TC News

by Dr Rich Hochberg and Dr Steve Adam

Technical Committee Reports for Spring 2008
And Standards Activities

I have really enjoyed working with the members of the Technical Committees these past few years, but sad to say my tenure in this position is coming to an end. A new Vice President for Technical Activities will be elected for 2009 and this is my last submission in this fine magazine. Dr. Steve Adam assisted in getting a new PARs going in the Standards arena, with their potential to become IEEE Standards in many important areas. Steve's contributions were greatly appreciated by all of us who had contact with him.

These and other TC activities were reported at our last IMS AdCom meeting in Victoria, BC, after the I 2MTC meeting. Highlights of the reports follow: (some had to be edited to meet space limitations in the magazine).

Rich

TC-1 Measurement Precision, Sensitivity and Noise: by Norman Belecki
• The following activities were undertaken this past quarter:
• Began an outline for a resource bibliography on noise analysis at the limits of measurement precision in the various areas of electromagnetic metrology.
• Reviewed about 330 papers submitted to CPEM 2008 for content relating to the purview of TC-1. Thirteen summaries were directly related and another 50 or so have relevant content. In addition reviewing the resulting I&M Transactions papers and to adding them (as appropriate) to the resource document, I plan to solicit their authors to join TC-1, either at the conference or later.

TC-2 DC-LF Measurement: by Yicheng Wang
• TC-2 has successfully helped organizing tutorials on quantum-based electrical standards for I2TMC 2008. This is part of TC-2 effort to collect feedback and ideas to guide future TC-2 activities.

TC-3 Frequency and Time: by Eva Ferre-Pikal

• During the past year the TC-3 has been updating IEEE Std 1139 ‘Standard Definitions of Physical Quantities for Fundamental Frequency and Time Metrology - Random Instabilities’. We have finished the review process and plan to submit the draft standard to the IEEE for balloting by the end of April 2008.

