Integrating intermittent distributed generation, distributed storage systems, electric vehicles, and flexible loads will present security, stability, and power quality challenges in future smart grids. The amount of data to be processed to face these issues can overwhelm grid operation tools and conventional IT-based applications, limiting situational awareness and decision support. Decentralized and self-organizing technologies can help with that problem. In a self-organizing system, information processing is based on local interactions of its elementary parts (dynamic agents), enabling the cooperative solution of complex decision-making problems by only requiring local information exchange without needing a fusion center for data collection and processing.

Wide area monitoring, protection and control systems (WAMPACs) have been recognized as the most promising enabling technologies to meet challenges of modern electric power transmission systems, where reliability, economics, environmental and other social objectives must be balanced to optimize the grid assets and satisfy growing electrical demand. To this aim WAMPAC requires precise phasor and frequency information, which are acquired by deploying multiple time synchronized sensors, known as Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs), providing precise synchronized information about voltage and current phasors, frequency and rate-of-change-of-frequency.

New techniques and technologies for sensors are developing fast and being applied in a wide range of fields for measurement and instrumentation, both for research and commercial purposes. This book aims to provide advanced students and practising engineers with a selective tour of highlights in the topical field of sensors for measurement. The authors provide descriptions of the operation, characteristics and applications of the sensors on which they work, together with recent advances and prospects for the future. The chapters cover both fibre optic and solid state sensing, applied across a wide range of applications.

A telecommunications network is an electronic system of links, nodes and the controls that govern their operations to allow voice and data transfer among users and devices. Examples of telecommunications networks are the telephone networks, computer networks and the Internet. Understanding Telecommunications Networks provides a comprehensive explanation of how various systems and technologies link together to construct fixed and mobile telecommunications networks and provide services. It uses straightforward language supported by block-schematic diagrams so that non-engineers and engineers alike can learn about the principles.

This book explains how telecommunications networks work. It uses straightforward language supported by copious block-schematic diagrams so that non-engineers and engineers alike can learn about the principles of fixed and mobile telecommunications networks carrying voice and data. The book covers all aspects of today's networks, including how they are planned, formed and operated, plus next generation networks and how they will be implemented.

We all enjoy the benefits of the 'information age' but we may not be aware of the range of technologies and infrastructure that underpins the Internet and the services that it supports. There are many companies involved in the business of providing and operating such resources. This book attempts to explain the complex interplay between the companies, how their businesses operate, and how they seek to make a profit.

Fractional control techniques provide an effective way to control dynamic behaviours, using fractional differential equations. This can include the control of fractional plants, the control of a plant using a fractional controller, or the control of a plant so that the controlled system will have a fractional behaviour to achieve a performance that would otherwise be hard to come by.

The application areas of batteries are currently booming. The recent generation of devices combines a high energy density with a reasonable cost and life expectancy, making them suitable not only for cars but also electric bikes, scooters, forklifts, gardening and household tools, storage batteries as well as airborne applications such as drones, helicopters, and small airplanes.

Wind power is a pillar of low emission energy systems. Designing more efficient wind turbines and farms, and increasing reliability and flexibility, is an area of intense research and development. In order to overcome the intermittent character of wind power, both the individual turbines and the wind farm as a whole must be considered.

Written by two leading experts in the field, this exceptional book introduces the reader to the principles, theory and applications of physical layer wireless/mobile communications. In the area of wireless, the antennas, propagation and the radio channel used are inter-related; this book offers an explanation of that relationship, which is fundamental to the development of systems with high spectral efficiency.

In order to optimise the yield of wind power from existing and future wind plants, the entire breadth of the system of a plant, from the wind field to the turbine components, needs to be modelled in the design process. The modelling and simulation approaches used in each subsystem as well as the system-wide solution methods to optimize across subsystem boundaries are described in this reference. Chapters are written by technical experts in each field, describing the current state of the art in modelling and simulation for wind plant design. This comprehensive, two-volume research reference will provide long-lasting insight into the methods that will need to be developed for the technology to advance into its next generation.

