IFSA Activities Report '2000

IFSA Activities Report (September 2000)

Celebrate the one year anniversary of IFSA

International Frequency Sensor Association (IFSA) has just completed its first year of operation with a growing membership world-wide taken from many sectors of industry and academia. It has received special interest from different big companies as well as SMEs, who want to know more about how modern sensor, measurement and microsystems technologies can help them become more competitive. Individual researchers and manufacturers are also showing an increasing interest as a result of members' initiatives. The high level of expertise and wide experience that exists within the membership provides an effective mechanism to facilitate a market driven development of new products. This has resulted in a number of new joint research projects being generated in smart sensors.

Stronger working partnerships between industry and academia will continue to be necessary to facilitate the growth of market exploitation of the smart sensor technology. IFSA has demonstrated that it can provide an effective way for creating technology and market awareness, the profitable exploitation of new ideas and research results, an effective way of building business relationship.

IFSA has founded Best Paper and Best Exhibition Awards, that will be given every year during different sensors events for outstanding achievements in the area of frequency (period, duty-cycle, time interval, pulse number and digital) output smart sensors.

Presently, the IFSA includes 56 % members from industry and 44 % members from academia from 22 countries (See Figure 1. IFSA Membership and Figure 2 Members per Region). These countries are listed according to priority of registration in IFSA: France, Germany, Great Britain, Korea, Romania, Sweden, Greece, USA, Belgium, The Netherlands, Ukraine, Belarus, Hungary, Portugal, Taiwan, Slovak Republic, Russia, Singapore, Italy, Czech Republic, Switzerland and Poland. There is a steady trend of members growth from industry. The members' interest in specific type of sensors is shown in Figure 3. Members' Interests.

Information dissemination was and is one of the main IFSA activities. The current visitors web site statistics shows more than 37000 page views, more than 140000 hits and 900 MB bandwidth used (Figure 4. IFSA Web Site Statistics). IFSA’s web site takes first position (at September 2000) in search results rating (“frequency sensor” key words) of such most popular search engines and portals as Yahoo!, Google, AltaVista, Excite, Lycos, Magellan, Netscape, Northern Light and Metacrawler search engines. The Linkbot 4.0 Quality Rating Score (site quality rating) is 98 percentiles (the percentage of sites in the Internet with a quality rating lower than IFSA’s web site).

IFSA’s web site was visited by visitors from 49 countries (countries are listed according to the number of page views per domain): USA, Germany, Ukraine, France, Switzerland, Netherlands, Japan, United Kingdom, Italy, Belgium, Sweden, Poland, Norway, Russia, Korea (South), Denmark, Singapore, Austria, Spain, Hungary, Finland, Portugal, Australia, Belarus, Taiwan, Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, Romania, Argentina, Israel, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Lithuania, Canada, Mexico, Uruguay, Brazil, Peru, South Africa, Latvia, Estonia, Ireland, Moldova, China, Colombia, India, Greece, Slovenia and Iceland (Figure 5. Visitors per Region).

IFSA Development and Change

After one-year successful operation with a ever-growing membership and number of visitors it was decided to transform the IFSA web site into worldwide Sensors Web Portal - a main web portal for sensor related information, foothold of international effective cooperation, important mean for technology transfer, inter-institutional collaboration and public access to research information in the next Millennium. Sensors Web Portal will be organized like big Internet recourses catalogue, aggregating information from various sources and presenting it in a user-friendly format. It is planned to open some new sections and e-services:

Sensor technology section. Technology searching service (information about microelectronics and microsystems technologies available for sensors manufacturing and links to appropriate microelectronics company and design houses) will be launched.
E-commerce. Sensors database will be created and e-commerce transactions started. It will cover so called an Internet sensor market in which numerous companies – not just those with existing business relationships – conduct transactions such as procurement (the e-marketplace). It offers the merits of easy additions and modification the Internet sensors database (that will be created during transformation of IFSA Web site into Sensors Web Portal), efficient information exchange and ability to form dynamic alliances.
Bookstore will be opened in the Sensor Web Portal. Here our members and visitors will have an opportunity to order and buy sensor related books and magazines from different publishing houses world-wide.
Content of Sensor Web Portal will be expanded essentially. So, now there is an information not only about frequency and smart sensors but also about different common sensors subjects. It is intends for design, production, and manufacturing engineers involved in the detection, control, and measurement of specific physical properties and conditions as well as for sensors manufacturers, researchers and PhD students. It focuses on the usage of sensing devices to increase efficiency, economy, and productivity in applications ranging from manufacturing to process control, from aerospace to consumer products. Content will emphasize new developments in sensing and allied technologies — including data acquisition and networking — as well as innovative applications and operating principles of sensors and systems.
Members area will be opened. It will include: “Who is who” in sensor community; information about planning and current joint research projects; on-line registration for different sensor events (symposiums, conferences, workshops, training courses, exhibitions, etc.), specialized market reports will be available for registered members. IFSA membership is still free, at least up to the end of 2000 year.
Sensors on-line community. Here our visitors can ask technical questions and give advices like experts, find partners and investors for innovation sensor related projects and technology transfers, advertise its sensor related products.

Any person, group, organization, company and university who would like to know more about future Sensors Web Portal activities or register interest with a view to becoming an IFSA member as well as to be included into e-commerce sensors database or technological database should contact the Vice President at the address below. R&D providers and companies with prototyping and manufacturing facilities for different smart sensors are very welcome.

Dr. Sergey Y. Yurish, IFSA Vice President,

Bandera str., 12, 290013, Lviv, Ukraine.

Tel.: +380 322 97 16 74, fax: +380 322 97 16 41

E-mail: syurish@mail.icmp.lviv.ua