IEEE Sensors 2005, the premier international sensors conference

 

IEEE Sensors 2005 was held at the heart of Southern California – Orange County! This is one of Southern California's most vibrant recreation, entertainment, and educational centers. Famous worldwide for its picturesque sandy beaches, majestic coastline, infinite recreational activities, award-winning dining and world-class shopping, Orange county is more than a cluster of sophisticated beach towns – it’s the center of high tech industry and premium educational institutions.   

 

Hyatt Regency Irvine

Orange County

Irvine, California

Oct. 31^st - Nov. 3^rd

 

 

IEEE Sensors 05 Topics of Interest:

1. Sensors Phenomena and Modeling (theory, characterization, CAD modeling, and testing of sensors)
2. Sensor and Actuator Systems (sensor electronics, actuator systems, sensor-actuator systems, multiple-sensor systems, intelligent sensing, sensor arrays, “electronic nose” technology, sensor buses, sensor networks, voting systems, telemetering, internet-based and other remote data acquisition, and control of sensors)
3. Chemical and Gas Sensors (devices, materials, and technology)
4. Biosensors (sensor arrays, lab-on chip, online monitoring, process control, test kits, materials, and technology)
5. Optical Sensors (radiation sensors, optoelectronic/photonic sensors, and fibers)
6. Mechanical sensors (inertial, pressure, and tactile)
7. Physical Sensors (thermal, magnetic, and mass-sensitive devices)
8. Applications (automotive, medical, environmental monitoring, consumer, alarm and security, military, nautical, aeronautical and space sensor systems, robotics, and automation)

 

Banquet Speaker

 

Tsunamis – Phenomena, Forecasting, and Measurement

Shuto Nobuo, ARISH, Nihon University, Japan

 

Abstract: A tsu-nami is a huge sea wave (nami) that attacks ports (tsu).  If the ports are located at the bay bottom, they are well sheltered against wind waves and swells. Different from these short-period waves, a tsunami, a long wave, is small at the entrance of the bay but destructively big at the ports. At the birth of a giant tsunami, the sea surface several hundred kilometers long and several ten kilometers wide transforms vertically by several meters.  The 1960 Chilean tsunami was 700 km long, quite long compared with the Pacific Ocean 4 km deep.  Its height was about 10 meters.Approaching the shore, a tsunami decreases its length and increases its height, because of the shoaling effect.  Focusing and resonance effects, results of the sea bottom topography, work to increase tsunami height, too.  Under some conditions, dispersion effect, a result of the wave profile itself, acts to develop solitons at the front.  The 1946 Aleutian tsunami, a typical giant tsunami, had a vertical front 30 m high and ran up to a height of 35 m. Losses of lives, houses and fishing boats are numerous.  The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami claimed nearly 300,000 lives, not only as a near-field tsunami but also as a far-field tsunami. The best and the last way to save human lives is an early evacuation according to forecasting and warning.  There are two kinds of forecasting, natural and man-made.  Any violent earthquake that causes you to fall or hold onto something to keep from falling is a natural warning.  This warning has 10% exception, that is, tsunami earthquake. The man-made forecasting is based upon empirical laws and/or numerical simulations.  According to a warning statistics in the Pacific for the years 1991-1997, 20 of 30 warnings were false from a practical point of view. In order to reduce the false warning, measurements of tsunamis in the deep sea is inevitable.  The conventional ocean-bottom-tsunami gauges measure the water surface change with quartz pressure sensors and the data are transmitted via satellite or through cables.  A new technique, a fiber-optic sensor, is being developed. The 2004 tsunami on the Indian Ocean was recorded by the Jason 1 altimetry satellite. A research to use the high-frequency ocean radar from a shore-based observation station has just started.In the shallow sea, 50 m deep or so, the output of ultrasonic wave gauges installed on the sea-bottom is used to detect tsunamis after numerically filtered.  A newly developed GPS tsunami gauge succeeded to record a tsunami of September 5th, 2004. At the shoreline, a tide gauge can record tsunamis but the output is strongly biased by hydraulic filtering.  An ultrasonic wave gauge installed at the top of a pole in the air measures the distance to the water surface with the risk of scaling-out for a tsunami higher than the position of the gauge.

