Deployment of cybersecurity for managing traffic efficiency and safety in smart cities

Boosting the concept of smart cities for implementing an intelligent management of traffic congestion while reducing cybersecurity concerns will not only be more efficient for reducing traffic congestion but also more resilient to cyber incidents. In this paper we proposed a framework that can act as a generalized firewall and work interactively with several critical infrastructures in a smart city to protect the respective operations from a variety of cyber threats. The objective is to develop several steps for a comprehensive traffic management framework in smart cities that facilitates the cooperation among drivers and between drivers and the traffic management authority. The transformative nature of the proposed study supports its applications to a variety of networked critical infrastructures, including electricity, gas, water, rails, and telecommunications, as they intend to respond effectively to a wide range of weather- or human-related disruptions. The contributions of this paper include: Improving the traffic management performance in urban transportation systems, assessing and mitigating the cybersecurity risk in urban traffic management, and facilitating efficient and cyber-secure traffic management in metropolitan areas; Developing and testing an interactive simulation platform for evaluating the traffic management performance under various traffic conditions; Validating and demonstrating the applications in a practical urban transportation system; Disseminating the proposed study results to a wide range of concerned audiences via user-group meetings, detailed education forums, and a close collaboration with the local traffic management authority.     

Coherent l1‐SVD method for DOA estimation of wideband signals

The l₁‐SVD is an efficient method for spatial sparsity based direction of arrival (DOA) estimation of narrowband signals. We propose a coherent strategy for extension of the l₁‐SVD method to wideband signals. In this method, focusing matrices are used for transferring different frequency bins data to the reference bin, and then the transformed data are combined. Finally the l₁‐SVD is applied for the combined data. The proposed method outperforms the non‐coherent strategy with a lower computational burden. © 2013 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Numerical and experimental study of bistable piezoelectric energy harvester

Piezoelectric energy harvesting from mechanical vibrations is a reliable technology to charge low power electronic equipment. It has been reported in the literature that low frequency broadband vibrations cannot be harvested effectively using linear piezoelectric energy harvester (PEH). In this paper a bistable nonlinear PEH with two distinct energy wells generated using repulsive magnetic interactions between a cantilever magnetic proof mass and an external magnet is considered. It has been modeled using finite element method and validated with experimental results. Experimental results verify that, for our study, distance between magnetic proof mass and external magnet of 1.32 T flux density should be less than or equal to 8.5?mm for maintaining bistability. This distance also affects to the resonance frequency of harvester. Maximum efficiency of the harvester has been noticed at 8.5mm. Further it has been shown experimentally that the bistable nonlinear piezoelectric energy harvester takes almost half of the time taken by its linear counterpart to charge a 20 mAh battery.     

Magnetic and photocatalytic properties of CoFe2O4/Ni nanocomposites

Journal of Electroceramics - In this research, hard/soft CoFe2O4/Ni magnetic nanocomposite samples with different concentrations of Ni were successfully produced by a two-step mechanical alloying...     

LMI‐based adaptive output feedback fault‐tolerant controller design for nonlinear systems

This paper presents 2‐novel linear matrix inequality (LMI)‐based adaptive output feedback fault‐tolerant control strategies for the class of nonlinear Lipschitz systems in the presence of bounded matched or mismatched disturbances and simultaneous occurrence of actuator faults, including failure, loss of effectiveness, and stuck. The constructive algorithms based on LMI with creatively using Lyapunov stability theory and without the need for an explicit information about mode of actuator faults or fault detection and isolation mechanism are developed for online tuning of adaptive and fixed output‐feedback gains to stabilize the closed‐loop control system asymptotically. The proposed controllers guarantee to compensate actuator faults effects and to attenuate disturbance effects. The resulting control methods have simpler structure, as compared with most existing recent methods and more suitable for practical systems. The merits of the proposed fault‐tolerant control scheme have been verified by the simulation on nonlinear Boeing 747 lateral motion dynamic model subjected to actuator faults.     

An Efficient Hybrid Approach to Solve Bi-objective Multi-area Dynamic Economic Emission Dispatch Problem

Abstract

Single period economic dispatch cannot handle the intertemporal constraints in multi-period environment. To cope with this issue, the extension of economic dispatch over multiple time intervals (i.e., dynamic economic dispatch) has been introduced that considers the intertemporal constraints between different time intervals. Another issue is determining the most economical generation dispatch that could supply the area demand without violating the tie-line capacity, which cannot be solved by conventional economic dispatch problems. However, this study shows that the most economic schedule of power generation cannot satisfy echo-system expectation; therefore, making a compromise between fuel cost and environmental issues, a hot-button subject in industrialized nations, seems to be crucial. To reach the goals a bi-objective multi-area dynamic economic dispatch approach, which can handle intertemporal and multi-area constraints concurrently, is proposed to assist power system operators more and more. Finally, a hybrid algorithm, namely gray wolf optimizer-particle swarm optimization is introduced to solve the proposed problem and also a set of benchmark problems. By implementing the proposed approach on two small (10-unit, three areas) and large (40-unit, four areas) scale test systems, about 3.1% and 3.3% improvement in generation cost is obtained, respectively compare to the best reported results in the literature.     