TC-4 High Frequency Measurement: by Yeou-Song (Brian) Lee
• Continue close reports with the MTT-11, NCSLI, MSC, and ARFTG
• Working group on the scattering parameter measurement standards to the IEEE standards association formed. PAR378 was re-submitted for June Standards Association meeting after the issues from the March meeting were resolved.
• PAR 470 working group for microwave and RF power measurement was initiated and members are contacted.
• Future Plans:
o Continue recruiting members to join this committee.
o Liaison with other professional societies in the high frequency measurement
o Upon approval of PAR378, the working group is expecting to submit the draft in late 2008.
o Submit PAR 470 and form a working group.
TC-9 Sensor Technology: by Kang Lee
• The Technical Committee on Sensor Technology TC-9 sponsored the following working group (WG) activities in standards development:
• IEEE 1451.0 - Common Functionality and TEDS Working Group
o The IEEE 1451.0-2007 standard is published.
• IEEE 1451.5 - Wireless Sensor Working Group
o The IEEE 1451.5-2007 standard is published.
• IEEE 1451.7 – Sensor and RFID Integration Working Group
o The working group conducted biweekly teleconference calls developing draft specifications of IEEE 1451.7 Standard for Transducers to Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Systems Communication Protocols and Transducer Electronic Data Sheet Formats
• IEEE 1588 - Precise Networked Clock Synchronization Working Group
o The IEEE 1588-2008 standard was approved by the IEEE Standards Board. Kang has worked with IEEE to put the draft up for sale at the IEEE website because of industry demand
• Participated in the ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC31/WG4 meetings on air interface standards for RFID. The air interfaces involved were ISO 18000-6 standard for Passive and Battery-assisted RFID and ISO 18000-7 standard for Active RFID. These standards will in some way link with the IEEE 1451.7 standard for sensor interface.
• Kang made a presentation “IEEE 1451 Smart Sensor and Network Standards” at the SC31/WG6 Subcommittee on mobile item identification management. Kang is working with IEEE to fast track the IEEE 1451 standards to the JCT1/SC31 committee.
• 2007 ISPCS Symposium
o The 2007 International IEEE Symposium on Precision Clock Synchronization (ISPCS) for Measurement, Control, and Communication was held on Oct 1-3 in Vienna, Austria. Kang was the technical program co-chair. About 150 people attended the symposium and 50 people participated in the Plugfest to test IEEE 1588 standards-based prototype hardward and software for interoperaility. See web site: http://www.ispcs.org.
• 2008 ISPCS Symposium
o The 2008 International IEEE Symposium on Precision Clock Synchronization (ISPCS) for Measurement, Control, and Communication is being planned to be held on Septembe 22-26, 2008 at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Kang is the General Program Co-Chair. Teleconference calls have been held monthly for the organizing committee to plan for the Symposium.. See web site: http://www.ispcs.org.
• Planned activities for the next six months:
o The IEEE 1451.7 Working Group will continue the development of the draft specification for the sensor to RFID tag interface standard.
o The IEEE 1588 Working Group is working with the IEEE Editor in preparing the approved IEEE 1588-2008 draft standard for publication.
o Continue to work with the University of Michigan to hold the 2008 International IEEE Symposium on Precision Clock Synchronization for Measurement, Control, and Communication in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
TC-10 Waveform Generation, Measurement, and Analysis: by Thomas Linnenbrink
• TC-10 is actively developing five major standards: The revision of IEEE Std 181-2003 (Standard on Transitions, Pulses, and Related Waveforms); the revision of IEEE Std 1057-1994 (Standard for Digitizing Waveform Recorders); the revision of IEEE Std 1241-2000 (Standard for Terminology and Test Methods for Analog-to-Digital Converters); the development of IEEE Std P1658 (Standard for Terminology and Test Methods for Digital-to-Analog Converter Devices; and, the development of IEEE Std P1696 (Standard for Terminology and Test Methods for Electronic Probes). The committee members reviewed work in progress on 1057, 1241, 1658, and 1696 at our February 2008 meeting in Colorado Springs sponsored by Hittite Microwave. Plans were made to start revising 181 and to coordinate it with the IEC. A new standard addressing jitter was discussed. The committee also agreed to submit a TC-10 overview paper to the 16th IMEKO TC4 Symposium/13th Workshop on ADC Modeling and Testing in Florence, IT, September 22 - 24, 2008. The next TC-10 meeting will be held on May 19 - 22 in Beaverton, OR, hosted by Tektronix. The Fall 2008 meeting will be held in Florence, IT in conjunction with the symposium and workshop noted above. At this time, nearly one third of the TC-10 membership lives in Europe.
