A Networked Control Systems Perspective for Wide-Area Monitoring Control of Smart Power Grids

This paper presents a networked control systems (NCS) framework for wide area monitoring control of smart power grids. We consider a scenario in which wide area measurements are transmitted to controllers at remote locations. We model the effects of delays and packet dropouts due to limited communication capabilities in the grid. We also design a robust networked controller to damp wide-area oscillations based on information obtained from Wide Area Monitoring Systems (WAMS), and analyze the improvement in system stability due to networked control. With communication integration being an important feature of the smart grid, detailed consideration of the effects of communication is essential in the control design for future power systems. We believe that this work is an essential step in this direction.

Design of a Low Power 64 Point FFT Architecture for WLAN Applications

This paper presents a Radix-4(3) based FFT architecture suitable for OFDM based WLAN applications. The radix-4(3) parallel unrolled architecture presented here, uses a radix-4 butterfly unit which takes all four inputs in parallel and can selectively produce one out of the four outputs. A 64 point FFT processor based on the proposed architecture has been implemented in UMC 130nm 1P8M CMOS process with a maximum clock frequency of 100 MHz and area of 0.83mm(2). The proposed processor provides a throughput of four times the clock rate and can finish one 64 point FFT computation in 16 clock cycles. For IEEE 802.11a/g WLAN, the processor needs to be operated at a clock rate of 5 MHz with a power consumption of 2.27 mW which is 27% less than the previously reported low power implementations.

Antenna Selection with Power Adaptation in Interference-Constrained Cognitive Radios

The performance of an underlay cognitive radio (CR) system, which can transmit when the primary is on, is curtailed by tight constraints on the interference it can cause to the primary receiver. Transmit antenna selection (AS) improves the performance of underlay CR by exploiting spatial diversity but with less hardware. However, the selected antenna and its transmit power now both depend on the channel gains to the secondary and primary receivers. We develop a novel Chernoffbound based optimal AS and power adaptation (CBBOASPA) policy that minimizes an upper bound on the symbol error probability (SEP) at the secondary receiver, subject to constraints on the average transmit power and the average interference to the primary. The optimal antenna and its power are presented in an insightful closed form in terms of the channel gains. We then analyze the SEP of CBBOASPA. Extensive benchmarking shows that the SEP of CBBOASPA for both MPSK and MQAM is one to two orders of magnitude lower than several ad hoc AS policies and even optimal AS with on-off power control.

Minimum switching loss pulse width modulation for reduced power conversion loss in reactive power compensators

Advanced bus-clamping switching sequences, which employ an active vector twice in a subcycle, are used to reduce line current distortion and switching loss in a space vector modulated voltage source converter. This study evaluates minimum switching loss pulse width modulation (MSLPWM), which is a combination of such sequences, for static reactive power compensator (STATCOM) application. It is shown that MSLPWM results in a significant reduction in device loss over conventional space vector pulse width modulation. Experimental verification is presented at different power levels of up to 150 kVA.

Anomalous power law decay in solvation dynamics of DNA: a mode coupling theory analysis of ion contribution

Several time dependent fluorescence Stokes shift (TDFSS) experiments have reported a slow power law decay in the hydration dynamics of a DNA molecule. Such a power law has neither been observed in computer simulations nor in some other TDFSS experiments. Here we observe that a slow decay may originate from collective ion contribution because in experiments DNA is immersed in a buffer solution, and also from groove bound water and lastly from DNA dynamics itself. In this work we first express the solvation time correlation function in terms of dynamic structure factors of the solution. We use mode coupling theory to calculate analytically the time dependence of collective ionic contribution. A power law decay in seen to originate from an interplay between long-range probe-ion direct correlation function and ion-ion dynamic structure factor. Although the power law decay is reminiscent of Debye-Falkenhagen effect, yet solvation dynamics is dominated by ion atmosphere relaxation times at longer length scales (small wave number) than in electrolyte friction. We further discuss why this power law may not originate from water motions which have been computed by molecular dynamics simulations. Finally, we propose several experiments to check the prediction of the present theoretical work.

