A computerized platform for monitoring the operation of an electric power distribution grid which includes in one form an accessory device operatively coupled with or comprised in an electronic protection relay of said electric power distribution grid, wherein said accessory device is configured to gather grid data and to transmit said grid data through the Internet; a publishing computerised unit capable of communicating with said accessory device through the Internet, said publishing computerised unit being configured to interact with said accessory device to acquire and store said grid data; an interface computerized unit capable of communicating with said accessory device and said publishing computerised unit through the Internet, said interface computerized unit being configured to provide interface services to manage the interaction of said accessory device with said publishing computerised unit.

Systems and methods for location estimation and tracking for passive RFID and wireless sensor networks in accordance with embodiments of the invention are disclosed. In one embodiment, a process for obtaining location information using an RFID reader system includes transmitting a combined interrogation and ranging signal from a plurality of antennas, where the ranging signal is a pseudorandom signal, receiving a backscattered return signal from an RFID tag at one or more receive antennas, extracting an information signal from the return signal and decoding the information signal to obtain RFID tag data, extracting a received ranging signal from the return signal, and estimating a range to the RFID tag based upon correlation between the ranging signal and the received ranging signal.

A passive wireless sensor may be wirelessly coupled with an interrogator. The sensor uses multiple antennas to receive an interrogation signal from the interrogator and compares a path length difference between the signal received at each antenna. The path length difference changes based on the relative position of the sensor and interrogator. Using the path length difference, the sensor transmits a response signal to the interrogator. The interrogator analyzes the response signal to determine sensor position. The interrogator compares the determined sensor position to a previous known sensor position to determine if an attack has occurred, such as a replay, counterfeit, or tampering attack. The sensor may include cryptographic circuitry that scrambles the response signal, thwarting an attack such as a sniffing attack. The interrogator may include multiple antennas and determine a position of the sensor by calculating an angle-of-arrival that enhances a signal from the sensor, via beamforming.

Improvements over existing data collection interfaces disclosed herein include, among other things, additional logic blocks (and associated timers, state machines, and registers) to off-load data collection and data processing prior to waking a microprocessor from a sleep mode. For example, an improved data collection interface collects a predetermined number of sensor values from a sensor while maintaining active a single communication session with the sensor over a pin of the interface. The microprocessor remains in the sleep mode for an entire duration of the single communication session. The data collection interface can reduce the likelihood of false starts of the microprocessor by using the logic blocks to verify that data meet preconditions prior to interrupting the microprocessor. The data collection interface can reduce the overall power consumption of a chip in which the microprocessor is integrated by a factor of at least about 2× (i.e., 50% reduction in power consumption).

A radio frequency device utilizing an antenna having a single antenna structure resonant on multiple resonant frequency ranges. The antenna can be configured to operate within multiple frequency ranges for communication according to respective protocols associated with the respective frequency ranges.

A battery monitoring system includes a self-contained measurement device configured to mount to a battery cell. The self-contained measurement device includes a sensor configured to monitor an operational parameter of the battery cell, and a communication module configured to output a signal indicative of the operational parameter.

A device for manipulating interface signals includes a slave interface, which is connectable to a master interface of a control device, a master interface, which is connectable to a slave interface of a measuring device, and a circuit configuration, which is supplied with at least one data-input signal per interface, and which outputs a corresponding data-output signal per data-input signal to the respective other interface. The circuit configuration includes at least one manipulation unit, to which a data-input signal and a substitute-data signal are supplied and which outputs a corresponding data-output signal, as well as a protocol unit, to which at least one protocol-relevant interface signal is supplied and which, based on manipulation rules and information received with the at least one protocol-relevant interface signal, chooses when the at least one manipulation unit outputs the corresponding data-input signal or the substitute-data signal as data-output signal.

Devices state changes in a building may be determined using a combination of power monitoring and network monitoring. Power monitoring may be performed by obtaining a power monitoring signal and processing the power monitoring signal with models to determine information about state changes of one or more devices in the building. Network monitoring may be performed by receiving information about network packets transmitted by devices in the building and processing the information about the network packets to determine information about state changes of one or more devices in the building. For some devices and some implementations, information about state changes of a device may be determined by using both power monitoring and network monitoring.

Devices, systems, and techniques are described that relate to the monitoring of various types of components in industrial systems. These include battery-less monitors that run on power harvested from their environments, systems for acquiring monitor data for the components in a facility, and/or techniques for processing monitor data to reliably determine the status of individual components and other system parameters.

A vehicle monitoring system, includes a vehicle database, which includes information associated with a plurality of vehicles. The vehicle monitoring system also includes a sensor database, which includes information captured by a sensor of an observing vehicle, and one or more processors. The one or more processors may generate a request to determine information associated with a target vehicle and to transmit the request to the sensor in response to determining that the information captured by the sensor does not include the information associated with the target vehicle. The sensor captures the information associated with the target vehicle based at least in part on the request. The one or more processors may also receive and store the information associated with the target vehicle from the sensor. Further, the one or more processors may output the information associated with the target vehicle to a computing device.