Veronica Scotti
Forensic Metrology: Where Law Meets Measurements

This paper is intended to give a short overview about the emerging branch of a new forensic science called forensic metrology. It is important to highlight the role played by scientists in proceedings and the relevance of scientific rules that, in the past, were not considered at all. This is especially true when measurement uncertainty is considered, since it apparently conflicts with the legal principle of certitude. Nowadays the attitude of courts is changing because of the reached awareness of the important information brought by uncertainty in investigating an event, even though building a bridge between scientists and legal people, who refer to different backgrounds, is quite a challenge, and is hard to win.

Marcantonio Catelani, Lorenzo Ciani, Bianca Sereni, Andrea Zanobini
Repeatability and Reproducibility Techniques for Measurement System Analysis

This research was conducted with the aim of analyzing two of the main metrological characteristics of any measurement system: Repeatability and Reproducibility. Both of these features play an important role in the analysis of the measurements and they can give us a lot of information about who and what influences any measuring system. The analysis of Repeatability and Reproducibility is generally carried out through the use of the study Gage R&R. This study is very useful because it permits us to understand which are the decisive factors in a measurement system, and, definitively, if the process is stable, that is under statistical control or out of statistical control.

Zygmunt Lech Warsza, Mykhaylo Dorozhovets
Evaluation of the uncertainty type A of the random stationary signal component from its autocorrelated observations

The proposal of evaluating the uncertainty type A of the stationary random component of measured signal from its regularly sampled observations (auto-correlated) is presented. In the first step the regularly variable components of the signal are indentified and removed from the raw sample data. Then upgraded formulas for standard uncertainty type A of the sample and of the mean value are expressed with the use of the correction coefficients or the so-called “effective number” of observations. These quantities depend on number of observations and on the autocorrelation function of the sample cleaned from regular components. Two methods of finding and estimating the autocorrelation function for the sample data are also presented. Few numerical examples are included.

Rihab Lahouli, Manel Ben-Romdhane, Chiheb Rebai, Dominique Dallet
Digital reconstruction stage of the FBD %Sigma;%Delta;-based ADC architecture for multistandard receiver

This paper presents the design of a digital reconstruction stage for a frequency band decomposition (FBD)-based analog-to-digital converter (ADC) architecture for digitizing multistandard receiver signals. The proposed FBDbased ADC architecture is flexible with programmable parallel branches composed of discrete time (DT) 4th order single-bit %Sigma;%Delta; modulators. The mixed baseband architecture uses a single non programmable anti-aliasing filter (AAF) avoiding the use of an automatic gain control (AGC) circuit. System level analysis proved that proposed FBD architecture satisfies design specifications of the proposed software defined radio (SDR) receiver. In this paper, the authors focus essentially on the reconstruction stage design for UMTS use case while discussing digital stage processing and performances.

Dariusz Kościelnik, Jakub Szyduczyński, Dominik Rzepka, Wojciech Andrysiewicz, Marek Miśkowicz
Architecture of successive approximation time-to-digital converter with single set of delay lines

The paper addresses a time-to-digital conversion method based on successive approximation algorithm in time domain (SA-TDC). The SA-TDC is based on successive delaying the events defining a start and a stop of the input time interval being converted to a digital number by the use of binaryscaled delay components. The paper contribution is a presentation of several enhancements of SA-TDC architecture with single set of delay lines such as a reduction of hardware complexity and a decrease of quantization step by asymmetric inverter design in delay lines. On the other hand, the problem of metastability in logic appeared during conversion process for quasi-simultaneous inputs as a significant drawback of SA-TDCs is explored.