Influence of sputter power on structural and electrical properties of TiO2 films for Al/TiO2/Si gate capacitors

Titanium dioxide (TiO2) thin films were deposited onto p-Si substrates held at room temperature by reactive Direct Current (DC) magnetron sputtering at various sputter powers in the range 80-200W. The as-deposited TiO2 films were annealed at a temperature of 1023K. The post-annealed films were characterized for crystallographic structure, chemical binding configuration, surface morphology and optical absorption. The electrical and dielectric properties of Al/TiO2/p-Si structure were determined from the capacitance-voltage and current-voltage characteristics. X-ray diffraction studies confirmed that the as-deposited films were amorphous in nature. After post-annealing at 1023K, the films formed at lower powers exhibited anatase phase, where as those deposited at sputter powers >160W showed the mixed anatase and rutile phases of TiO2. The surface morphology of the films varied significantly with the increase of sputter power. The electrical and dielectric properties on the air-annealed Al/TiO2/p-Si structures were studied. The effect of sputter power on the electrical and dielectric characteristics of the structure of Al/TiO2/p-Si (metal-insulator-semiconductor) was systematically investigated. Copyright (c) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Coordination of Reactive Power in Grid-Connected Wind Farms for Voltage Stability Enhancement

This paper studies the feasibility of utilizing the reactive power of grid-connected variable-speed wind generators to enhance the steady-state voltage stability margin of the system. Allowing wind generators to work at maximum reactive power limit may cause the system to operate near the steady-state stability limit, which is undesirable. This necessitates proper coordination of reactive power output of wind generators with other reactive power controllers in the grid. This paper presents a trust region framework for coordinating reactive output of wind generators-with other reactive sources for voltage stability enhancement. Case studies on 418-bus equivalent system of Indian southern grid indicates the effectiveness of proposed methodology in enhancing the steady-state voltage stability margin.

Universal power law in crossover from integrability to quantum chaos

We study models of interacting fermions in one dimension to investigate the crossover from integrability to nonintegrability, i.e., quantum chaos, as a function of system size. Using exact diagonalization of finite-sized systems, we study this crossover by obtaining the energy level statistics and Drude weight associated with transport. Our results reinforce the idea that for system size L -> infinity nonintegrability sets in for an arbitrarily small integrability-breaking perturbation. The crossover value of the perturbation scales as a power law similar to L-eta when the integrable system is gapless. The exponent eta approximate to 3 appears to be robust to microscopic details and the precise form of the perturbation. We conjecture that the exponent in the power law is characteristic of the random matrix ensemble describing the nonintegrable system. For systems with a gap, the crossover scaling appears to be faster than a power law.

Solar thermal power system augmented with LHP

The present work reports the study of the bubble formation dynamics in the compensation chamber (CC) of the evaporator in Loop Heat Pipes. A series of experiments were conducted at different heat loads and bubbles in the CC were visualized. Bubbles diameter, frequency and velocity were measured and correlated against heat loads. Temperatures were measured at various locations and heat transfer coefficient was calculated. Performance of the LHP evaporator was evaluated at different heat loads. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license

Comparison of CO2 and steam in transcritical Rankine cycles for concentrated solar power

High temperature, high pressure transcritical condensing CO2 cycle (TC-CO2) is compared with transcritical steam (TC-steam) cycle. Performance indicators such as thermal efficiency, volumetric flow rates and entropy generation are used to analyze the power cycle wherein, irreversibilities in turbo-machinery and heat exchangers are taken into account. Although, both cycles yield comparable thermal efficiencies under identical operating conditions, TC-CO2 plant is significantly compact compared to a TC-steam plant. Large specific volume of steam is responsible for a bulky system. It is also found that the performance of a TC-CO2 cycle is less sensitive to source temperature variations, which is an important requirement of a solar thermal system. In addition, issues like wet expansion in turbine and vacuum in condenser are absent in case of a TC-CO2 cycle. External heat addition to working fluid is assumed to take place through a heat transfer fluid (HTF) which receives heat from a solar receiver. A TC-CO2 system receives heat though a single HTF loop, whereas, for TC-steam cycle two HTF loops in series are proposed to avoid high temperature differential between the steam and HTF. (C) 2013 P. Garg. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Interference-Constrained Optimal Power-Adaptive Amplify-and-Forward Relaying and Selection for Underlay Cognitive Radios

In an underlay cognitive radio (CR) system, a secondary user can transmit when the primary is transmitting but is subject to tight constraints on the interference it causes to the primary receiver. Amplify-and-forward (AF) relaying is an effective technique that significantly improves the performance of a CR by providing an alternate path for the secondary transmitter's signal to reach the secondary receiver. We present and analyze a novel optimal relay gain adaptation policy (ORGAP) in which the relay is interference aware and optimally adapts both its gain and transmit power as a function of its local channel gains. ORGAP minimizes the symbol error probability at the secondary receiver subject to constraints on the average relay transmit power and on the average interference caused to the primary. It is different from ad hoc AF relaying policies and serves as a new and fundamental theoretical benchmark for relaying in an underlay CR. We also develop a near-optimal and simpler relay gain adaptation policy that is easy to implement. An extension to a multirelay scenario with selection is also developed. Our extensive numerical results for single and multiple relay systems quantify the power savings achieved over several ad hoc policies for both MPSK and MQAM constellations.

