This volume gathers the latest advances, innovations, and applications in the field of structural health monitoring (SHM) and more broadly in the fields of smart materials and intelligent systems. The volume covers highly diverse topics, including signal processing, smart sensors, autonomous systems, remote sensing and support, UAV platforms for SHM, Internet of Things, Industry 4.0, and SHM for civil structures and infrastructures. The contributions, which are published after a rigorous international peer-review process, highlight numerous exciting ideas that will spur novel research directions and foster multidisciplinary collaboration among different specialists. The contents of this volume reflect the outcomes of the activities of EWSHM (European Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring) in 2020.

This book provides an accessible and comprehensive tutorial on the key enabling technologies for 5G and beyond, covering both the fundamentals and the state-of-the-art 5G standards. The book begins with a historical overview of the evolution of cellular technologies and addresses the questions on why 5G and what is 5G. Following this, six tutorial chapters describe the fundamental technology components for 5G and beyond. These include modern advancements in channel coding, multiple access, massive multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO), network densification, unmanned aerial vehicle enabled cellular networks, and 6G wireless systems. The second part of this book consists of five chapters that introduce the basics of 5G New Radio (NR) standards developed by 3GPP. These include 5G architecture, protocols, and physical layer aspects. The third part of this book provides an overview of the key 5G NR evolution directions. These directions include ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC) enhancements, operation in unlicensed spectrum, positioning, integrated access and backhaul, air-to-ground communication, and non-terrestrial networks with satellite communication.

Solar Energy Advancements in Agriculture and Food Production Systems aims to assist society and agricultural communities in different regions and scales to improve their productivity and sustainability. Solar energy, with its rapidly growing technologies and nascent market, has shown promise for integration into a variety of agricultural activities, providing an alternative, sustainable solution to current practices. To meet the future demands of modern sustainable agriculture, this book addresses the major existing problems by providing innovative, effective, and sustainable solutions using environment-friendly, advanced, energy-efficient, and cost-optimized solar energy technologies. This comprehensive book is intended to serve as a practical guide for scientists, engineers, policymakers, and stakeholders involved in agriculture and related primary industries, as well as sustainable energy development, and climate change mitigation projects. By including globally implemented solar-based agriculture projects in each chapter and highlighting the key associated challenges and benefits, it aims to bridge the knowledge gap between the market/real-world applications and research in the field.

This book gathers papers addressing state-of-the-art research in all areas of information and communication technologies and their applications in intelligent computing, cloud storage, data mining and software analysis. It presents the outcomes of the Fifth International Conference on Information and Communication Technology for Intelligent Systems (ICTIS 2021), held in Ahmedabad, India. The book is divided into two volumes. It discusses the fundamentals of various data analysis techniques and algorithms, making it a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners alike.

The field of electromagnetic sensitivity is the new epidemic of the 21st century, and can cause disease of the automatic nerve system in any part of the body. This is as a result of chemical sensitivity, in which over 80,000 chemicals are involved, resulting in innumerable combinations. A cursory understanding of the combinations can help clinicians partially understand the associated problems and thus help in the diagnosis and treatment of electromagnetic sensitivities. But a basic understanding of environmentally induced illness and healing must first be understood by the clinicians before diseases occur such as cardiac arrhythmia, muscle spasms, and nerve pain. Key Features: Describes how an understanding of the vast combinations of electrical and chemical sensitivities will help in the diagnosis and treatment of electromagnetic sensitivities Reveals the complexity and multi-faceted presentation often seen in chemical sensitivity and chronic degenerative disease cases Provides information backed up by rigorous scientific data including hundreds of tables and figures as online resources Features a Dedication to Robert Becker, MD, an orthopedic surgeon who was one of the first clinicians to recognize the significance of EMF in medicine and surgery, and also to his assistant Andrew Marino, PhD, who helped develop the basic science of orthopedic electromagnet healing

This book provides comprehensive coverage of various Cryptography topics, while highlighting the most recent trends such as quantum, blockchain, lightweight, Chaotic and DNA cryptography. Moreover, this book covers cryptography primitives and its usage and applications and focuses on the fundamental principles of modern cryptography such as Stream Ciphers, block ciphers, public key algorithms and digital signatures. Readers will gain a solid foundation in cryptography and security. This book presents the fundamental mathematical concepts of cryptography. Moreover, this book presents hiding data techniques such as steganography and watermarking. The author also provides a comparative study of the different cryptographic methods, which can be used to solve security problems.

