Il benessere del suino pesante italiano: esperienze di ricerca in allevamento, durante il trasporto e nella percezione dei consumatori

Questo elaborato contiene studi riguardanti il benessere del suino pesante italiano ed in particolare si sofferma su alcuni aspetti particolarmente significativi per il miglioramento del benessere. Gli aspetti in esame hanno riguardato la percezione da parte del consumatore italiano del benessere in azienda; inoltre sono stati studiati gli effetti sul benessere di alcune caratteristiche dell'allevamento e di aspetti multifattoriali riguardanti il trasporto al macello. Alla luce dei lavori contenuti in questo lavoro, emerge come una revisione della normativa, anche considerando la categoria dei suini pesanti, possa migliorare notevolmente le loro condizioni di benessere. I consumatori italiani, infatti, hanno confermato di essere attenti e interessati al benessere animale, oltre che disposti a spendere di più per gli animali derivanti da pratiche innovative e più rispettose del benessere, come l'immunocastrazione. Un altro criterio importante, soprattutto in questa categoria di prodotti, è la disponibilità di spazio. Le nostre evidenze sperimentali dimostrano che garantire a questa categoria di suini requisiti di spazio superiori a quelli richiesti dalla normativa migliora il comportamento degli animali e i parametri di produzione. Infine, in termini di trasporto, lo studio da noi condotto ha permesso di identificare parametri da utilizzare come indicatori del livello di stress degli animali, risultando in una buona correlazione con i parametri di stress ematobiochimico. A conclusione di queste variegate esperienze di ricerca, si evidenzia quindi come investire in ulteriori impegni da parte del settore suinicolo, perseguendo l'obiettivo di ridurre al minimo gli stress a cui sono sottoposti i suini pesanti nel corso della loro vita, dall'adozione di tecniche di castrazione meno invasive, il miglioramento delle condizioni di allevamento e di trasporto, dovrebbe essere l'obiettivo comune di tutti i protagonisti della filiera, anche con l’obiettivo di ottenere un prodotto finale con un valore etico che soddisfi le aspettative implicite del consumatore.

Troposphere Calibration Techniques for Deep Space Probe Tracking

Ground-based Earth troposphere calibration systems play an important role in planetary exploration, especially to carry out radio science experiments aimed at the estimation of planetary gravity fields. In these experiments, the main observable is the spacecraft (S/C) range rate, measured from the Doppler shift of an electromagnetic wave transmitted from ground, received by the spacecraft and coherently retransmitted back to ground. If the solar corona and interplanetary plasma noise is already removed from Doppler data, the Earth troposphere remains one of the main error sources in tracking observables. Current Earth media calibration systems at NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) stations are based upon a combination of weather data and multidirectional, dual frequency GPS measurements acquired at each station complex. In order to support Cassini’s cruise radio science experiments, a new generation of media calibration systems were developed, driven by the need to achieve the goal of an end-to-end Allan deviation of the radio link in the order of 3×〖10〗^(-15) at 1000 s integration time. The future ESA’s Bepi Colombo mission to Mercury carries scientific instrumentation for radio science experiments (a Ka-band transponder and a three-axis accelerometer) which, in combination with the S/C telecommunication system (a X/X/Ka transponder) will provide the most advanced tracking system ever flown on an interplanetary probe. Current error budget for MORE (Mercury Orbiter Radioscience Experiment) allows the residual uncalibrated troposphere to contribute with a value of 8×〖10〗^(-15) to the two-way Allan deviation at 1000 s integration time. The current standard ESA/ESTRACK calibration system is based on a combination of surface meteorological measurements and mathematical algorithms, capable to reconstruct the Earth troposphere path delay, leaving an uncalibrated component of about 1-2% of the total delay. In order to satisfy the stringent MORE requirements, the short time-scale variations of the Earth troposphere water vapor content must be calibrated at ESA deep space antennas (DSA) with more precise and stable instruments (microwave radiometers). In parallel to this high performance instruments, ESA ground stations should be upgraded to media calibration systems at least capable to calibrate both troposphere path delay components (dry and wet) at sub-centimetre level, in order to reduce S/C navigation uncertainties. The natural choice is to provide a continuous troposphere calibration by processing GNSS data acquired at each complex by dual frequency receivers already installed for station location purposes. The work presented here outlines the troposphere calibration technique to support both Deep Space probe navigation and radio science experiments. After an introduction to deep space tracking techniques, observables and error sources, in Chapter 2 the troposphere path delay is widely investigated, reporting the estimation techniques and the state of the art of the ESA and NASA troposphere calibrations. Chapter 3 deals with an analysis of the status and the performances of the NASA Advanced Media Calibration (AMC) system referred to the Cassini data analysis. Chapter 4 describes the current release of a developed GNSS software (S/W) to estimate the troposphere calibration to be used for ESA S/C navigation purposes. During the development phase of the S/W a test campaign has been undertaken in order to evaluate the S/W performances. A description of the campaign and the main results are reported in Chapter 5. Chapter 6 presents a preliminary analysis of microwave radiometers to be used to support radio science experiments. The analysis has been carried out considering radiometric measurements of the ESA/ESTEC instruments installed in Cabauw (NL) and compared with the requirements of MORE. Finally, Chapter 7 summarizes the results obtained and defines some key technical aspects to be evaluated and taken into account for the development phase of future instrumentation.

