This book highlights the emerging field of intelligent computing and developing smart systems. It includes chapters discussing the outcome of challenging research related to distributed computing, smart machines and their security related research, and also covers next-generation communication techniques and the networking technologies that have the potential to build the future communication infrastructure. Bringing together computing, communications and other aspects of intelligent and smart computing, it contributes to developing a roadmap for future research on intelligent systems.

This book provides an insight into recent technological trends and innovations in solutions and platforms to improve mobility of visually impaired people. The authors' goal is to help to contribute to the social and societal inclusion of the visually impaired. The book's topics include, but are not limited to, obstacle detection systems, indoor and outdoor navigation, transportation sustainability systems, and hardware/devices to aid visually impaired people. The book has a strong focus on practical applications tested in a real environment. Applications include city halls, municipalities, and companies that must keep up to date with recent trends in platforms, methodologies and technologies to promote urban mobility. Also discuss are broader realms including education, health, electronics, tourism, and transportation. Contributors include a variety of researchers and practitioners around the world.

In the ever-growing world of technology, it is becoming more important to understand the developments of new electronic services and mobile applications. Innovative Mobile Platform Developments for Electronic Services Design and Delivery is a comprehensive look at all aspects of production management, delivery and consumption of e-services, self services, and mobile communication including business-to-business, business-to-consumer, government-to-business, government-to-consumer, and consumer-to-consumer e-services. This volume is perfect for the interest of professionals, academic educators, researchers, and industry consultants by providing the latest interdisciplinary research as a new platform for learning and research dissemination.

Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) offer practitioners an effective way to achieve network connectivity in difficult wiring areas and provide enhanced flexibility for moving and extending networks. Today the most critical WLAN/Wireless IP (Internet Protocol) issues involve security, mobility, and quality of service, and this practical new resource addresses these hot topics head-on. The book gives professionals a solid understanding of important standards and presents numerous networking options for their challenging projects in the field. Moreover, practitioners find guidance on deployment, insights on interworking with third generation mobile communications systems, and discussions on the market and business aspects of WLANS.

This title offers a conceptual model for examining consumer adoption, usage and impact of broadband, utilizing various construct methodologies, and thereby providing a clear window into the rational decisions of potential broadband consumers.

This monograph introduces recent developments in formation control of distributed-agent systems. Eschewing the traditional concern with the dynamic characteristics of individual agents, the book proposes a treatment that studies the formation control problem in terms of interactions among agents including factors such as sensing topology, communication and actuation topologies, and computations. Keeping pace with recent technological advancements in control, communications, sensing and computation that have begun to bring the applications of distributed-systems theory out of the industrial sphere and into that of day-to-day life, this monograph provides distributed control algorithms for a group of agents that may behave together. Unlike traditional control laws that usually require measurements with respect to a global coordinate frame and communications between a centralized operation center and agents, this book provides control laws that require only relative measurements and communications between agents without interaction with a centralized operator. Since the control algorithms presented in this book do not require any global sensing and any information exchanges with a centralized operation center, they can be realized in a fully distributed way, which significantly reduces the operation and implementation costs of a group of agents. Formation Control will give both students and researchers interested in pursuing this field a good grounding on which to base their work.

This book introduces the linkage between evolutionary computation and complex networks and the advantages of cross-fertilising ideas from both fields. Instead of introducing each field individually, the authors focus on the research that sits at the interface of both fields. The book is structured to address two questions: (1) how complex networks are used to analyze and improve the performance of evolutionary computation methods? (2) how evolutionary computation methods are used to solve problems in complex networks? The authors interweave complex networks and evolutionary computing, using evolutionary computation to discover community structure, while also using network analysis techniques to analyze the performance of evolutionary algorithms. The book is suitable for both beginners and senior researchers in the fields of evolutionary computation and complex networks.

SMS (short message service) and MMS (multimedia message service) are two of the hottest services in wireless communications today, offering customers exciting ways to communicate by sending text and multimedia messages. This comprehensive book offers wireless engineers and managers practical guidance in the planning and implementation of SMS and MMS services with interworking (the ability to successfully send a message when the origin and destination cellular phones do not use the same wireless operator). The book offers professionals various solutions to the common problem of number portability (a situation when a cellular phone has been "portedout" to another operator while keeping the same number) and provides methods for blocking spam from inbound SMS. Including numerous solved examples, this authoritative reference helps practitioners master of the key concepts they need to understand for their work in the field.