The chapters in this open access book arise out of the EU Cost Action project Cryptacus, the objective of which was to improve and adapt existent cryptanalysis methodologies and tools to the ubiquitous computing framework. The cryptanalysis implemented lies along four axes: cryptographic models, cryptanalysis of building blocks, hardware and software security engineering, and security assessment of real-world systems. The authors are top-class researchers in security and cryptography, and the contributions are of value to researchers and practitioners in these domains. This book is open access under a CC BY license.

Comprehensive but digestible and affordable guide to the complexities of English and Welsh Building Regulations Has become the go to for a variety of professionals and students in Construction, Architecture and Built Environment fields who need a reference to UK building regs Provides easy to read and ready reference guidance on the Regulations without having to wade through the Regs themselves Packed with useful features, notes and flags to guide the reader on important points and suggestions

This book discusses the optimal design and operation of multi-carrier energy systems, providing a comprehensive review of existing systems as well as proposing new models. Chapters cover the theoretical background and application examples of interconnecting energy technologies such as combined heat and power plants, natural gas-fired power plants, power to gas technology, hydropower plants, and water desalination systems, taking into account the operational and technical constraints of each interconnecting element and the network constraint of each energy system. This book will be a valuable reference for power network and mechanical system professionals and engineers, electrical power engineering researchers and developers, and professionals from affiliated power system planning communities. Provides insight on the design and operation of multi-carrier energy systems; Covers both theoretical aspects and technical applications; Includes case studies to help apply concepts to real engineering situations.

State estimation is a key function for real-time operation and control of electrical power systems since its role is to provide a complete, coherent, and reliable network real-time model used to set up other real-time operation and control functions. In recent years it has extended its applications to monitoring active distribution networks with distributed energy resources. The inputs of a conventional state estimator are a redundant collection of real-time measurement, load and production forecasts and a mathematical model that relates these measurements to the complex nodal voltages, which are taken as the state variables of the system. The goal of state estimation is to adjust models so that they are closer to observed values and deliver better forecasts. In power systems, this is key to maintaining power quality and operating generation and storage units well. This book, written by international authors from industry and universities, systematically addresses state estimation in power distribution systems. Chapters convey techniques for distribution system state estimation, such as classical methods, three-phase network modelling, power flow calculation, fast decoupled approaches and their new application via complex per unit normalization, the Bayesian method, and multiarea state estimation. Also, synchronized and non-synchronized measurements with different sample rates, real-time monitoring, and practical experiences of distribution state estimation are covered. Researchers involved with electrical power and electrical distribution systems, professionals working in utilities, advanced students and PhD students will find this work essential reading.

This volume presents papers from International Meeting on Energy Storage Devices (IMSED 2018). It covers the recent research in energy storage devices, specifically for Li-ion battery and supercapacitors, covering their synthesis, characterization of storage materials and associated phenomenon at electrode/electrolyte interfaces, as well as addressing the challenges associated with their disposal, cost, life cycle and usage. This volume will be of interest to researchers and engineers across a variety of fields.

This book is focused on the development of rigorous, yet practical, methods for the design of advanced process control systems to improve process operational safety and cybersecurity for a wide range of nonlinear process systems. Process Operational Safety and Cybersecurity develops designs for novel model predictive control systems accounting for operational safety considerations, presents theoretical analysis on recursive feasibility and simultaneous closed-loop stability and safety, and discusses practical considerations including data-driven modeling of nonlinear processes, characterization of closed-loop stability regions and computational efficiency. The text then shifts focus to the design of integrated detection and model predictive control systems which improve process cybersecurity by efficiently detecting and mitigating the impact of intelligent cyber-attacks. The book explores several key areas relating to operational safety and cybersecurity including: machine-learning-based modeling of nonlinear dynamical systems for model predictive control; a framework for detection and resilient control of sensor cyber-attacks for nonlinear systems; insight into theoretical and practical issues associated with the design of control systems for process operational safety and cybersecurity; and a number of numerical simulations of chemical process examples and Aspen simulations of large-scale chemical process networks of industrial relevance. A basic knowledge of nonlinear system analysis, Lyapunov stability techniques, dynamic optimization, and machine-learning techniques will help readers to understand the methodologies proposed. The book is a valuable resource for academic researchers and graduate students pursuing research in this area as well as for process control engineers. Advances in Industrial Control reports and encourages the transfer of technology in control engineering. The rapid development of control technology has an impact on all areas of the control discipline. The series offers an opportunity for researchers to present an extended exposition of new work in all aspects of industrial control.

