Bücher der Reihe SpringerBriefs in Electrical and Computer Engineering

This book showcases recent trends in brain-computer interface development. It highlights fascinating results in areas such as language decoding, spinal cord stimulation to enable gait and to restore hand functions. The contributions are based on the 12 nominated brain-computer interface projects of the BCI Award 2022. Every year an international jury selects the most innovate BCI projects and nominates 12 projects before selecting the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners. In the book, each project is described in detail by the team of scientists behind it, and the editors provide a concluding discussion of the highlights and overall progress in the field.

This SpringerBrief presents research in the application of Stochastic Petri Nets (SPN) to the performance evaluation of wireless networks under bursty traffic. It covers typical Quality-of-Service performance metrics such as mean throughput, average delay and packet dropping probability. Along with an introduction of SPN basics, the authors introduce the key motivation and challenges of using SPN to analyze the resource sharing performance in wireless networks. The authors explain two powerful modeling techniques that treat the well-known state space explosion problem: model decomposition and iteration, and model aggregation using stochastic high-level petri nets. The first technique assists in performance analysis of opportunistic scheduling, Device-to-Device communications with full frequency reuse and partial frequency reuse. The second technique is used to formulate a wireless channel mode for cross-layer performance analysis in OFDM system. Stochastic Petri Nets for Wireless Networks reveals useful insights for the design of radio resource management algorithms and a new line of thinking for the performance evaluation of future wireless networks. This material is valuable as a reference for researchers and professionals working in wireless networks and for advanced-level students studying wireless technologies in electrical engineering or computer science.

This SpringerBrief presents novel methods of approaching challenging problems in the reconstruction of accurate 3D models and serves as an introduction for further 3D reconstruction methods. It develops a 3D reconstruction system that produces accurate results by cascading multiple novel loop detection, sifting, and optimization methods.The authors offer a fast point cloud registration method that utilizes optimized randomness in random sample consensus for surface loop detection. The text also proposes two methods  for surface-loop sifting. One is supported by a sparse-feature-based optimization graph. This graph is more robust to different scan patterns than earlier methods and can cope with tracking failure and recovery. The other is an offline algorithm that can sift loop detections based on their impact on loop optimization results and which is enabled by a dense map posterior metric for 3D reconstruction and mapping performance evaluation works without any costly ground-truth data.The methods presented in Towards Optimal Point Cloud Processing for 3D Reconstruction will be of assistance to researchers developing 3D modelling methods and to workers in the wide variety of fields that exploit such technology including metrology, geological animation and mass customization in smart manufacturing.

This brief presents an alternative viewpoint on processing technology for wireless communications based on recent research advances. As a lever in emerging processing technology, the structure perspective addresses the complexity and uncertainty issues found in current wireless applications. Likewise, this brief aims at providing a new prospective to the development of communication technology and information science, while stimulating new theories and technologies for wireless systems with ever-increasing complexity. Readers of this brief may range from graduate students to researchers in related fields.

This brief presents four practical methods to effectively explore causal relationships, which are often used for explanation, prediction and decision making in medicine, epidemiology, biology, economics, physics and social sciences. The first two methods apply conditional independence tests for causal discovery. The last two methods employ association rule mining for efficient causal hypothesis generation, and a partial association test and retrospective cohort study for validating the hypotheses. All four methods are innovative and effective in identifying potential causal relationships around a given target, and each has its own strength and weakness. For each method, a software tool is provided along with examples demonstrating its use. Practical Approaches to Causal Relationship Exploration is designed for researchers and practitioners working in the areas of artificial intelligence, machine learning, data mining, and biomedical research. The material also benefits advanced students interested in causal relationship discovery.

