Bücher der Reihe SpringerBriefs in Electrical and Computer Engineering

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 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.

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 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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 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.