A first Experimental Investigation of the Practical Efficiency of Battery Scheduling

Nowadays, mobile devices are used more and more, and their battery lifetime is a key concern. In this paper, we concentrate on a method called battery scheduling with the aim to optimize the battery lifetime of mobile devices. This technique has already been largely theoretically studied in other papers. It consists, for systems containing multiple batteries, in switching the load from one battery to the other. Then, while following a given scheduling sequence, advantage can be taken from the recovery and rate capacity effects. However, little studies with experimental data of battery scheduling have been found. In this paper we describe a simple setup for measuring the possible gain of battery scheduling, and give some exploratory results for two types of real batteries: a smart Li-Ion battery used in the Thales personal communication system and a more commonly used NiCd battery. The results, so far, show that system lifetime extension is not systematic, and generally can only reach less then 10%

Optimal Scheduling of Energy Storage Using A New Priority-Based Smart Grid Control Method

This paper presents a method to optimally use an energy storage system (such as a battery) on a microgrid with load and photovoltaic generation. The purpose of the method is to employ the photovoltaic generation and energy storage systems to reduce the main grid bill, which includes an energy cost and a power peak cost. The method predicts the loads and generation power of each day, and then searches for an optimal storage behavior plan for the energy storage system according to these predictions. However, this plan is not followed in an open-loop control structure as in previous publications, but provided to a real-time decision algorithm, which also considers real power measures. This algorithm considers a series of device priorities in addition to the storage plan, which makes it robust enough to comply with unpredicted situations. The whole proposed method is implemented on a real-hardware test bench, with its different steps being distributed between a personal computer and a programmable logic controller according to their time scale. When compared to a different state-of-the-art method, the proposed method is concluded to better adjust the energy storage system usage to the photovoltaic generation and general consumption.Unión Europea ID 100205Unión Europea ID 26937

Design of Ad Hoc Wireless Mesh Networks Formed by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles with Advanced Mechanical Automation

Ad hoc wireless mesh networks formed by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) equipped with wireless transceivers (access points (APs)) are increasingly being touted as being able to provide a flexible "on-the-fly" communications infrastructure that can collect and transmit sensor data from sensors in remote, wilderness, or disaster-hit areas. Recent advances in the mechanical automation of UAVs have resulted in separable APs and replaceable batteries that can be carried by UAVs and placed at arbitrary locations in the field. These advanced mechanized UAV mesh networks pose interesting questions in terms of the design of the network architecture and the optimal UAV scheduling algorithms. This paper studies a range of network architectures that depend on the mechanized automation (AP separation and battery replacement) capabilities of UAVs and proposes heuristic UAV scheduling algorithms for each network architecture, which are benchmarked against optimal designs.Comment: 12 page