This SpringerBrief presents intelligent spectrum sharing technologies for future wireless communication systems. It explains the widely used opportunistic spectrum access and TV white space sharing, which has been approved by the FCC. Four new technologies to significantly increase the efficiency of spectrum sharing are also introduced. The four technologies presented are Dynamic Spectrum Co-Access, Incentivized Cooperative Spectrum Sharing, On-Demand Spectrum Sharing and Licensed Shared Spectrum Access. These technologies shed light on future wireless communication systems and pave the way for innovative spectrum sharing with increased spectrum utilization. Increased utilization will allow networks to meet the demand for radio spectrum and promote the growth of wireless industry and national economy. Spectrum Sharing is a valuable resource for researchers and professionals working in wireless communications. Advanced-level students in electrical engineering and computer science will also find this content helpful as a study guide.

This SpringerBrief investigates the special challenges of broadcast design in cognitive radio (CR) ad hoc networks. It introduces two broadcast protocols in CR ad hoc networks: a quality-of-service based broadcast protocol under blind information and a fully-distributed broadcast protocol with collision avoidance. A novel unified analytical model is also presented to analyze the performance of the broadcast protocols. This is the first book dedicated to the unique broadcast design challenges in CR ad hoc networks. The authors also discuss the recent research on the performance analysis of broadcast protocols.Broadcast Design In Cognitive Radio Ad Hoc Networks is designed for professionals and researchers working in the wireless networks industry. Advanced-level students in electrical engineering and computer science, especially those focused on wireless networks will find this information very valuable.

ICT Development for Social and Rural Connectedness provides an introduction to the concept of 'connectedness', and explores how this socio-psychological term has evolved during the age of the Internet. The book surveys the principles of ICT for development (ICTD), and closely examines how ICT has played a pivotal role in the rural community development of various countries. To highlight the continued benefits of ICT in these regions, the book presents an in-depth case study that analyzes the connectedness within the rural internet centers of Malaysia. The book is intended primarily for researchers and practitioners as a reference guide to ICTD in rural environments.

Recommender systems are one of the recent inventions to deal with the ever-growing information overload in relation to the selection of goods and services in a global economy. Collaborative Filtering (CF) is one of the most popular techniques in recommender systems. The CF recommends items to a target user based on the preferences of a set of similar users known as the neighbors, generated from a database made up of the preferences of past users. In the absence of these ratings, trust between the users could be used to choose the neighbor for recommendation making. Better recommendations can be achieved using an inferred trust network which mimics the real world "friend of a friend" recommendations. To extend the boundaries of the neighbor, an effective trust inference technique is required. This book proposes a trust interference technique called Directed Series Parallel Graph (DSPG) that has empirically outperformed other popular trust inference algorithms, such as TidalTrust and MoleTrust. For times when reliable explicit trust data is not available, this book outlines a new method called SimTrust for developing trust networks based on a user's interest similarity. To identify the interest similarity, a user's personalized tagging information is used. However, particular emphasis is given in what resources the user chooses to tag, rather than the text of the tag applied. The commonalities of the resources being tagged by the users can be used to form the neighbors used in the automated recommender system. Through a series of case studies and empirical results, this book highlights the effectiveness of this tag-similarity based method over the traditional collaborative filtering approach, which typically uses rating data. Trust for Intelligent Recommendation is intended for practitioners as a reference guide for developing improved, trust-based recommender systems. Researchers in a related field will also find this book valuable.

Designing a New Class of Distributed Systems closely examines the Distributed Intelligent Managed Element (DIME) Computing Model, a new model for distributed systems, and provides a guide to implementing Distributed Managed Workflows with High Reliability, Availability, Performance and Security. The book also explores the viability of self-optimizing, self-monitoring autonomous DIME-based computing systems. Designing a New Class of Distributed Systems is designed for practitioners as a reference guide for innovative distributed systems design. Researchers working in a related field will also find this book valuable.

This book introduces Radio Frequency Propagation to a broad audience.  The author blends theory and practice to bring readers up-to-date in key concepts, underlying principles and practical applications of wireless communications.  The presentation is designed to be easily accessible, minimizing mathematics and maximizing visuals.

