Characterization and Emulation of Low-Voltage Power Line Channels for Narrowband and Broadband Communication

The demand for smart grid and smart home applications has raised the recent interest in power line communication (PLC) technologies, and has driven a broad set of deep surveys in low-voltage (LV) power line channels. This book proposes a set of novel approaches, to characterize and to emulate LV power line channels in the frequency range from0.15to 10 MHz, which closes gaps between the traditional narrowband (up to 500 kHz) and broadband (above1.8 MHz) ranges

Characterization and Emulation of Low-Voltage Power Line Channels for Narrowband and Broadband Communication

The demand for smart grid and smart home applications has raised the recent interest in power line communication (PLC) technologies, and has driven a broad set of deep surveys in low-voltage (LV) power line channels. This book proposes a set of novel approaches, to characterize and to emulate LV power line channels in the frequency range from0.15to 10 MHz, which closes gaps between the traditional narrowband (up to 500 kHz) and broadband (above1.8 MHz) ranges

Innovative Concepts and Applications for Smart Water Cities

Smart cities are emerging worldwide, including economic, institutional, social, and technical concepts in interaction with existing infrastructure to achieve sustainability and increase quality of life. Additionally, digitalisation projects in the field of urban water infrastructure (UWI) aim to increase capacity of existing infrastructure to deal with future challenges caused by climate change, growing of urban population, and maintenance. Therefore, efficient and reliable information- and communication technologies (ICT) represent a key factor for the exchange of measurement data (e.g., monitoring environmental parameters) and interconnections between different participants. However, ICT and system-wide management are not yet widely deployed and mainly concentrated on main points in network-based UWI (e.g., combined sewer overflows, inlet point of district meter areas). In this context, especially the Internet of Things (IoT) concepts enables a large-scale implementation of measurement devices even at underground and remote structures, increasing data availability significantly. Following, new possibilities in the management of network-based UWI are emerging. The research aim of this doctoral dissertation is to contribute to the ongoing development of smart water cities by developing innovative concepts in the field of urban drainage and water distribution network including nature-based solutions

Monolithic integrated reflective transceiver in indium phosphide

The work presented in this thesis is about an InP based monolithic integrated reflective transceiver meant for use in future fiber access networks at the user site. The motivation for this research results from the users’ demands for ever-increasing bandwidth at low cost of operation, administration and maintenance. We investigated solutions to these challenges with a network concept using a dynamically reconfigurable optical network topology with a wavelength router and a colorless optical network unit. This work focuses on developing the optical part of the optical network unit, a reflective transceiver. This reflective transceiver consists of three basic components: a tunable wavelength duplexer, a photodetector and a reflective modulator. The tunable wavelength duplexer separates two wavelengths, one for the downstream and one for the upstream signals, and guides them to the photodetector and the reflective modulator. The photodetector detects the downstream data. The reflective modulator modulates the light carrier with the upstream data and reflects it back to the network. The integrated transceiver was realized bymonolithically integrating these components on a common active-passive butt-joint layer stack based on InP technology. This approach not only offers high bandwidth for both downstream data and upstream data, but also lowers the cost of the device and the network operation because of the colorless operation at the user site. The main results obtained within this work are summarized as follows: an efficient and polarization insensitive tunable wavelength duplexer was realized; a new method to fabricate a reflective SOA has been proposed and demonstrated; a high performance waveguide photodetector based on SOA layer stack was successfully fabricated; a low cost photoreceiverwhich includes an InP photodetector and a SiGe amplifier was demonstrated; aworking monolithic integrated reflective transceiver based on InP was successfully realized and demonstrated; two monolithic integrated transceivers aiming for higher bandwidth have been designed and fabricated. In addition, a novel MMI reflector has been proposed and realized with high reflectivity. This work was funded by DutchMinistry of Economic Affairs through the Freeband Project Broadband Photonics Access, the Smartmix projectMemphis and the NRC Photonics

Characterization and Emulation of Low-Voltage Power Line Channels for Narrowband and Broadband Communication

This thesis proposes a set of novel approaches to characterize and to emulate LV power line channels in the frequency range from 0.15 to 10MHz, which close gaps between the traditional narrowband (up to 500 kHz) and broadband (above 1.8MHz) ranges

Bundling telecommunications services : competitive strategies for converging markets

With the advent of digital convergence, incumbent telephone and cable companies have begun to offer their services, such as voice telephony, Internet and TV in so-called triple play packages. While carefully recognizing the technological, legal and economic framework of the fixed-line telecommunications industry, this book investigates whether bundling is indeed a profitable pricing strategy for the firms and if it can possibly facilitate the leverage of market power into neighboring markets

Design and cost performance of WDM pons for multi-wavelength users

Die rasante Verbreitung des Internet führt zu einem steigenden Bedarf an höheren Bitraten in Telekommunikationsnetzwerken. Dieser kann derzeit nur mit optischen Netzwerken erfüllt werden, insbesondere mit der Wellen¬längen¬multiplex-Technik (WDM). Viele Forschungsergebnisse weisen darauf hin, dass WDM Passive Optische Netzwerke (PON) die nächste Generation der optischen Zugangsnetze darstellen. Die Wellenlängenmultiplex-Technik beruht darauf, dass mehrere optische Kanäle mit niedrigen Bitraten über eine Faser übertragen werden und so ein WDM Signal mit hoher Bitrate erzeugen. Ziel dieser Arbeit ist die Identifizierung von neuen Architekturen, welche jedem Benutzer und jedem Dienst mindestens eine Wellenlänge zur Verfügung stellen. Neue Methoden und Modelle zur Berechnung von ein- und mehrstufigen WDM PONs werden eingeführt. Um alle technologisch realisierbaren ein- und mehrstufigen WDM PONs zu berechnen und zu analysieren wurde ein Design Tool entwickelt. Für einen flächendeckenden kommerziellen Einsatz reicht es nicht aus, funktionierende Technologien anzubieten, vielmehr müssen ökonomische Über¬legungen miteinbezogen werden. Diese Arbeit ermöglicht einen Vergleich unterschiedlicher Architekturen hinsichtlich ihrer Wirtschaftlichkeit und zielt darauf ab, jene Architekturen zu identifizieren, welche kostenoptimal sind. Neue kosten¬optimale Netzwerk-Architekturen führen zu einer schnelleren Marktpenetration und dazu, Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) Realität werden zu lassen.Due to the incomparable popularity of the Internet, the already enormous and still rocketing bandwidth demand may only be satisfied by optical networks, particularly by using the Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) technology. In many research labs, WDM Passive Optical Networks (PON) access networks are considered as the next generation optical access. To obtain WDM signals with high bit rates, multiple channels operating at a lower transmission speed can be supported on a single optical fiber. The subject of this thesis will be engineering new cutting edge architectures offering each user and service at least one wavelength. New techniques and models are introduced to design single and multistage WDM PONs. A design tool was implemented to analyze all technologically feasible single and multistage WDM PON architectures. During real deployments, the technology has worked but the economic factors have proven to be too costly. Thus, it is important to examine these economic aspects. The objective is to identify those architectures that minimize costs. Access to these newly identified network architectures will prompt market introduction as well as market penetration helping Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) to become reality