Integration of low-cost air quality sensors with the internet of things (IoT) has become a feasible approach towards the development of smart cities. Several studies have assessed the performance of low-cost air quality sensors by comparing their measurements with reference instruments. We examined the performance of a low-cost IoT particulate matter (PM 10 and PM 2.5 ) sensor in the urban environment of Santiago, Chile. The prototype was assembled from a PM 10 -PM 2.5 sensor (SDS011), a temperature and relative humidity sensor (BME280) and an IoT board (ESP8266/ Node MCU). Field tests were conducted at three regulatory monitoring stations during the 2018 austral winter and spring seasons. The sensors at each site were operated in parallel with continuous reference air quality monitors (BAM 1020 and TEOM 1400) and a filterbased sampler (Partisol 2000i). Variability between sensor units (n = 7) and the correlation between the sensor and reference instruments were examined. Moderate inter-unit variability was observed between sensors for PM 2.5 (normalized root-mean-square error 9-24%) and PM 10 (10-37%). The correlations between the 1-h average concentrations reported by the sensors and continuous monitors were higher for PM 2.5 (R 2 0.47-0.86) than PM 10 (0.24-0.56). The correlations (R 2 ) between the 24-h PM 2.5 averages from the sensors and reference instruments were 0.63-0.87 for continuous monitoring and 0.69-0.93 for filter-based samplers. Correlation analysis revealed that sensors tended to overestimate PM concentrations in high relative humidity (RH > 75%) and underestimate when RH was below 50%. Overall, the prototype evaluated exhibited adequate performance and may be potentially suitable for monitoring daily PM 2.5 averages after correcting for RH.

Quantum communication, and more specifically Quantum Key Distribution (QKD), enables the transmission of information in a theoretically secure way, guaranteed by the laws of quantum physics. Although fiber-based QKD has been readily available since several years ago, a global quantum communication network will require the development of space links, which remains to be demonstrated. NICT launched a LEO satellite in 2014 carrying a lasercom terminal (SOTA), designed for in-orbit technological demonstrations. In this paper, we present the results of the campaign to measure the polarization characteristics of the SOTA laser sources after propagating from LEO to ground. The most-widely used property for encoding information in free-space QKD is the polarization, and especially the linear polarization. Therefore, studying its behavior in a realistic link is a fundamental step for proving the feasibility of space quantum communications. The results of the polarization preservation of two highly-polarized lasers are presented here, including the first-time measurement of a linearly-polarized source at λ = 976 nm and a circularly-polarized source at λ = 1549 nm from space using a realistic QKD-like receiver, installed in the Optical Ground Station at the NICT Headquarters, in Tokyo, Japan.

Free-space optical communications have held the promise of revolutionizing space communications for a long time. The benefits of increasing the bitrate while reducing the volume, mass and energy of the space terminals have attracted the attention of many researchers for a long time. In the last few years, more and more technology demonstrations have been taking place with participants from both the public and the private sector. The National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) in Japan has a long experience in this field. SOTA (Small Optical TrAnsponder) was the last NICT space lasercom mission, designed to demonstrate the potential of this technology applied to microsatellites. Since the beginning of SOTA mission in 2014, NICT regularly established communication using the Optical Ground Stations (OGS) located in the Headquarters at Koganei (Tokyo) to receive the SOTA signals, with over one hundred successful links. All the goals of the SOTA mission were fulfilled, including up to 10-Mbit/s downlinks using two different wavelengths and apertures, coarse and fine tracking of the OGS beacon, space-to-ground transmission of the on-board-camera images, experiments with different error correcting codes, interoperability with other international OGS, and experiments on quantum communications. The SOTA mission ended on November 2016, more than doubling the designed lifetime of 1-year. In this paper, the SOTA characteristics and basic operation are explained, along with the most relevant technological demonstrations.

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The utilization of drones as flying base stations (BSs) in the sixth-generation (6G) cellular networks has attracted much attention recently. In this context, free-space optical (FSO) systems could be deployed to provide high-capacity fronthaul/backhaul links between drones and ground BSs. Particularly, a drone-to-ground FSO communication link can be established by equipping the drone with a modulating retro-reflector (MRR) to modulate the incoming optical beam and reflect the modulated beam back along the same path. This helps to alleviate stringent pointing requirements from the drone while satisfying the limited size, weight, and power (SWaP) consumption requirements. Nevertheless, the underlying physical channel effects of this aerial retro-reflected FSO system have never been experimentally explored in the literature. In this paper, we report, for the first time, the experimental channel statistics of a drone-to-ground retroreflected FSO link, offering practical insights into the angle-of-arrival (AoA) fluctuations at the receiver, the channel coherence time, the probability of fade, the level crossing rate, the average fade duration, and the time-frequency channel characteristics. Our results are expected to serve as practical sources of reference for the theoretical performance analyses and engineering designs of drone-based retro-reflected FSO systems.INDEX TERMS Free-space optics (FSO), unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), aerial fronthaul/backhaul links, drone hovering, fine-tracking systems.