• Specific activities of the five subcommittees are described below.
• Subcommittee on Pulse Techniques (SCOPT) (181) (Nick Paulter, Chair):
o The SCOPT chairman submitted a Project Authorization Request to the IEEE on 7 March 2008 for revising the Std 181-2003. Revisions will include correcting errors, adding information on impulse-like waveforms and, developing reference waveforms for comparison and evaluation of algorithm performance. The chairman is hoping to coordinate this revision process with that of similar IEC documents, namely, the IEC 60469-1 and -2. Nick Paulter, the SCOPT chairman, is also the convener of IEC MT 18 of its TC-85 which is responsible for these two IEC standards.
• Waveform Measurement Subcommittee (1057) (Bill Boyer, Chair):
o The Waveform Recorder Subcommittee of TC-10 has completed work on an updated version of IEEE Standard 1057 on testing waveform recorders. The third and final recirculation ballot was completed last fall with 100 per cent approval. The draft was approved by RevCom at their December 2007 meeting. We also had to request that the PAR be amended so that the Scope and Purpose statements in the PAR were identical to the one in the draft. The PAR change request was approved by NESCom in November 2007. We have completed working with the IEEE editors to produce the final version to be published. A working group meeting was held in February in Colorado Springs to review the editing changes. The official publication is scheduled for April 18, 2008.
• ADC Subcommittee (1241) (Steve Tilden, Chair):
o The committee continued aggressive editing and re-writing the maintenance draft update at its February 2008 meeting in Colorado Springs, Colorado and. It will meet again in May in Beaverton, Oregon where further progress will be made on the draft. The committee also participates in IMTC quite widely and ADC Forum conferences. Further publication is planned for future conferences and publications as well as the next ADC Forum to spread the word about the standard and solicit input from non-members. This committee is also trying to increase its working membership to speed the process. The deadline for ballot completion and approval for this maintenance cycle is Dec 31 2009.
• DAC Subcommittee (P1658) (Steve Tilden, Chair):
o The committee made significant progress towards creating the initial draft at its February meeting in Colorado Springs. It will meet again in May in Beaverton, Oregon to continue that work toward creating an initial draft for ballot before the PAR deadline. This committee is also aggressively recruiting new working members to gain momentum toward draft completion. On 27 March the IEEE NESCom approved our request for a PAR extension (Attached) from 31 Dec 2008 to 31 Dec 2010 which will allow us to complete the draft and ballot without compromising on depth of coverage or details.
• Subcommittee on Probe Standards (SCOPS) (P1696) (Robert Graham, Chair):
o The draft standard is beginning to take shape. An draft outline has been generated, and is being updated as the standard progresses. SCOPS has been meeting regularly, both in-person at the regular TC-10 meetings and by teleconference. Assignments have been made to committee members to write specific sections. The entire subcommittee then reviews the material. Our next teleconference is scheduled for Wednesday, April 23rd. Our next in-person meeting will be on Thursday, May 22nd, in Beaverton, OR.
TC-11 SCC-20 Coordinators: by Joe Stanco
• This report is an update of the progress being made in the incorporation of ATML which define a collection of XML-based schemas that allows ATE and test information to be exchanged in a common format adhering to the XML standards in a number of IEEE SCC20 standards. The SCC20 is the standards organization through which the ATML components will be published.
• In addition, the Hardware Interfaces (HI), Diagnostic and Maintenance Control (DMC), Test Description (TAD) and Test Information Integration (TII) subcommittees will meet in St. Louis, MO on April 22nd through the 24th 2008. The following gives a status of the various standards with ATML components.
o ATML Overview and Architecture IEEE Std 1671-2006 Published December 2006
o IEEE P1636.1 (Test Results) Trial-Use Standard, published
o IEEE P1671.3 (UUT Description) Trial-Use, published
o IEEE P1671.4 (Test Configuration) Trial-Use, being published
o IEEE P1671.5 (Test Adapter) Trial-Use Standard, formal ballot process
o IEEE P1671.6 (Test Station) Trial-Use Standard, formal ballot process
o IEEE P1671.2 (Instrument Description) Trial-Use, formal ballot process
o IEEE P1671.1 (Test Description) Trial-Use Standard, invitation for ballot.
o Diagnostics (AI-ESTATE - 1232), Signal Description (STD - 1641), Signal Description (STD - 1641), Maintenance Action Information (MAI - P1636.2) have component candidate schemas.
