Intelligent Remote Sensors: from Fields to Information

19世纪世纪的研究表明，场是曲线的，而波是以直线传播的。后来卢瑟福在新西兰的实验和马可尼在加拿大和英国之间的演示表明，波是“绕着拐角”传播的。一场关于传播的研究热潮随之而来，催生了国际无线电科学联盟（URSI）。世纪后，生物电磁学等领域仍面临巨大挑战，URSI和其他研究机构仍在报告进展。 随着对场和波的研究导致了无线电通信，电气工程作为一门新学科从物理学中脱颖而出，现在它借鉴了从数学到材料科学的许多其他学科。在二十世纪，通信和信息也作为变革领域出现，最终发展成今天的信息和通信技术，代表了人类所知的最具破坏性的创新。本研究是关于场与信息转换的传感器的设计。传感元件在场和信号之间进行映射;其信号处理映射信号和信息，通常称为“智能”。在实践中，感知是咬约束，因为信号质量限制了信息。各种元件感测各种类型的场，特别是用于电磁场的天线和用于声场的扬声器/麦克风。智能遥感器具有多个传感器元件或阵列，使其信号处理能够抑制不需要的信号，同时增强需要的信号及其信息。它的设计需要多种专业工程技能--概念、数学公式和开发--包括评估紧凑的宽带元件及其阵列结构。除此之外，还有信号理论和自适应处理，加上传播及其建模不可分割的作用，包括“转角”机制：为了最好地映射信息，传感器必须适应不断变化的条件，特别是传播。这些不同的技能都需要在一起，所以传感器设计的创新需要在场和波的散射，元件和阵列，信号处理，以及这些之间的相互作用的科学基础。评估对于工程学来说尤其重要，也是研究的一部分。该方法是为广泛的应用开发传感器，以激发协同作用。在通信领域，这些技术用于物联网和卫星雷达监测地球资源;在生物电磁学领域，发现和利用场与微生物之间的相互作用，为无线电消毒剂铺平道路;在声学领域，新的沉浸式系统用于解释诊断信号。其成果将是新的设计基础和发明，世界级的传感器和世界级的工程师，最终为新的经济财富做出贡献。

Nineteenth century research established that fields are curvilinear, and as waves, travel in straight lines. Then Rutherford's experiments in New Zealand and Marconi's demonstration between Canada and Britain showed that waves travelled "around corners". A research frenzy ensued on propagation, spawning the Union Radio Scientifique Internationale (URSI). Over a century later, grand challenges still beckon in fields and waves, such as bioelectromagnetics, with progress still reported through URSI and other research organizations.  As the study of fields and waves led to radio communications, electrical engineering emerged from physics as a new discipline, and it now draws on many other disciplines from mathematics to materials science. In the twentieth century, Communications, and then Information, emerged also as transformative areas, culminating in today's Information and Communications Technology representing the most disruptive innovations that mankind has known. This research is on the design of sensors which transform between fields and information. The sensing element maps between fields and signals; and its signal processing maps signals and information, often called "intelligence". In practice, the sensing is the biting constraint because the signal quality limits the information. Various elements sense the various types of fields, in particular antennas for electromagnetic fields and loudspeakers/microphones for acoustic fields. An intelligent remote sensor has multiple sensor elements, or an array, enabling its signal processing to suppress unwanted signals while boosting the wanted signal and its information. Its design calls for several specialist engineering skills - conception, mathematical formulation, and development - including the evaluation of compact, wide-band elements and their array structures. On top of these, there is the signal theory and adaptive processing, plus the inseparable role of the propagation and its modelling, including "around the corner" mechanisms: to best map the information, the sensor must adapt to changing conditions, particularly the propagation. These diverse skills are required together, so innovation in sensor design calls on scientific foundations in the scattering of fields and waves, elements and arrays, signal processing, and the interplay between these. Evaluation is particularly important for engineering and is part of the research. The methodology is to develop sensors for a wide set of applications to invoke synergy. In communications, these are for the Internet-of-Things and satellite radar monitoring of earth resources; in bioelectromagnetics, discovering and using interactions between fields and micro-organisms, paving the way to radio disinfectants; and in acoustics, new immersive systems for interpreting diagnostic signals. The outcomes will be new design foundations and inventions, world class sensors and world class engineers, ultimately contributing to new economic wealth.