A wide range delay locked loop for low power and low jitter applications

In this paper, a design of analog delay locked loop is introduced in which new techniques are applied to eventually increase operating frequency range and reduce jitter considerably. In this design, all blocks of a delay locked loop including a voltage controlled delay line, charge pump, and loop filter are accurately designed. A new delay cell is proposed with wide delay range, in which increase of delay range results in using fewer cells, and consequently the power consumption will decrease. Current mirror techniques and feedback in the proposed charge pump also cause higher current matching and better jitter performance. This delay locked loop, which is designed with TSMC 0.18‐μm CMOS technology, has a wide frequency range from 217 to 800 MHz. It consumes maximum 3.4‐mW and minimum 2.6‐mW power dissipation in source voltage of 1.8 V, which is suitable for low power applications. It also has an appropriate lock time that is at least equal to 3 clock cycles at 217 MHz and at most 25 clock cycles at 800 MHz. Jitter performance in this delay locked loop is improved significantly: RMS jitter is 0.65 ps at 800 MHz and 2.54 ps at 217 MHz. Moreover, its maximum peak‐to‐peak jitter is equal to 5.17 ps, and its minimum peak‐to‐peak jitter is equal to 1.39 ps at 217 and 800 MHz, respectively.     

An oscillatory noise‐shaped quantizer for time‐based continuous‐time sigma‐delta modulators

In this paper, a new type of an oscillatory noise‐shaped quantizer (NSQ) for time‐based continuous‐time sigma‐delta modulators is presented. The proposed NSQ is composed of an oscillatory voltage‐to‐time converter and a polyphase sampler. Using Tustin's transformation method and through the approximation of the comparator gain, a linearized model of the NSQ is introduced. This way, a novel realization of the first‐ and second‐order NSQ is presented. Its implementation is based on fully passive continuous‐time filters without needing any amplifier or power consuming element. The ploy‐phase sampler inside the NSQ is based on the combination of a time‐to‐digital and a digital‐to‐time converter. The layout of the proposed NSQ is provided in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company 0.18 μm complementary metal‐oxide‐semiconductor 1P6M technology. The verification of the proposed NSQ is done via investigating both the system level and postlayout simulation results. Leveraging the proposed NSQ in an Lth‐order time‐based continuous‐time sigma‐delta modulator enhances the noise‐shaping order up to L + 2, confirming its superior effectiveness. This makes it possible to design high performance and wideband continuous‐time SDMs with low power consumption and relaxed design complexity.     

Compensation of voltage disturbances in distribution systems using single-phase dynamic voltage restorer

In this paper, a new topology is proposed for a single-phase dynamic voltage restorer (DVR) using direct ac/ac converter. This topology does not require dc-link energy storage elements. The proposed topology has a simple structure and can compensate several types of voltage disturbances such as voltage sags, swells, harmonics and flickers. This topology will not face any problem in long time compensation due to the fact that it provides the required energy directly through grid. The proposed topology can be easily extended to n-phase systems such as three-phase based on the same principle of the operation. In n-phase systems, the voltage sags and swells can be properly compensated regardless of the balanced or unbalanced operation. A new control method is also proposed for direct ac/ac converter in the proposed topology. The simulation and experimental results verify the effectiveness of the proposed topology and its control method in voltage restoration.     

Modeling and prioritizing demand response programs in power markets

One of the responsibilities of power market regulator is setting rules for selecting and prioritizing demand response (DR) programs. There are many different alternatives of DR programs for improving load profile characteristics and achieving customers’ satisfaction. Regulator should find the optimal solution which reflects the perspectives of each DR stakeholder. Multi Attribute Decision Making (MADM) is a proper method for handling such optimization problems. In this paper, an extended responsive load economic model is developed. The model is based on price elasticity and customer benefit function. Prioritizing of DR programs can be realized by means of Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method. Considerations of ISO/utility/customer regarding the weighting of attributes are encountered by entropy method. An Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) is used for selecting the most effective DR program. Numerical studies are conducted on the load curve of the Iranian power grid in 2007.