• The Diagnostic and Maintenance Control (DMC) subcommittee’s Standard for Software Interface for Maintenance Information Collection and Analysis IEEE P 1636 (SIMICA), invitation for ballot.
TC-17 Materials in Measurements: by Jacob Scharcanski
• The discussions following the creation of a new group of international members within TC-17, last September, led to the proposition of a 'Workshop on Modeling in Measurements’. Since this is the first meeting of the kind, we expect to have invited speakers, and other contributors interested in this research area. This Workshop has been proposed as a two-days meeting in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), in October 2009. At that time, there will be other IEEE sponsored meetings in Rio (IEEE MMSP 09 and SIBGRAPI 09). After the meeting, we plan to report on the Workshop achievements in a Special Section in the IEEE Transactions on I & M.
• All members of the IEEE IMS are most welcome to join the group, and also are invited to provide their input(s)/suggestion(s) by e-mailing: Gladimir Baranoski, gvgbaran@curumin.math.uwaterloo.ca or Jacob Scharcanski, <jacobs@inf.ufrgs.br>.
TC-19 Imaging Measurements: by George Giakos
• The TC 19 Technical Committee on “Imaging Systems” has been involved into the following activities:
o Assisted in the reviewing of journal papers for the Transactions
o Assisted in the reviewing of Proceeding papers for the IMTC 2008
o Organized two Special Sessions for the IMTC 2008, entitled “Imaging Systems and Techniques”.
 Involved with the organizing of the IEEE International Workshop on Imaging Systems and Techniques 2008 (IST 2008) that will take place in Chania, Island of Crete, Greece. The IEEE IST 2008 International Workshop deals with the design, development, evaluation and applications of imaging systems, instrumentation, and measuring techniques
TC-20 Transportation Systems: by Frans C.A. Groen and Georg Brasseur
• The Committee is promoting:
o basic research on I & M in transportation systems
o sensor data processing, interpretation and fusion in intelligent transportation systems
o I & M in alternative energies vehicles and driver assist systems.
o Incorporating instrumentation, measurement and sensor data interpretation in curricula for automotive and transportation systems
• The work on establishing a new Master of Engineering study at TU-Graz called “Automotive Software and Electronics" with a new chair plus department called "Embedded Automotive Systems" is finished. The Master study will started in the fall term 2007. Our attempt is totally in compliance with the view of “Transportation Systems".
• Contributed to the organization, in collaboration with TC-15 Virtual Systems, TC-27 Human-Computer Interfaces and Interaction, TC-28 I & M for Robotics and Automation and TC-30 Security and Contraband Detection, of the ROSE 2007 - IEEE International Workshop on Robotic and Sensors Environments, Ottawa, ON, Canada, 12-13 October 2008.
• Ongoing activities include:
o Organization of a tutorial on “Different measurement issues and how they are solved in transportation systems” at IMTC2008
o Supporting Okyay Kaynak, and Emil Petriu as a member of the Technical Program Committee of VECIMS 2008-International Conference on Virtual Environments, Human-Computer Interfaces, and Measurement Systems, to be held in Istanbul, Turkey, 14-16 July, 2008
TC-21 Built in Test (BIT): by Robert Gao and Dennis Hecht
• Starting a new project with the National Institute of Standards and Technology on bearing wear monitoring for designing a smart spindle with self-diagnosis and prognosis capability.
• Starting a new collaborative project sponsored by the National Science Foundation on cyber-enabled reconfigurable manufacturing enterprise.
• Continued activities of the NDIA Integrated Diagnostic Committee, including follow-on work in the area of Electronic Prognostic, for which workshops were held in previous years. Report and Information Briefings have been completed on maintenance database analysis. Specific outcomes include:
o Results briefing has been provided, with quantified diagnostic benefits and a selected candidate system.
o Data analysis has been started.
o Expected benefits include reduced false alarm removals of 40% and improved availability of 25% .
• The NDIA Integrated Diagnostic Committee has recently been tasked to help stream-line the process by which new technologies, especially in the diagnostic realm, find there way into the design of new/modified weapon systems in a more expeditious manner.
• For the next reporting period, the Committee plans to engage in the following activities:
o Play a more active role in promoting the Vehicle Health Management Initiative
o Hold joint meeting with Automatic Test Committee to develop standardize sharing of diagnostic data with ATE
o Expand research to include human physical activity measurement through the integration of sensor suites, embedded firmware, and wireless communication.

