In the paper a low-cost measurement and control network for power quality monitoring is presented. The architecture is arranged on three hierarchical levels: the fieldbus, the intranet and the Internet. Particular attention has been paid to the lower level which represent the field level, based on the H8/3048F Hitachi microcomputer and linked to a VXIbus device by means of a suited, register based interface. The proposed network has been designed for industrial measurement applications. It can embody a number of analog signal conditioning circuits, processor and communication capabilities, to meet the industrial needs. In the paper, an application of proposed station to power quality monitoring is reported. Experimental results showing the system performance are also included in the paper.

The LASOL project comprises the development, evaluation and appraisal of a novel automated inspection system specifically designed for large area solder joints (LSJ). The LASOL project started in September 1998 and is co-funded by the Commission of the European Communities, DG XII, under its Brite/EuRam Program with the Project No. BE-4689. Current inspection systems based on grayscale imaging are usually optimized for very small joints (e.g. surface mount). These systems can check for the existence of a joint but provide inadequate information on its condition or quality. The LASOL system utilizes a non-destructive method based on the Coded Light Approach to optically inspect the joint surface in three dimensions. With this method the LASOL team intends to achieve: establishment of generic relations between geometric structures and quality functions (e.g. fluid and gas tightness or mechanical strength); definition of generic rules for process control using geometric measurement data; set-up and validation of an industrial pre-competitive prototype for automated inspection of LSJ’s. Actual results of topography registration, classification and rules of quality assurance of LSJ’s are presented.

A tool for educational purposes to be used during laboratory sessions on electrical and electronic measurement courses is proposed. It represents an interactive environment for performing measurements and writing technical reports at the same time, using an user-friendly dialogue system. It should be emphasised that the implemented tool is quite different from an automatic measurement system, due to its interactive features. It improves the Quality Management of the educational services provided by electronic measurement laboratories by increasing the quality of typical laboratory interactions, such as theory-practice, laboratory instruments-users and teacher-students. A particularisation of the more general Deming quality theories has been adopted.

In this paper we consider direct repeated measurements of a quantity R that is defined by the product P₁^n₁ · P_m^n_m (n₁, ... ,n_m = ±1 ) of m other quantities. Bayes theorem is applied to obtain posterior estimates of R and Pα (α = 1, ..., n) based on the measurements of R and prior information (estimates, associated uncertainties) about Pα. The paper extends a previous result applicable to a calibration chain with only two elements to chains with arbitrary number of elements.

A multiple-output nonlinear filter for impulse noise removal from image data is presented. The proposed technique is based on the subsequent activation of two recursive filtering algorithms that operate on different subsets of input data. As a result, two pixel values are updated at each processing step producing a very effective cancellation of noise pulses. Impulse noise removal is based on rank ordered filtering. A nonlinear mechanism for error correction is also provided in order to avoid detail blur. Validation of the method is carried out by evaluating the quality of the filtered data with respect to two conflicting performance indexes: effectiveness of the noise cancellation and accuracy of detail preservation. Experimental results show that the proposed approach performs significantly better than well-known nonlinear methods in the literature including state-of-the-art operators.