Definition, realization and evaluation of a software reference architecture for use in space applications

A recent initiative of the European Space Agency (ESA) aims at the definition and adoption of a software reference architecture for use in on-board software of future space missions. Our PhD project placed in the context of that effort. At the outset of our work we gathered all the industrial needs relevant to ESA and all the main European space stakeholders and we were able to consolidate a set of technical high-level requirements for the fulfillment of them. The conclusion we reached from that phase confirmed that the adoption of a software reference architecture was indeed the best solution for the fulfillment of the high-level requirements. The software reference architecture we set on building rests on four constituents: (i) a component model, to design the software as a composition of individually verifiable and reusable software units; (ii) a computational model, to ensure that the architectural description of the software is statically analyzable; (iii) a programming model, to ensure that the implementation of the design entities conforms with the semantics, the assumptions and the constraints of the computational model; (iv) a conforming execution platform, to actively preserve at run time the properties asserted by static analysis. The nature, feasibility and fitness of constituents (ii), (iii) and (iv), were already proved by the author in an international project that preceded the commencement of the PhD work. The core of the PhD project was therefore centered on the design and prototype implementation of constituent (i), a component model. Our proposed component model is centered on: (i) rigorous separation of concerns, achieved with the support for design views and by careful allocation of concerns to the dedicated software entities; (ii) the support for specification and model-based analysis of extra-functional properties; (iii) the inclusion space-specific concerns.

Design and implementation of a novel multi-constellation FPGA-based dual frequency GNSS receiver for space applications

The PhD activity described in the document is part of the Microsatellite and Microsystem Laboratory of the II Faculty of Engineering, University of Bologna. The main objective is the design and development of a GNSS receiver for the orbit determination of microsatellites in low earth orbit. The development starts from the electronic design and goes up to the implementation of the navigation algorithms, covering all the aspects that are involved in this type of applications. The use of GPS receivers for orbit determination is a consolidated application used in many space missions, but the development of the new GNSS system within few years, such as the European Galileo, the Chinese COMPASS and the Russian modernized GLONASS, proposes new challenges and offers new opportunities to increase the orbit determination performances. The evaluation of improvements coming from the new systems together with the implementation of a receiver that is compatible with at least one of the new systems, are the main activities of the PhD. The activities can be divided in three section: receiver requirements definition and prototype implementation, design and analysis of the GNSS signal tracking algorithms, and design and analysis of the navigation algorithms. The receiver prototype is based on a Virtex FPGA by Xilinx, and includes a PowerPC processor. The architecture follows the software defined radio paradigm, so most of signal processing is performed in software while only what is strictly necessary is done in hardware. The tracking algorithms are implemented as a combination of Phase Locked Loop and Frequency Locked Loop for the carrier, and Delay Locked Loop with variable bandwidth for the code. The navigation algorithm is based on the extended Kalman filter and includes an accurate LEO orbit model.

An Integrated Transmission-Media Noise Calibration Software For Deep-Space Radio Science Experiments

The thesis describes the implementation of a calibration, format-translation and data conditioning software for radiometric tracking data of deep-space spacecraft. All of the available propagation-media noise rejection techniques available as features in the code are covered in their mathematical formulations, performance and software implementations. Some techniques are retrieved from literature and current state of the art, while other algorithms have been conceived ex novo. All of the three typical deep-space refractive environments (solar plasma, ionosphere, troposphere) are dealt with by employing specific subroutines. Specific attention has been reserved to the GNSS-based tropospheric path delay calibration subroutine, since it is the most bulky module of the software suite, in terms of both the sheer number of lines of code, and development time. The software is currently in its final stage of development and once completed will serve as a pre-processing stage for orbit determination codes. Calibration of transmission-media noise sources in radiometric observables proved to be an essential operation to be performed of radiometric data in order to meet the more and more demanding error budget requirements of modern deep-space missions. A completely autonomous and all-around propagation-media calibration software is a novelty in orbit determination, although standalone codes are currently employed by ESA and NASA. The described S/W is planned to be compatible with the current standards for tropospheric noise calibration used by both these agencies like the AMC, TSAC and ESA IFMS weather data, and it natively works with the Tracking Data Message file format (TDM) adopted by CCSDS as standard aimed to promote and simplify inter-agency collaboration.

Deep space orbit determination and guidance of the LICIACube microsatellite mission

Recently, the JPL's MarCO mission demonstrated that these probes are also mature enough to be employed in the deep space, even though with the limitations related to the employed commercial components. Currently, other deep space CubeSats are planned either as stand-alone missions or as companions of a traditional large probe. Therefore, developing a dedicated navigation suite is crucial to reaching the mission's goals, considering the limitations of the onboard components compared to typical deep space missions. In this framework, the LICIACube mission represents an ideal candidate test-bench, as it performs a flyby of the Didymos asteroid system subject to a strong position, epochs, and pointing requirements. This mission will also allow us to infer the capabilities of such microsatellites and highlight their limitations compared with the benefits of a lighter design and tailoring efforts. In this work, the OD and guidance methods and tools adopted for classical deep space missions have been tailored for the CubeSat applications and validated through extensive analyses. In addition, navigation procedures and interfaces have been designed in view of the operations foreseen in late 2022. The pre-launch covariance analysis has been performed to assess the mission's feasibility for the nominal trajectory and its associated uncertainties, based on conservative assumptions on the main parameters. Extensive sensitivity analyses have been carried out to understand the main mission parameters affecting the performance and to demonstrate the robustness of the designed trajectory and operation schedule in fulfilling the mission requirements. The developed system was also stressed by tuning the models to access different reconstruction methods for the maneuvers. The analysis demonstrated the feasibility of the LICIACube mission navigation in compliance with the mission requirements, compatible with the limited resources available, both in space and on the ground.