This brief examines issues of spectrum allocation for the limited resources of radio spectrum. It uses a game-theoretic perspective, in which the nodes in the wireless network are rational and always pursue their own objectives. It provides a systematic study of the approaches that can guarantee the system's convergence at an equilibrium state, in which the system performance is optimal or sub-optimal. The author provides a short tutorial on game theory, explains game-theoretic channel allocation in clique and in multi-hop wireless networks and explores challenges in designing game-theoretic mechanisms for dynamic channel redistribution. Since designing a completely secure mechanism is extremely expensive or impossible in most of distributed autonomous systems, it is more beneficial to study misbehavior of the nodes and develop light-weighted game-theoretic channel allocation mechanisms. With a mix of theoretical and hands-on information, the brief traces the concepts of game theory, the current state of spectrum allocation in wireless networks and future competition for resources. Thorough yet accessible, the content is ideal for researchers and practitioners working on spectrum redistribution. It is also a helpful resource for researchers and advanced-level students interested in game theory and wireless communications.

This book describes in detail modern technologies for printed electronics, explaining how nanotechnology and modern printing technology are merging to revolutionize electronics fabrication of thin, lightweight, large and inexpensive products. Readers will benefit from the explanations of materials, devices and circuits used to design and implement the latest applications of printed electronics, such as thin flexible OLED displays, organic solar cells, OLED lighting, smart wallpaper, sensors, logic, memory and more.

This book presents the theory, analysis, and design of ultra-wideband (UWB) radar and sensor systems (in short, UWB systems) and their components. UWB systems find numerous applications in the military, security, civilian, commercial and medicine fields. This book addresses five main topics of UWB systems: System Analysis, Transmitter Design, Receiver Design, Antenna Design and System Integration and Test. The developments of a practical UWB system and its components using microwave integrated circuits, as well as various measurements, are included in detail to demonstrate the theory, analysis and design technique. Essentially, this book will enable the reader to design their own UWB systems and components.In the System Analysis chapter, the UWB principle of operation as well as the power budget analysis and range resolution analysis are presented. In the UWB Transmitter Design chapter, the design, fabrication and measurement of impulse and monocycle pulse generators are covered. The UWB Receiver Design chapter addresses the design and measurement of the strobe pulse generator, sampling mixer, low-noise amplifier and synchronous sampling receiver. Next, the UWB Antenna Design chapter details the design and measurement of to two UWB antennas: the microstrip quasi-horn antenna and the UWB uniplanar antenna. The System Integration and Test chapter covers the transmission-reception test, signal processing, system integration, and evaluation of the UWB sensor. The final chapter provides a summary and conclusion of the work.

This brief proposes that the keys to internet cross-layer optimization are the development of non-standard implicit primal-dual solvers for underlying optimization problems, and design of jointly optimal network protocols as decomposition of such solvers. Relying on this novel design-space oriented approach, the author develops joint TCP congestion control and wireless-link scheduling schemes for wireless applications over Internet with centralized and distributed (multi-hop) wireless links. Different from the existing solutions, the proposed schemes can be asynchronously implemented without message passing among network nodes; thus they are readily deployed with current infrastructure. Moreover, global convergence/stability of the proposed schemes to optimal equilibrium is established using the Lyapunov method in the network fluid model. Simulation results are provided to evaluate the proposed schemes in practical networks.

This book explores the challenges and presents best strategies for designing Through-Silicon Vias (TSVs) for 3D integrated circuits. It describes a novel technique to mitigate TSV-induced noise, the GND Plug, which is superior to others adapted from 2-D planar technologies, such as a backside ground plane and traditional substrate contacts. The book also investigates, in the form of a comparative study, the impact of TSV size and granularity, spacing of C4 connectors, off-chip power delivery network, shared and dedicated TSVs, and coaxial TSVs on the quality of power delivery in 3-D ICs. The authors provide detailed best design practices for designing 3-D power delivery networks. Since TSVs occupy silicon real-estate and impact device density, this book provides four iterative algorithms to minimize the number of TSVs in a power delivery network. Unlike other existing methods, these algorithms can be applied in early design stages when only functional block- level behaviors and a floorplan are available. Finally, the authors explore the use of Carbon Nanotubes for power grid design as a futuristic alternative to Copper.