In order to optimise the yield of wind power from existing and future wind plants, the entire breadth of the system of a plant, from the wind field to the turbine components, needs to be modelled in the design process. The modelling and simulation approaches used in each subsystem as well as the system-wide solution methods to optimize across subsystem boundaries are described in this reference. Chapters are written by technical experts in each field, describing the current state of the art in modelling and simulation for wind plant design. This comprehensive, two-volume research reference will provide long-lasting insight into the methods that will need to be developed for the technology to advance into its next generation.

Wind Power Modelling: Power plants and grid integration is the third book in a comprehensive three-volume set on wind farm power modelling; the key to efficient wind plant design and wind power growth. The set covers every aspect - from wind flow over turbine component design to grid integration. With chapters from eminent international experts, the set is written for researchers in academia and industry involved with all facets of wind power modelling. Covering generation, storage technologies and grid models, this volume will be of particular interest to practitioners in the utilities sector.

There is a growing interest in the development and deployment of surveillance systems in public and private locations. Conventional approaches rely on the installation of wide area CCTV (Closed Circuit Television), but the explosion in the numbers of cameras that have to be monitored, the increasing costs of providing monitoring personnel and the limitations that humans have to maintain sustained levels of concentration severely limit the effectiveness of these systems. Advances in information and communication technologies, such as computer vision for face recognition and human behaviour analysis, digital annotation and storage of video, transmission of video/audio streams over wired and wireless networks, can potentially provide significant improvements in this field.

Continuous advances in wearables, sensors and smart Wireless Body Area Network technologies have precipitated the development of new applications for on-, in- and body-to-body wearable communications for healthcare and sport monitoring. Progress in this cross-disciplinary field is further influenced by developments in radio communication, protocols, synchronization aspects, energy harvesting and storage solutions, and efficient processing techniques for smart antennas.

The interplay of privacy, security and user-determination is an important consideration in the roll-out of biometric technologies. It brings into play requirements such as privacy of biometric data in systems, communication and databases, soft biometric profiling, biometric recognition of persons across distributed systems and in nomadic scenarios, and the convergence between user convenience, usability and authentication reliability.

Designed for ICT professionals involved in the planning, design, development, testing and operation of network services, this book is ideal for self-teaching. It will help readers evaluate a network situation and identify the most important aspects to be monitored and analysed. The author provides a detailed step by step methodological approach to network design from the analysis of the initial network requirements to architecture design, modelling, simulation and evaluation, with a special focus on statistical and queuing models. The chapters are structured as a series of independent modules that can be combined for designing university courses. Practice exercises are given for selected chapters, and case studies will take the reader through the whole network design process.

Integral Equations for Real-Life Multiscale Electromagnetic Problems brings together and explains the main available approaches for the numerical solution of surface integral equations that can be used to analyse real-world multi-scale electromagnetic problems. In computational electromagnetics, formulations based on surface integral equations are currently the most commonly-used option for the analysis of electrically large and complex structures, but it is essential to have available state-of-the-art techniques to solve them in an efficient and accurate way.

This text/reference is a detailed look at the development and use of integral equation methods for electromagnetic analysis, specifically for antennas and radar scattering. Developers and practitioners will appreciate the broad-based approach to understanding and utilizing integral equation methods and the unique coverage of historical developments that led to the current state-of-the-art. In contrast to existing books, Integral Equation Methods for Electromagnetics lays the groundwork in the initial chapters so students and basic users can solve simple problems and work their way up to the most advanced and current solutions.

This book gives an exposition of recently developed approximate dynamic programming (ADP) techniques for decision and control in human engineered systems. ADP is a reinforcement machine learning technique that is motivated by learning mechanisms in biological and animal systems. It is connected from a theoretical point of view with both adaptive control and optimal control methods. The book shows how ADP can be used to design a family of adaptive optimal control algorithms that converge in real-time to optimal control solutions by measuring data along the system trajectories. Generally, in the current literature adaptive controllers and optimal controllers are two distinct methods for the design of automatic control systems. Traditional adaptive controllers learn online in real time how to control systems, but do not yield optimal performance. On the other hand, traditional optimal controllers must be designed offline using full knowledge of the systems dynamics. It is also shown how to use ADP methods to solve multi-player differential games online. Differential games have been shown to be important in H-infinity robust control for disturbance rejection, and in coordinating activities among multiple agents in networked teams. The focus of this book is on continuous-time systems, whose dynamical models can be derived directly from physical principles based on Hamiltonian or Lagrangian dynamics.