 

Keynote Speakers

 

Resonant Microsensors

Roger T. Howe, University of California – Berkeley, USA

 

Abstract:  Electromechanical resonant sensors have been demonstrated for a variety of physical and chemical measurands over the past several decades.  The distinguishing feature of this sensor class is that signals are detected indirectly through their effect on an electromechanical resonance.  In comparison to other approaches, electronic circuits have a major role in the sensing mechanism itself and are not just used for signal amplification.  Depending on the measurand, there may be significant challenges in coupling it to the resonator, which usually requires some degree of isolation from the ambient.  A selection of resonant sensors will be described to illustrate these points.  In particular, recent results at Berkeley on resonant strain sensors show that increasing the quality factor (Q) of the resonator may in fact lead to lower sensor performance. Over the past few years, the use of microresonators as high-Q electromechanical circuit elements for filters, mixers, and frequency references has been aggressively explored in academic and industrial research labs.  Commercialization of these “resonant RF MEMS” is underway for both piezoelectric resonator filters and electrostatic resonator timing references.  The fabrication processes, design tools, and encapsulation technologies developed for RF MEMS can in many cases be adapted to resonant sensing.  The talk will conclude with a discussion of how the sensor community can exploit these advances to develop practical resonant sensors.

 

 

MEMS inertial sensors - toward higher accuracy & multi-axis sensing

Shigeru Nakamura, Tokimec Inc., Japan

 

Abstract: Various applications such as advanced automotive safety systems, mobile phone, virtual reality and robotics increase the demand for inexpensive and miniaturized inertial sensors with high accuracy. One solution fulfilling these requirements is a MEMS Inertial sensor. The most common MEMS angular rate sensor is a vibratory gyroscope, which detects Coriolis force. This paper reports a new design of a MEMS inertial sensor. This sensor, which is based on the principle of a rotational gyroscope, can detect both 3-axis acceleration and 2-axis angular rate at a time by electrostatically suspending and rotating a rotor in the shape of a ring made from silicon.The device has several advantages: the levitation of the rotor in a vacuum eliminates a mechanical friction resulting in high sensitivity; the position control for the levitation allows to sense accelerations in tri-axis. Latest measurements yield noise level of gyro and that of accelerometer as low as 0.002deg/s/Hz1/2 and 20 µG/Hz1/2 respectively, with a 1.5mm diameter rotor at 74,000rpm.

 

 

Chip technology, nanoliters and picoliters – miniaturization of (bio)analytical chemistry methods

Andreas Manz, ISAS – Institute for Analytical Sciences, Germany

 

Abstract: Microfluidic chips have been reasonably popular in the analytical research community. Particularly, fast separations and chemical reactions have been of interest. However, there is a trade-off between internal volumes and detection limits. Capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE) and isoelectric focusing (IEF) have become recognised as pre-eminent electrophoresis techniques for protein analysis. Previously, microfluidic devices have been reported for free flow electrophoresis. In this paper, a specially designed microfluidic device is proposed to do ZE and IEF. Depending on applied voltage and pressure drop, FFE separations can be obtained within less than a second. Isoelectric focusing of a peptide has been successfully achieved within 500ms on a PDMS device. A novel free flow design has been used to achieve this. [Asn1,Val5]-Angiotensin II (pI=7.73) labelled with 5-CR 6G fluorophore was diluted with 2% Ampholyte (pH3-10) with 0.1% Tween-20 and the isoelectric focusing process of the designed chip was registered by a CCD colour imaging system. Isotachophoretic separations can also be obtained. A silicon and glass device has been used for DNA oligomer hybridization assays. The chip is based on flow lamination mixing, has an internal volume of 60 nL and mixes 100% of the volume within 20 ms. DNA oligomer hybridization ("match") can be successfully detected within 1 s. A "mismatch" does not give false positives. Concentrations are relatively high, still and results are preliminary. However, this type of assay could be competitive in throughput with DNA binding arrays, particularly if run in parallel. More exotic applications include dry powder injections and mixing for drug formulation, gated microplasmas used as GC injectors, magnetophoresis and Fourier-transform chromatography based on shear flow.