Volume 89, Issue 2 - In memoriam Fernando Puente León / Gastherausgeber: Michael Heizmann, Jürgen Beyerer

State-of-the-art vacuum electron tubes such as gyrotrons, deliver RF output powers up to more than 2 MW at frequencies up to 170 GHz. In terms of the very high power levels, a proper verification of the gyrotron components itself and measurements during gyrotron operation are vital to prevent possible fatal errors. Several basic RF measurement setups, which are used at IHM/KIT, are discussed. Currently, their upper frequency limit is 175 GHz. In terms of future gyrotron operation above 200 GHz, upgrades of the measurement setups for operation up to 260–330 GHz are prepared. The experimental devices discussed herein are a quasi-optical mode generator for the verification of the quasi-optical gyrotron output system, the window measurement test stand to verify the ceramic gyrotron output window and the frequency diagnostic system to measure the operating frequency and thereby the excited mode.

Solid Oxide Cells (SOCs) have gained an increasing interest as electrochemical energy converters due to their high efficiency, fuel flexibility and ability of reversible fuel cell/electrolysis operation. During the development process as well as in quality assurance tests, the performance of single cells and cell stacks is commonly evaluated by means of current/voltage- (CV-) characteristics. Despite of the fact that the measurement of a CV-characteristic seems to be simple compared to more complex, dynamic methods as electrochemical impedance spectroscopy or current interrupt techniques, the resulting performance strongly depends on the test setup and the chosen operating conditions. In this paper, the impact of different single cell testing environments and operating conditions on the CV-characteristic of high performance cells is discussed. The influence of cell size, contacting and current collection, contact pressure, fuel flow rate and composition on the achievable cell performance is presented and limitations arising from the test bed and testing conditions will be pointed out. As today’s high performance cells are capable of delivering current densities of several ampere per cm 2 a special emphasis will be laid on single cell testing in this current range.

This paper presents a review of radar applications in high-accuracy distance measurement of a target. The radars included in this review are frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radar sensors operating in four different millimeter-wave frequency bands, namely 24 GHz, 61 GHz, 80 GHz and 122 GHz. The radar sensors are used to measure the distance of standard and complex targets in a short range of a few meters, thus indicating that the choice of target and the medium used for radar signal propagation also play a key role in determining the distance measurement accuracy of an FMCW radar. The standard target is a trihedral corner reflector in a laboratory-based free space measurement setup and the complex targets include a piston in an oil-filled hydraulic cylinder and a planar positioning stage used in micromachining. In each of these measurement scenarios, a distance measurement accuracy in micrometer range is achieved due to the use of a sophisticated signal processing algorithm that is based on a combined frequency and phase estimation method. The paper is concluded with a technical comparison of the accuracy achieved by the FMCW radars reviewed in this article with other related works.

A new compensation method of harmonic distortions by using Atan2 function is introduced in this paper. It provides a simple online calibration function to determine the parameters of harmonic distortions. Thus, it can be implemented in a microcontroller with less computational capacity and can increase the accuracy of a low-cost angle position sensor for automotive applications.

Autonomous driving is a promising technology to, among many aspects, improve road safety. There are however several scenarios that are challenging for autonomous vehicles. One of these are unsignalized junctions. There exist scenarios in which there is no clear regulation as to is allowed to drive first. Instead, communication and cooperation are necessary to solve such scenarios. This is especially challenging when interacting with human drivers. In this work we focus on unsignalized T-intersections. For that scenario we propose a discrete event system (DES) that is able to solve the cooperation with human drivers at a T-intersection with limited visibility and no direct communication. The algorithm is validated in a simulation environment, and the parameters for the algorithm are based on an analysis of typical human behavior at intersections using real-world data.