Non Destructive Testing (NDT) techniques are more and more exploited in order to quickly and cheaply detect flaws into the inspected materials such as aluminium plates. Important solutions in this field are based on eddy current detection, different eddy current probes being mentioned in the literature. Uniform eddy current probes (uniform-ECP) represent a particular category characterized by less sensitivity to the lift-off effects and has been originally used to inspect weld zones. This paper presents novel architectures based on uniform-ECP that combine the tangential excitation coil having a parallelepiped shape with highly sensitive giant magnetoresistances (GMR). Two different architectures regarding the GMR sensor location within the excitation coil are considered. An automatic testing system to characterize the sensor and to perform tests on an aluminum plate specimen with different defects is also presented.

Changes in study programs at European universities based on Bologna declaration concern also the education in measurement and instrumentation (M&I). The bachelor and master stages are at the most of universities strictly separated in the new study plans, whilst only at some ones a so-called "integrated master program" arose. Study programs at a number of universities in continental Europe, where electrical engineering is taught, have been compared from the view of education in M&I. Whilst at the most of them the education in M&I is concerned to the bachelor study stage and one or two basic courses are offered, at several universities exist some additional specialized courses. Concerning master study stage, only some of the scanned universities offer separate specialization in M&I, the other universities offer some additional specialized courses only.

The transients produced by the electric arc at pantograph and recorded at the output of a GSM-R antenna are characterized statistically in the time domain and in the joint time-frequency domain, in order to quantify the noise produced on the GSM-R channel itself. The measurements have been performed on a French line with a 25 kV 50 Hz supply system.

Recently at National Institute of Metrological Research (INRIM) a Hamon actively guarded 10 × 100 MΩ was developed to improve the traceability levels at 1 GΩ level. Utilizing and revisiting this project, a Hamon 10 × 10 GΩ network is now under realization to extend the capabilities of the Hamon method up to 100 GΩ. Moreover, by means of this Hamon network, it will be possible to extend the capabilities of the measurement method for the calibration of picoammeters already developed at INRIM.

The results of the implementation of a novel measurement technique in monitoring variations of power consumption in wireless sensors network nodes which operate under the ZigBee protocol are presented in this work. A simple wireless ZIGBEE network consisting of three nodes (one sample from each of the typical node types) is measured with the proposed energy measuring configuration. The measurements are performed during the switch-on or switch-off operation of the nodes and the resulting waveforms provide useful information about the energy consumption of each node type, in each phase operation or "handshaking".