This book is the first volume of a monograph series published by the Socio-Economic History Society, Japan. The purpose of the series is to make works by Japanese scholars accessible to a wider readership and to increase the knowledge of scholars in this field, particularly in relation to Asia. This volume includes four chapters on energy and the environment of Japan, China and Britain and four short book reviews on recent academic works published in Japanese and English. The four chapters cover the following topics: the relationship between deforestation and the development of the silk reeling industry in a district of Nagano Prefecture (central Japan) from the 1870s to the 1900s and the subsequent shift from firewood to coal; the importance of timber supplies for the development of industry as illustrated by a case study on the supply of timber for use as rail sleepers in the Japanese national railway network during the prewar period; a methodological survey of the history of ecology and the environment in China; and an analysis of the British Smoke Nuisance Abatement Act of 1821 as a measure that incorporated the interests of politicians, landlords and industrialists.

This book presents select proceedings of Electric Power and Renewable Energy Conference 2020 (EPREC 2020). This book provides rigorous discussions, case studies, and recent developments in the emerging areas of the power system, especially, renewable energy conversion systems, distributed generations, microgrid, smart grid, HVDC & FACTS, power system protection, etc. The readers would be benefited in terms of enhancing their knowledge and skills in the domain areas. The book will be a valuable reference for beginners, researchers, and professionals interested in developments in the power system.

This book provides the tools to enhance the precision, automation and intelligence of modern CNC machining systems. Based on a detailed description of the technical foundations of the machining monitoring system, it develops the general idea of design and implementation of smart machining monitoring systems, focusing on the tool condition monitoring system. The book is structured in two parts. Part I discusses the fundamentals of machining systems, including modeling of machining processes, mathematical basics of condition monitoring and the framework of TCM from a machine learning perspective. Part II is then focused on the applications of these theories. It explains sensory signal processing and feature extraction, as well as the cyber-physical system of the smart machining system. Its utilisation of numerous illustrations and diagrams explain the ideas presented in a clear way, making this book a valuable reference for researchers, graduate students and engineers alike.

This book discusses the design of textile production within the framework Industry 4.0. Relevant research topics in the textile industry are identified and solutions are conceptualized, developed and implemented. This is followed by an evaluation of the solutions in which, among other things, the profitability is considered. Questions about the transfer of knowledge into the company complete the work. Industry 4.0 in Textile Production provides a rich investigation into and survey of textile production The informative cases studies, clear perspective, and detailed analysis make this book of great use to engineers, researchers and postgraduate students interested in the textile industry.

This handbook presents state-of-the-art research in reinforcement learning, focusing on its applications in the control and game theory of dynamic systems and future directions for related research and technology. The contributions gathered in this book deal with challenges faced when using learning and adaptation methods to solve academic and industrial problems, such as optimization in dynamic environments with single and multiple agents, convergence and performance analysis, and online implementation. They explore means by which these difficulties can be solved, and cover a wide range of related topics including: deep learning; artificial intelligence; applications of game theory; mixed modality learning; and multi-agent reinforcement learning. Practicing engineers and scholars in the field of machine learning, game theory, and autonomous control will find the Handbook of Reinforcement Learning and Control to be thought-provoking, instructive and informative.

Swarm system, also known as multi-agent system, refers to a system composed of multiple subsystems (agents) with certain communication, calculation, decision-making, and action capabilities through local information interaction, such as a group of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), satellites, etc. Formation tracking control of swarm systems is an important technical support and approach for the emergence of swarm intelligence at motion control level. By applying formation tracking control, swarm system agents can adjust their relations in the state or output space through neighboring information interaction, and then the swarm system can achieve favorable space-time conditions for many cooperative tasks such as source seeking, target enclosing, and surveillance. Thus, complex missions can be performed efficiently or cost-effectively. In cross-domain collaborative applications, including air-ground coordination and air-sea coordination, swarm systems are usually composed of several heterogeneous agents, and swarm intelligence can be enhanced by complementary functions of different agents. How to achieve time-varying formation tracking for heterogeneous swarm systems is crucial for cross-domain coordination, which has important theoretical value and practical significance. This important book presents a systematic theoretical approach and control framework on the time-varying formation tracking for high-order heterogeneous swarm systems. Distributed controller design and stability analysis of closed-loop systems for several specific formation tracking problems are provided. Furthermore, the proposed control approaches are applied to practical cooperative experiment platforms composed of UAVs and UGVs, and several formation tracking experiments are carried out to further verify the effectiveness of the theories.