TC-22 Intelligent Measurement Systems: by Cesare Alippi and Mel Siegel
• The Committee is promoting:
o basic research on computational intelligence (soft computing and composite technologies) in I & M systems and their applications;
o research on intelligent distributed sensing networks based on soft-computing components;
o research on computational intelligence methodologies and techniques for adapting processing systems;
o the use of computational intelligence technologies in I & M for intelligent manufacturing applications, homeland protection and personal safety.
• The Committee is organising and coordinating
• 2008 IEEE International Conference on Computational Intelligence for Measurement Systems and Applications (CIMSA), July 14-16, 2008, Istanbul, Turkey sponsored by the IEEE IMS and the IEEE Neural Networks Society. The committee is also collaborating in the organization of the co-located IEEE International Conference on Virtual Environments, Human-Computer Interfaces and Measurement Systems (VECIMS) 14-16 July, 2008.
• TC-22 has provided the technical cooperation to the special session: Energy Harvesting and Management: towards credible deployments in wireless sensor networks and systems, IMTC 2008, to promote the use of intelligent techniques in the field of energy harvesting and WSNs.
TC-23 Education for Instrumentation and Measurements: by Theodore Laopoulos
• This report is an update of the progress being made in the incorporation of ATML which define a collection of XML-based schemas that allows ATE and test information to be exchanged in a common format adhering to the XML standards in a number of IEEE SCC20 standards. The SCC20 is the standards organization through which the ATML components will be published.
• In addition, the Hardware Interfaces (HI), Diagnostic and Maintenance Control (DMC), Test Description (TAD) and Test Information Integration (TII) subcommittees will meet in St. Louis, MO on April 22nd through the 24th 2008. The following gives a status of the various standards with ATML components.
 ATML Overview and Architecture IEEE Std 1671-2006 Published December 2006
 IEEE P1636.1 (Test Results) Trial-Use Standard, published
 IEEE P1671.3 (UUT Description) Trial-Use, published
 P1671.4 (Test Configuration) Trial-Use, being published
 IEEE P1671.5 (Test Adapter) Trial-Use Standard, formal ballot process
 IEEE P1671.6 (Test Station) Trial-Use Standard, formal ballot process
 IEEE P1671.2 (Instrument Description) Trial-Use, formal ballot process
 IEEE P1671.1 (Test Description) Trial-Use Standard, invitation for ballot.
• Diagnostics (AI-ESTATE - 1232), Signal Description (STD - 1641), Signal Description (STD - 1641), Maintenance Action Information (MAI - P1636.2) have component candidate schemas.
• The Diagnostic and Maintenance Control (DMC) subcommittee’s Standard for Software Interface for Maintenance Information Collection and Analysis IEEE P 1636 (SIMICA), invitation for ballot.
TC-25 Medical and Biological Measurements: by Marco Parvis
• The TC is organizing the third edition of MEMEA (MEMEA-2008 in Ottawa) with a good success, 39 submissions, and 29 accepted papers. The previous MeMeA workshop closed with a remarkable surplus of more than 100%.
• In the meantime, the TC subcommittee on Blood Pressure Measurement (Dr. Voicu Groza) is working on a PAR, which has been approved on 27 Mar 2008 by IEEE-SA Standards Board. The project name is “Standard for Objective Measurement of Systemic Arterial Blood Pressure in Humans”. The project has been approved till 31 Dec 2012.
TC-26 Radar Cross-Section Measurements: by Mark Yeary
• Committee Focus Areas of Research:
o Digital Radar Receiver Design and Deployment
o Innovative Algorithm Development for Severe Weather Detection and Warning
o Hardware Development and Upgrades for Radar Systems
• Specific Committee Activities:
o Service on the Technical Program Committee (TPC) for I2MTC 2008
o Service as a Session Chair at for I2MTC 2008
o Reviewing papers for the I&M Transactions
o Continued interactions with the National Severe Storms Laboratory
o On a teamwork basis, preparing for a workshop
o Working with NASA to measure and characterize airborne hazards
o Working to promote the national Multi-Function Phased Array Radar (MPAR) and Automation, of the ROSE 2008 - IEEE International Workshop on Robotic and initiative. This is in collaboration with NOAA, ONR, Lockheed-Martin, and the FAA.
TC-31 I&M for Homeland Security: by Kang Lee and Brian Wadell.
• Activities in the last six months:
o Sensor Standards Harmonization meetings: Kang Lee organized and conducted two Sensor Standards Harmonization working group meetings on Oct 16, 2007 and April 30, 2008 respectively, at NIST. The meetings aimed to coordinate sensor-related standards activities in industry and government in support of DHS Standard Office for their interest in sensor standards and interoperability.
