We present an experimental apparatus that allows microsecond-resolved ellipsometric and absorption measurements. The apparatus is based on an optical cavity containing a Dove prism, in which light undergoes total internal reflection (TIR), while the data acquisition is based on software defined radio technology and custom-built drivers. We demonstrate the ability to sense rapid variations in the refractive index above the TIR interface for arbitrarily long times with a temporal resolution of at least 2 μs.

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Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) describes an ICT based environment that exposes personalized and context-aware intelligent services, thus creating an appropriate experience to the end user to support independent living and improvement of the everyday quality of life of both healthy elderly and disabled people. The social and economic impact of AAL systems have boosted the research activities that combined with the advantages of enabling technologies such as Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) and Internet of Things (IoT) can greatly improve the performance and the efficiency of such systems. Sensors and actuators inside buildings can create an intelligent sensing environments that help gather realtime data for the patients, monitor their vital signs and identify abnormal situations that need medical attention. AAL applications might be life critical and therefore have very strict requirements for their performance with respect to the reliability of the devices, the ability of the system to gather data from heterogeneous devices, the timeliness of the data transfer and their trustworthiness. This work presents the functional architecture of SOrBet (Marie Curie IAPP project) that provides a framework for interconnecting efficiently smart devices, equipping them with intelligence that helps automating many of the everyday activities of the inhabitants. SOrBet is a paradigm shift of traditional AAL systems based on a hybrid architecture, including both distributed and centralized functionalities, extensible, self-organising, robust and secure, built on the concept of "reliability by design", thus being capable of meeting the strict Quality of Service (QoS) requirements of demanding applications such as AAL.978-1-4673-6305-1/15/$31.00 ©2015 IEEE IEEE ICC 2015 -Workshop on ICT-enabled services and technologies for eHealth and Ambient Assisted Living

Abstract-In an Emergency and/or Crisis Situations (ECS)like earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, fires, terrorist attacks etc. the adequate operation of communication services is of extreme importance. History has shown that poor communication in such cases resulted in several casualties. In ECS fixed communication infrastructure might be unserviceable due to sustained damages. Evermore, the communication demand is highly increased in such cases resulting in poor quality of service as both civilians and authorities are trying to establish communications. In this paper, a Rapid Emergency Deployment mobile Communication (REDComm) node is presented. REDComm nodes include wireless communication technologies, to provide various telecommunication services in ECS and interoperability between them. It incorporates an 802.11a mesh cognitive radio technology that operates in the television broadcasting frequency bands to provide a backbone networking with increased range and flexibility. REDComm is constructed upon a trailer chassis able to minimize setup time, which is valuable in ECS. The presented platform is powered by a hybrid power source that combines thermal, solar and wind energy and eliminates the need for external power supply.