Research

A simple and practical way to best select tasks to finish

This is a light post, but practical and easy to implement, to improve our productivity in prioritising tasks.

Manufacturing and space: Multilateration using ranging signals for large scale dimensional metrology

Multilateration is a position determination method that is locating an object by accurately computing the distance between the object and three or more other objects (e.g., transmitter or laser tracker) with known positions. This method is also known as hyperbolic position determination.

Research

Research how to: A practical guide

Research is a challenging task and requires a substantial effort and resource including both time and monetary. However, we must (or most of us already) believe that research is a value-creation activity instead of a cost-centre activity.

GNSS

TUTORIAL on how to measure RF receiver noise: A practical approach

In this post, we will provide tutorial on how to quantify a receiver (instrument) noise. In addition, the basics of various unit of measurements related to signal processing will be discussed.

Research

Research management: How to manage knowledge workers

Management is a well-known term that everybody has heard before. All aspects of our lives require management, from managing our home, and our study to our work or business.

Research

Research marketing: How to promote our research

Marketing has been considered important in all aspects of activity related to relationship with other entities such as customer.

Research

Competitive research strategy: Analysing factors toward leading research

Research world is very competitive, especially today, where resources (such as articles and technical/scientific reports) are abundant, and relatively easy and cheap to access. Like in industry, to be competitive in research, we need to have a strategy.

Research

Classic philosophies that have been forgotten: Important factors for research and development

In this post, we will discuss the forgotten classic philosophies (values) that are instrumental for performing high quality research, development and innovation activities.

Applied programming

TUTORIAL: MATLAB software inter-connection and cooperation with PYTHON software using pyenv()

In a complex software application, most of the time, the application is written with several programming languages. These programming languages are inter-connected and cooperate together (compatible) to deliver the overall software functionalities.

Research

Disruptive innovation to create growth: A research perspective

Economic growth is one of the main targets of a nation to reach prosperity. It is well known that developed nations leverage knowledge-based economic created from advanced research and high-value products or services.

GNSS

Public datasets for spoofing and evil waveform (EWF) signals

Spoofing attacks on GNSS signals become more serious than ever due to the advancement of spoofing algorithms and computational capabilities and processing. These spoofing attacks transmit a counterfeit signal that leads to a wrong positioning, timing and navigation (PNT) solutions.

Research

Reverse step: building research and knowledge from data or observation study

Research is an iterative process and can be performed in either forward or reverse steps. Different fields of research require different research steps that best suit the specific situation of each field.

Metrology

Mathematical geometrical fitting: Concept and fitting methods

One of instrumental aspects in dimensional, geometrical and surface texture measurements is an algorithm to mathematically fit a geometry to spatial points. These spatial points are captured and digitised by a measuring instrument.

Research

Research: Lessons learnt from “Hands of Time: A Watchmaker's History of Time”

Time is the only thing that all humans have equally. Whether they come from a royal family or from an ordinary family, they all have the same 24 hours per day!

Research

Research as value and economy creation activities

In this post, we will discuss how to estimate the value (in cash) that can be generated from a research activity. In finance, cash is king!

Research

Research is a broad ecosystem: All results are important!

Research is a complex ecosystem where all activities and results (in all fields) will be somehow connected, either directly or indirectly, to each other.

Metrology

Digital transformation of dimensional and geometrical measurements

Today era is the time for thorough digitalisation, from product design, process design to data analysis and executive summary making.

Research

Calculus and linear algebra as tools for statistics

Very often, statistics is overlooked by engineers and the importance of statistics is put behind calculus and (linear) algebra.

Applied programming

Prioritising to use built-in functions in interpreted languages

We need to avoid as mush as possible the use of for loop in our algorithm by implementing vectorisation method and using built-in functions as much as possible.

Applied programming

Vectorising linear sequence search in MATLAB programming

To significantly speed up the computation speed in MATLAB, the reduction of for loop should be minimised.

Research

Research is like a puzzle: Start from anywhere to reach a goal

Like a puzzle game, research is a unique and challenging but very rewarding activity. This metaphor is somehow valid, although may be not directly an 100% apple-to-apple comparison.

Applied programming

TUTORIAL: PYTHON for fitting Gaussian distribution on data

In this post, we will present a step-by-step tutorial on how to fit a Gaussian distribution curve on data by using Python programming language. This tutorial can be extended to fit other statistical distributions on data.

Applied programming

TUTORIAL: Visual Basic for Application (VBA) macro in Excel for Monte-Carlo Simulation

In this post, a hands-on tutorial of Visual Basic for Application (VBA) macro in Microsoft Excel for Monte-Carlo (MC) simulation is presented. MC simulation is a powerful tool to analyse and solve various scientific and engineering applications.

Applied programming

Common problems in numerical computation: from data overflow, rounding error, poor conditioning to memory leak

In many modern science and engineering fields, numerical computation has an essential role to perform meaningful analyses. In numerical computation, many unexpected results occur due to errors related to digital computation instead of errors due to logic or model or formula errors.

Research

Standard deviation and standard error: The fundamental and important differences

In statistical data analysis, the spread of data is mostly quantified with standard deviation. However, for scientific analysis, standard error (SE) (commonly also called, standard deviation of the mean) is more appropriate to use than standard deviation.