Low-power sensors and their applications in various fields ranging from military to civilian lives have made tremendous progress in the recent years. Low-power and extended battery life are the key focuses for long term, reliable and easy operation of these sensors. Sensors and Low Power Signal Processing provides a general overview of a sensor's working principle and a discussion of the emerging sensor technologies including chemical, electro-chemical and MEMS based sensors. Also included is a discussion on design challenges associated with low-power analog circuits and the schemes to overcome them. Finally, a short discussion of some of the simple wireless telemetry schemes best suited for low-power sensor applications and sensor packaging issues is discussed. Applications and sensor prototypes included are environmental monitoring, health care monitoring and issues related to the development of sensor prototypes and associated electronics to achieve high signal-to-noise ratio will also be presented.

From Government to E-Governance: Public Administration in the Digital Age will aim to provide relevant theoretical frameworks, past experiences, and the latest empirical research findings in the area of public administration systems that existed in earlier civilizations, as well as e-governance-introduced modern times. The target audience of this book will be composed of academics, students, civil servants, researchers, and policy advisors teaching and studying public administration and public policy, thinking to bring administrative reforms and working in government.

Low-power sensors and their applications in various fields ranging from military to civilian lives have made tremendous progress in the recent years. Low-power and extended battery life are the key focuses for long term, reliable and easy operation of these sensors. Sensors and Low Power Signal Processing provides a general overview of a sensor's working principle and a discussion of the emerging sensor technologies including chemical, electro-chemical and MEMS based sensors. Also included is a discussion on design challenges associated with low-power analog circuits and the schemes to overcome them. Finally, a short discussion of some of the simple wireless telemetry schemes best suited for low-power sensor applications and sensor packaging issues is discussed. Applications and sensor prototypes included are environmental monitoring, health care monitoring and issues related to the development of sensor prototypes and associated electronics to achieve high signal-to-noise ratio will also be presented.

Thin film cadmium telluride absorbers with cadmium sulphide hetero-junction partner are promising candidates for high efficiency low cost solutions of solar energy harvesting devices. These devices have band gaps well-suited for effective absorption of sunlight. Most importantly, the materials used in these devices can be deposited in a variety of industry-friendly ways, so that the cost associated with manufacturing is generally lower than other available technologies. Although poly-crystalline CdS has been found to be the best suited heterojunction partner for CdTe solar cell, the conventional polycrystalline CdS/CdTe cell has few issues that limit device performance. In order to overcome these problems, this study proposes the introduction of poly-CdS to amorphous oxygenated CdS (a-CdS: O) as window layer. The a-CdS: O window material has higher optical band gap (2.5-3.1 eV), better lattice match with CdTe absorber materials and reduced inter-diffusion tendency of CdS and CdTe layers. This book systematically demonstrates the conversion process of poly CdS to a-CdS: O and develops a strategy for the fabrication of suitable a-CdS: O layer to be applied in CdTe solar ce

Feed shortage is an acute problem for livestock production in developing countries. Presently ruminant animals are reared by feeding only rice straw which is very poor in quality. Feeding value of rice straw can be improved by supplementation of aquatic plants of which water hyacinth (WH- Eichhornia crassipes) ranks first. WH contains as much as protein and minerals than many conventional forages. This plant has high resistivity with a high production rate and requires no production cost. But WH is very high in water content, which makes the plant low in nutrient density. This problem can be over come by removing some moisture by partial sun drying (wilted form) and can be used as cattle feed. This book, therefore, provides a new technology for improving the low quality roughage based diet and mitigate the chronic livestock feed shortage for poor farmer who cannot rear large ruminant only for feed cost. Use of WH in cattle diet with rice straw would help to solve feed crisis, improve animal health and gradually increase the farmer's income. By this process the animal protein (meat and milk) will increase and alleviate the deficit protein demand for human being.

The context for this book is to present a proficient channel estimation technique for performance improvement and complexity reduction of multiple antenna system. Matrix factorization is applied on LS estimation to reduce a full rank matrix into a simpler form in order to eliminate matrix inversion. Results indicate a significant improvement in SNR compared with LS estimation. The complexity comparison is performed in terms of mathematical operations, which shows that the approach outperforms LS estimation at a lower complexity and represents a good solution for channel estimation technique. The book also provides design and implementation of a multiple antenna system on FPGA that provides reconfigurability, resource utilization and less power consumption. The encoder design is straight forward; however, the decoder design is little tricky as it requires resource optimization. The hardware, presented in this book, utilizes the resources by adopting the technique of parallelism. The system is developed based on modular design which simplifies system design, eases hardware update and facilitates testing the various modules in an independent manner.