Rainbow Connection Number of Graph Power and Graph Products

Rainbow connection number, rc(G), of a connected graph G is the minimum number of colors needed to color its edges so that every pair of vertices is connected by at least one path in which no two edges are colored the same (note that the coloring need not be proper). In this paper we study the rainbow connection number with respect to three important graph product operations (namely the Cartesian product, the lexicographic product and the strong product) and the operation of taking the power of a graph. In this direction, we show that if G is a graph obtained by applying any of the operations mentioned above on non-trivial graphs, then rc(G) a parts per thousand currency sign 2r(G) + c, where r(G) denotes the radius of G and . In general the rainbow connection number of a bridgeless graph can be as high as the square of its radius 1]. This is an attempt to identify some graph classes which have rainbow connection number very close to the obvious lower bound of diameter (and thus the radius). The bounds reported are tight up to additive constants. The proofs are constructive and hence yield polynomial time -factor approximation algorithms.

Optimal Binary Power Control for Underlay CR With Different Interference Constraints and Impact of Channel Estimation Errors

Adapting the power of secondary users (SUs) while adhering to constraints on the interference caused to primary receivers (PRxs) is a critical issue in underlay cognitive radio (CR). This adaptation is driven by the interference and transmit power constraints imposed on the secondary transmitter (STx). Its performance also depends on the quality of channel state information (CSI) available at the STx of the links from the STx to the secondary receiver and to the PRxs. For a system in which an STx is subject to an average interference constraint or an interference outage probability constraint at each of the PRxs, we derive novel symbol error probability (SEP)-optimal, practically motivated binary transmit power control policies. As a reference, we also present the corresponding SEP-optimal continuous transmit power control policies for one PRx. We then analyze the robustness of the optimal policies when the STx knows noisy channel estimates of the links between the SU and the PRxs. Altogether, our work develops a holistic understanding of the critical role played by different transmit and interference constraints in driving power control in underlay CR and the impact of CSI on its performance.

Performance Assessment of a Small Biogas-fuelled Power Generator Prototype

This study reports the development and performance evaluation of prototypes of biogas-fuelled stationary power generators in the range of 1 kW. Strategies to achieve high engine efficiency namely pulsed manifold injection, electronic throttle control and dual spark plugs, have been incorporated in the prototype. A complete closed-loop control of the engine operation to maintain a steady engine speed of 3000 rpm (+/- 5%) across the entire load range while maintaining an optimum fuel-air equivalence ratio is made possible by an electronic control unit (ECU) controlling the injection duration, ignition timing and throttle position. This study specifically focuses on the response of the generator to transient loads, and the overall efficiency obtained. The results obtained from testing the prototype have been found to be satisfactory and show that biogas power generators for low power applications can be made efficient (overall efficiency of 19% at electrical load of 640 W) using the strategies of biogas fuel injection.

Effect of radio frequency power and thickness on the electrochemical properties of Li2-x MnO3-y thin films

In the present work, Li2-x MnO3-y (LMO) thin films have been deposited by radio frequency (RF) reactive magnetron sputtering using acid-treated Li2MnO3 powder target. Systematic investigations have been carried out to study the effect of RF power on the physicochemical properties of LMO thin films deposited on platinized silicon substrates. X-ray diffraction, electron microscopy, surface chemical analysis and electrochemical studies were carried out for the LMO films after post deposition annealing treatment at 500 A degrees C for 1 h in air ambience. Galvanostatic charge discharge studies carried out using the LMO thin film electrodes, delivered a highest discharge capacity of 139 mu Ah mu m(-1) cm(-2) in the potential window 2.0-3.5 V vs. Li/Li+ at 100 W RF power and lowest discharge capacity of 80 mu Ah mu m(-1) cm(-2) at 75 W RF power. Thereafter, the physicochemical properties of LMO films deposited using optimized RF power 100 W on stainless steel substrates has been studied in the thickness range of 70 to 300 nm as a case study. From the galvanostatic charge discharge experiments, a stable discharge capacity of 68 mu Ah mu m(-1) cm(-2) was achieved in the potential window 2.0-4.2 V vs. Li/Li+ tested up to 30 cycles. As the thickness increased, the specific discharge capacity started reducing with higher magnitude of capacity fading.