This is a professional level, introductory text on antenna principles, design, analysis, and measurements. It is especially suitable for persons who wish to improve their knowledge of antenna principles, concept design, performance analyses, and measurements. It is not a cookbook-like catalog for antenna design, nor does its understanding require a familiarity with electromagnetic theory, sophisticated mathematics, or complex computer techniques. The 3rd Edition updates and expands the original text by Lamont Blake, which was prepared at the undergraduate engineering, science, or technology level. For providing technical depth at the senior and graduate university levels, additions to the original book include a greatly expanded Chapter 7 on Antennas with Special Properties, a brand new Chapter 8 on Electronically Steered Arrays, and a revised Chapter 9 on Measurements. Also new to this edition are numerous appendices to the updated text and a CD-ROM with sample computer analyses. Reader knowledge assumes familiarity with basic college physics and mathematics. Computer computations use Mathcad(R) software, which can be read and used by persons without prior computer programming knowledge. The book is therefore suitable for entry-level as well as the more experienced professionals who desire to expand their understanding of and capabilities for antenna principles, analyses, measurements, and design.

This book provides engineers with a comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art in reflectarray antenna research and development. The authors describe, in detail, design procedures for a wide range of applications, including broadband, multi-band, multi-beam, contour-beam, beam-scanning, and conformal reflectarray antennas. They provide sufficient coverage of basic reflectarray theory to fully understand reflectarray antenna design and analysis such that the readers can pursue reflectarray research on their own. Throughout the book numerous illustrative design examples including numerical and experimental results are provided. Featuring in-depth theoretical analysis along with practical design examples, Reflectarray Antennas is an excellent text/reference for engineering graduate students, researchers, and engineers in the field of antennas. It belongs on the bookshelves of university libraries, research institutes, and industrial labs and research facilities.

With solid theoretical foundations and numerous potential applications, Blind Signal Processing (BSP) is one of the hottest emerging areas in Signal Processing. This volume unifies and extends the theories of adaptive blind signal and image processing and provides practical and efficient algorithms for blind source separation, Independent, Principal, Minor Component Analysis, and Multichannel Blind Deconvolution (MBD) and Equalization. Containing over 1400 references and mathematical expressions Adaptive Blind Signal and Image Processing delivers an unprecedented collection of useful techniques for adaptive blind signal/image separation, extraction, decomposition and filtering of multi-variable signals and data.

• Offers a broad coverage of blind signal processing techniques and algorithms both from a theoretical and practical point of view
• Presents more than 50 simple algorithms that can be easily modified to suit the reader's specific real world problems
• Provides a guide to fundamental mathematics of multi-input, multi-output and multi-sensory systems
• Includes illustrative worked examples, computer simulations, tables, detailed graphs and conceptual models within self contained chapters to assist self study
• Accompanying CD-ROM features an electronic, interactive version of the book with fully coloured figures and text. C and MATLAB user-friendly software packages are also provided

By providing a detailed introduction to BSP, as well as presenting new results and recent developments, this informative and inspiring work will appeal to researchers, postgraduate students, engineers and scientists working in biomedical engineering,
communications, electronics, computer science, optimisations, finance, geophysics and neural networks.

Today, increasing demands and expectations are being placed on GPS systems. Assisted GPS (A-GPS) has been developed to provide greatly improved capabilities, helping GPS work better and faster in almost any location. Offering a detailed look at all the technical aspects and underpinnings of A-GPS, this unique book places emphasis on practical implementation. The book reviews standard GPS design, helping professionals understand why GPS requires assistance in the first place. Readers discover how A-GPS enables the computing of a position from navigation satellites in the absence of precise time - a topic not covered in any other book. Moreover, engineers learn how to design and analyze a high sensitivity GPS receiver and determine the achievable sensitivity of a GPS receiver.

This monograph presents new theories and methods for fixed-time cooperative control of multi-agent systems. Fundamental concepts of fixed-time stability and stabilization are introduced with insightful understanding. This book presents solutions for several problems of fixed-time cooperative control using systematic design methods. The book compares fixed-time cooperative control with asymptotic cooperative control, demonstrating how the former can achieve better closed-loop performance and disturbance rejection properties. It also discusses the differences from finite-time control, and shows how fixed-time cooperative control can produce the faster rate of convergence and provide an explicit estimate of the settling time independent of initial conditions. This monograph presents multiple applications of fixed-time control schemes, including to distributed optimization of multi-agent systems, making it useful to students, researchers and engineers alike.

This book focuses on non-GNSS positioning systems and approaches. Although it addresses both theoretical and practical aspects, the primary focus is on engineering practice. This is achieved by providing in-depth studies on a number of major topics such as tracking system architecture, link budget, system design, implementation, testing, and performance evaluation. It studies four positioning application cases in detail: covert vehicle tracking, horse racing, rowing, and tracking for field sports. Its comprehensive and systematic treatment of practical issues in wireless positioning makes the book particularly suitable for readers who are interested in learning about practical wireless positioning solutions. It will also benefit researchers, engineers and graduate students in fields such as positioning and navigation, geospatial engineering and telecommunications.