Research seminar "Recent examples of new applications for collaborative electromagnetic arrays"

Abstract

The use of networks or arrays of sensors has gained increasing interest over the past decade driven by a number of factors including the availability of reliable low cost sensor elements and their associated electronics, the ease of access to communications networks, especially wireless, and the increasing computation power that can be embedded into devices.  The latter of these factors has enabled increasingly sophisticated routines to be implemented for real time operation, which are able to exploit more fully the information available from the sensor array and invert the measurements from the sensor to output parameters of interest by the end users.  In addition, target system can be analysed with increasing realistic forward models, which in turn allows more effective inversion algorithms to be formulated.

This lecture considers the case of arrays of simple electromagnetic sensor and describes how the drivers for collaborative sensor networks can be exploited to realise new and advanced sensor systems.  The lecture will focus of several examples of the application of electromagnetic arrays from recent work at Manchester across a variety of sectors including computer networks, security equipment and industrial processes.  Although the applications are quite diverse the underlying approach and the electromagnetic inversion techniques have similarities.

Speaker biography

Tony Peyton is a Professor of Electromagnetic Tomography Engineering at the University of Manchester and specialises in the application of electromagnetic sensors for inspection and non-destructive testing, with over 20 years of industrial and academic experience.  He has worked with many different companies and been involved in several EU projects.  His group is a partner in the recently announced Centre of Research Excellence for Advanced Cooperative Systems (ACROSS), which is a major EU initiative in this field and led by the University of Zagreb.