Design and application of a multi-modal process tomography system

Abstract

This paper presents a design and application study of an integratedmulti-modal system designed to support a range of common modalities:electrical resistance, electrical capacitance and ultrasonic tomography. Sucha system is designed for use with complex processes that exhibit behaviourchanges over time and space, and thus demand equally diverse sensingmodalities. A multi-modal process tomography system able to exploitmultiple sensor modes must permit the integration of their data, probablycentred upon a composite process model. The paper presents an overview ofthis approach followed by an overview of the systems engineering andintegrated design constraints. These include a range of hardware orientedchallenges: the complexity and specificity of the front-end electronics foreach modality; the need for front-end data pre-processing and packing; theneed to integrate the data to facilitate data fusion; and finally the features toenable successful fusion and interpretation. A range of software aspects arealso reviewed: the need to support differing front-end sensors for eachmodality in a generic fashion; the need to communicate with front-end datapre-processing and packing systems; the need to integrate the data to allowdata fusion; and finally to enable successful interpretation. The review of thesystem concepts is illustrated with an application to the study of a complexmulti-component process