method without deformation model is proposed in this article, which utilizes the neural network to fit the hull deformation. To train the neural network online, connection weights of the neural network are regarded as system state variables which can be estimated by the Unscented Kalman Filter. Simultaneously, considering the time delay problem of inertial data, a time delay compensation method based on the quaternion attitude matrix is proposed. The simulation results show that the proposed method can obtain high estimation accuracy without any deformation model even when the inertial data are asynchronous.


2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (01) ◽  
pp. 2050003
Author(s):  
Wenjie Peng ◽  
Kaiqi Fu ◽  
Wei Zhang ◽  
Yanlu Xie ◽  
Jinsong Zhang

Pitch-range estimation from brief speech segments could bring benefits to many tasks like automatic speech recognition and speaker recognition. To estimate pitch range, previous studies have proposed to utilize deep-learning-based models with spectrum information as input. They demonstrated that such method works and could still achieve reliable estimation results when the speech segment is as brief as 300 ms. In this study, we evaluated the robustness of this method. We take the following scenarios into account: (1) a large number of training speakers; (2) different language backgrounds; and (3) monosyllabic utterances with different tones. Experimental results showed that: (1) The use of a large number of training speakers improved the estimation accuracies. (2) The mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) rate evaluated on the L2 speakers is similar to that on the native speakers. (3) Different tonal information will affect the LSTM-based model, but this influence is limited compared to the baseline method which calculates pitch-range targets from the distribution of [Formula: see text]0 values. These experimental results verified the efficiency of the LSTM-based pitch-range estimation method.


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