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 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.

Phased array antennas can be electronically steered and do not have moving parts, making them an efficient and cost-effective solution for today's complex radar and communications systems. This newly revised edition of the Artech House classic, Phased Array Antenna Handbook, offers the most up-to-date and broadest view of array antennas and systems. Professionals find complete design details that allow them to build and evaluate an array system with speed and confidence. The second edition offers a wealth of critical new material, including a detailed treatment of antenna system noise, sections on antenna pattern synthesis, cutting-edge developments in subarray technology, and in-depth information on array architecture and components.

This book provides readers with an overview of the architectures, programming frameworks, and hardware accelerators for typical cloud computing applications in data centers. The authors present the most recent and promising solutions, using hardware accelerators to provide high throughput, reduced latency and higher energy efficiency compared to current servers based on commodity processors. Readers will benefit from state-of-the-art information regarding application requirements in contemporary data centers, computational complexity of typical tasks in cloud computing, and a programming framework for the efficient utilization of the hardware accelerators.

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.

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.

Social media and new social facilities have made it necessary to develop new media design processes with different communication strategies in order to promote sustainable communication. Visual communication emphasizes messages that are transmitted through visual materials in order to effectively communicate emotions, thoughts, and concepts using symbols instead of words. Social networks present an ideal environment for utilizing this communication technique. New Media and Visual Communication in Social Networks is a pivotal scholarly publication that examines communication strategies in the context of social media and new digital media platforms and explores the effects of visual communication on social networks, visual identity, television, magazines, newspapers, and more. Highlighting a range of topics such as consumer behavior, visual identity, and digital pollution, this book is essential for researchers, practitioners, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and educators.

Digital technology plays a vital role in today's need for instant information access. The simplicity of acquiring and publishing online information presents new challenges in establishing and evaluating online credibility. Online Credibility and Digital Ethos: Evaluating Computer-Mediated Communication highlights important approaches to evaluating the credibility of digital sources and techniques used for various digital fields. This book brings together research in computer mediated communication along with the affects digital culture and online credibility.

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 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.

This book covers the state of the art in learning algorithms with an inclusion of semi-supervised methods to provide a broad scope of clustering and classification solutions for big data applications. Case studies and best practices are included along with theoretical models of learning for a comprehensive reference to the field. The book is organized into eight chapters that cover the following topics: discretization, feature extraction and selection, classification, clustering, topic modeling, graph analysis and applications. Practitioners and graduate students can use the volume as an important reference for their current and future research and faculty will find the volume useful for assignments in presenting current approaches to unsupervised and semi-supervised learning in graduate-level seminar courses. The book is based on selected, expanded papers from the Fourth International Conference on Soft Computing in Data Science (2018). Includes new advances in clustering and classification using semi-supervised and unsupervised learning; Address new challenges arising in feature extraction and selection using semi-supervised and unsupervised learning; Features applications from healthcare, engineering, and text/social media mining that exploit techniques from semi-supervised and unsupervised learning.

In the information age, telecommunications is the pillar of a strong economy. To developing countries, restructuring this industry is a necessary step toward integration into the world economy. Restructuring telecommunications, therefore, has been a pervasive issue in the economic reform programs of many countries in recent years. However, the nature of these changes has varied widely among these nations. "Unfinished Business" examines the process of reform in Mexico and contrasts it with that of the United States, Brazil, and New Zealand, examining both the economic and technological aspects of this highly complex situation.

Using interviews with key players in the policy process, Mariscal provides a detailed analysis of key elements and figures. Her multidisciplinary perspective allows for a full exploration of the international differences in telecommunications restructuring. Going beyond simply asking why privatization and deregulation policies were successfully implemented in Mexico, the work offers a comprehensive guide to the process and impact of policy choices on telecommunications development.