This book focuses on crystalline silicon solar cell science and technology. It is written from the perspective of an experimentalist with extensive hands-on experience in modeling, fabrication, and characterization. A practical approach to solar cell fabrication is presented in terms of its three components: materials, electrical, and optical. The materials section describes wafer processing methods including saw damage removal, texturing, diffusion, and surface passivation. The electrical section focuses on formation of ohmic contacts on n and p-doped surfaces. The optical section illustrates light interaction with textured silicon surfaces in terms of geometrical, diffractive and physical optics, transmission, and surface photovoltage (SPV) spectroscopy. A final chapter analyzes performance of solar cells, fabricated with a wide range of process parameters. A brief economic analysis on the merits of crystalline silicon-based photovoltaic technology as a cottage industry is also included. This professional reference will be an important resource for practicing engineers and technicians working with solar cell and PV manufacturing and renewable energy technologies, as well as upper-level engineering and material science students. Presents a practical approach to solar cell fabrication, and characterization; Offers modular methodology with detailed equipment and process parameters supported by experimental results; Includes processing diagrams and tables for 16% efficient solar cell fabrication.

In view of the increased consumption of energy due to the proliferation of electronic devices, this book addresses the trends, similarities, differences and advances in fuel cells of both chemical and biological composition. Fundamentals of microbial fuel cells are described, accompanied by details surrounding their uses and limitations. Chapters on electricigens, microbial group investigations and performance, Rumen Fluid microbes and state-of-the-art advances in microbial fuel cell technology are discussed. The book elaborates upon analytical techniques used for biofilm characterization. It also includes chapters on MFC models that include plant-based MFCs, Algal/Fungi MFCs, MDCs and MFCs using animal waste. A critical review on the performance of MFC technology in field trials is offered in an exclusively dedicated section. By addressing one of the most promising sources for clean and renewable energy, this book fills a pressing need to understand a possible solution for meeting the energy demands in our highly advanced technical world.

This book focuses on the design, fabrication and applications of carbon-based materials for lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries. It provides insights into the localized electrochemical transition of the "solid-solid" reaction instead of the "sulfur-polysulfides-lithium sulfides" reaction through the desolvation effect in subnanometer pores; demonstrates that the dissolution/diffusion of polysulfide anions in electrolyte can be greatly reduced by the strong binding of sulfur to the oxygen-containing groups on reduced graphene oxide; manifests that graphene foam can be used as a 3D current collector for high sulfur loading and high sulfur content cathodes; and presents the design of a unique sandwich structure with pure sulfur between two graphene membranes as a very simple but effective approach to the fabrication of Li-S batteries with ultrafast charge/discharge rates and long service lives. The book offers an invaluable resource for researchers, scientists, and engineers in the field of energy storage, providing essential insights, useful methods, and practical ideas that can be considered for the industrial production and future application of Li-S batteries.

This book provides an analysis of the role of fog computing, cloud computing, and Internet of Things in providing uninterrupted context-aware services as they relate to Healthcare 4.0. The book considers a three-layer patient-driven healthcare architecture for real-time data collection, processing, and transmission. It gives insight to the readers for the applicability of fog devices and gateways in Healthcare 4.0 environments for current and future applications. It also considers aspects required to manage the complexity of fog computing for Healthcare 4.0 and also develops a comprehensive taxonomy.

Solid chemisorption technology is an effective form of energy conversion for recovering low-grade thermal energy, but limited thermal conductivity and agglomeration phenomena greatly limit its performance. Over the past 20 years, researchers have explored the use of thermal conductive porous matrix to improve heat and mass transfer performance. Their efforts have yielded composite sorption technology, which is now extensively being used in refrigeration, heat pumps, energy storage, and de-NOx applications. This book reviews the latest technological advances regarding composite solid sorbents. Various development methods are introduced and compared, kinetic models are presented, and different cycles are analyzed. Given its scope, the book will benefit experts involved in developing novel materials and cycles for energy conversion, as well as engineers working to develop effective commercialized energy conversion systems based on solid sorption technology

The purpose of this book is to provide a working knowledge and an exposure to cutting edge developments in operation and control of electric energy processing systems. The book focuses on the modeling and control of interdependent communications and electric energy systems, Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS), and the interdisciplinary education component of the EPNES initiative.