Wireless sensor network (WSN) is an ad-hoc network technology comprising even thousands of autonomic and self-organizing nodes that combine environmental sensing, data processing, and wireless networking. The applications for sensor networks range from home and industrial environments to military uses. Unlike the traditional computer networks, a WSN is application-oriented and deployed for a specific task. WSNs are data centric, which means that messages are not send to individual nodes but to geographical locations or regions based on the data content. A WSN node is typically battery powered and characterized by extremely small size and low cost. As a result, the processing power, memory, and energy resources of an individual sensor node are limited. However, the feasibility of a WSN lies on the collaboration between the nodes. A reference WSN node comprises a Micro-Controller Unit (MCU) having few Million Instructions Per Second (MIPS) processing speed, tens of kilobytes program memory, few kilobytes data memory. In addition, the node contains a short-range radio, and a set of sensors. Supply power is typically obtained with small batteries. Assuming a target lifetime of one year using AA-size batteries, the available power budget is around 1 mW. This book covers the low-power WSNs services ranging from hardware platforms and communication protocols to network deployment, and sensor data collection and actuation. The implications of resource constraints and expected performance in terms of throughput, reliability and latency are explained. As a case study, this book presents experiments with low-energy TUTWSN technology to illustrate the possibilities and limitations of WSN applications.

Social Tagging Systems are web applications in which users upload resources (e.g., bookmarks, videos, photos, etc.) and annotate it with a list of freely chosen keywords called tags. This is a grassroots approach to organize a site and help users to find the resources they are interested in. Social tagging systems are open and inherently social; features that have been proven to encourage participation. However, with the large popularity of these systems and the increasing amount of user-contributed content, information overload rapidly becomes an issue. Recommender Systems are well known applications for increasing the level of relevant content over the "e;noise"e; that continuously grows as more and more content becomes available online. In social tagging systems, however, we face new challenges. While in classic recommender systems the mode of recommendation is basically the resource, in social tagging systems there are three possible modes of recommendation: users, resources, or tags. Therefore suitable methods that properly exploit the different dimensions of social tagging systems data are needed. In this book, we survey the most recent and state-of-the-art work about a whole new generation of recommender systems built to serve social tagging systems. The book is divided into self-contained chapters covering the background material on social tagging systems and recommender systems to the more advanced techniques like the ones based on tensor factorization and graph-based models.

This brief presents research results on social cognitive radio networks, a transformational and innovative networking paradigm that promotes the nexus between social interactions and cognitive radio networks. Along with a review of the research literature, the text examines the key motivation and challenges of social cognitive radio network design. Three socially inspired distributed spectrum sharing mechanisms are introduced: adaptive channel recommendation mechanism, imitation-based social spectrum sharing mechanism, and evolutionarily stable spectrum access mechanism. The brief concludes with a discussion of future research directions which ascertains that exploiting social interactions for distributed spectrum sharing will advance the state-of-the-art of cognitive radio network design, spur a new line of thinking for future wireless networks, and enable novel wireless service and applications.

This SpringerBrief explains how to leverage mobile users' social relationships to improve the interactions of mobile devices in mobile networks. It develops a social group utility maximization (SGUM) framework that captures diverse social ties of mobile users and diverse physical coupling of mobile devices. Key topics include random access control, power control, spectrum access, and location privacy.This brief also investigates SGUM-based power control game and random access control game, for which it establishes the socially-aware Nash equilibrium (SNE). It then examines the critical SGUM-based spectrum access game, and pseudonym change game for personalized location privacy. The authors propose future work on extending the SGUM framework to negative social ties, to demonstrate relevance to security applications and span the continuum between zero-sum game (ZSG) and non-cooperative game (NCG). Social Group Utility Maximization targets researchers and professionals working on mobile networks and social networks. Advanced-level students in electrical engineering and computer science will also find this material useful for their related courses.