o Participated in the 9th Annual Technologies for Critical Incident Preparedness Conference and Expo 2007: Kang Lee participated in the Technologies for Critical Incident Preparedness Conference and interacted with the people implementing technologies to protect the nation from terrorist attacks. He helped to promote the IEEE smart and wireless sensor standards to these technology implementers and users.
• The next Sensor Standards Harmonization meeting is planned to be held on August 12, 2008 at NIST. Interested party can contact Kang at kang.lee@nist.gov.
TC-32 Fault Tolerant Measurement Systems: by Nohpill Park and Serge Demidenko
1. The special session on "Design, Manufacturing and Test of Reliable System-on-Chip (SoC) and System-in-Package (SiP) for the forthcoming I2MTC 2008 has been proposed and developed. The session description is available on the web - http://imtc.ieee-ims.org/imtc_2008.php
2. Session on Dependable Sensors was organized at the 2nd International Conference on Sensing Technology, November 26-28, 2007, Palmerston North, New Zealand.
3. The extended versions of the papers presented at the session on Dependable Sensors as well as some of the selected papers from the International Conference Sensing Technology in the special issue of the International Journal of Intelligent Systems Technologies and Applications (IJISTA) - the call for papers has been released in March 2008.
4. Discussions were held with the organizers of the 2009 IEEE Sensors Conference on organizing a Special Session on Fault Tolerant and Dependable Sensing Technology within the program of the Conference (October 2009). The preliminary results of the discussion are positive.
TC-33 Characterization of Electrical HF and Optical Nonlinear Components: by Marc Vanden Bossche and Yves Rolain
• Co-organization of a series of special sessions at IMTC07 entitled: ‘advances in microwave measurements. We had 3 sessions in Warsaw, and the attendance level was normal when compared to the other sessions. The attendance was even good for even for the last session that was held in the afternoon of the last day of the conference. We are repeating it in 08 in Canada, for the third year on a row. I think that if we can continue at this pace, we can contribute to more RF and microwave measurement activity in I & M.
• Joint organization of a TC-33 Target Network of Excellence workshop at the EUMC2007 conference held in Munich. This is really the core business of TC-33. We are trying to get people together to obtain a traceable phase standard that can be shared by more than one National Metrology Institution. We were happy to bring NIST, NPL and PTB around the table, and there was an interest to try to set the first steps in the direction of an international comparison for phase measurements. As also major industry players as Agilent and R&S have shown interest and are willing to participate, we will continue this effort.
• Liaison function to the MTT-11 TC on microwave measurements. We also try to keep a strong link with MTT-11 the measurement TC of MTT. I think that this goes quite well, and it allows us to match the activities, so that there is no overlap and that we are promoting microwave measurements in a similar way.
TC-36 Industrial Inspection by Zheng Liu and David Forsyth
• Dr. Pradeep Ramuhalli (http://www.egr.msu.edu/ndel/members/current/ramuhalli) from Michigan State University will join our TC.
• The other thing is a survey on standards of nondestructive inspection data is being planned. We want to get the responses from industries on a plan for data format standards for nondestructive inspection.
TC-37 Measurements for Networking by Claudio Narduzzi and Abdulmotaleb El Saddik
• The TC encouraged participation in I2MTC 2008 by disseminating information on the conference and promoting the organization of a special session on measurement and networking at I2MTC2008. From conference submissions over ten papers were short listed for the special session; the composition has now been finalized with four papers.
• TC-37 was also a co-sponsor of the IEEE Workshop on Haptic Audio Visual Environments (HAVE 2007) held in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, 12-14 October 2007 and is now planning to sponsor HAVE 2008 too.
TC-38 Space Measurements by John. Schmalzel
• Sponsored a "IEEE 1451.1 Plug Fest" at the 2008 IEEE Sensors Applications Symposium in Atlanta, GA. Event was run by Dr. Deniz Gurkan, Univ. of Houston. Participants included Mobitrum, NASA Stennis Space Center (SSC), Rowan University, and included a sensor from NASA Kennedy Space Center. This was an opportunity to demonstrate plug and play capabilities of .1 sensors that adhered to an on-the-wire format updated by SSC.
• Co-sponsoring with TC-9, updates to IEEE 1451.1 to included on-the-wire descriptions and definitions of health electronic data sheets (HEDS).