On the Exploitation of Admittance Measurements for Wired Network Topology Derivation

The knowledge of the topology of a wired network is often of fundamental importance. For instance, in the context of Power Line Communications (PLC) networks it is helpful to implement data routing strategies, while in power distribution networks and Smart Micro Grids (SMG) it is required for grid monitoring and for power flow management. In this paper, we use the transmission line theory to shed new light and to show how the topological properties of a wired network can be found exploiting admittance measurements at the nodes. An analytic proof is reported to show that the derivation of the topology can be done in complex networks under certain assumptions. We also analyze the effect of the network background noise on admittance measurements. In this respect, we propose a topology derivation algorithm that works in the presence of noise. We finally analyze the performance of the algorithm using values that are typical of power line distribution networks.Comment: A version of this manuscript has been submitted to the IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement for possible publication. The paper consists of 8 pages, 11 figures, 1 tabl

MIMO precoding for filter bank modulation systems based on PSVD

In this paper we consider the design of a linearly precoded MIMO transceiver based on filter bank (FB) modulation for transmission over broadband frequency selective fading channels. The modulation FB is capable of lowering the channel dispersion at sub-channel level. Nevertheless, the sub-channels experience some level of inter-symbol interference. Therefore, the pre-coder and the equalizer are designed exploiting the polynomial singular value decomposition (PSVD). In particular, we consider two types of FB system. The first system deploys maximal frequency confined pulses and it is referred to as filtered multitone (FMT) modulation, while the second uses maximal time confined pulses with rectangular impulse response, i.e., it corresponds to the conventional orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system. We compare the performance of the considered systems in terms of capacity over typical WLAN channels, showing that PSVD precoding with FMT can outperform the performance of precoded OFDM in the two-bytwo antenna case especially for moderate to low SNRs

Azimuth and Elevation Dynamic Tracking of UAVs via 3-Axial ULA and Particle Filtering

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) localization has become crucial in recent years, mainly for navigation or self-positioning and for UAV based security monitoring and surveillance. In this paper, azimuth and elevation radio positioning of UAVs are considered. The localization is based on multiple differential phase-of-arrival measures exploiting a 3-Axial Uniform Linear Array of antennas. An ad hoc particle filtering algorithm is applied to improve the positioning performance using a dynamic motion model. A novel adaptive algorithm, namely, Particles Swarm Adaptive Scattering (PSAS), is proposed to increment the algorithm stability and precision. To assess performance a Confined Area Random Aerial Trajectory Emulator (CARATE) algorithm has been developed to generate actual paths of flying UAVs. The algorithm performance is compared with the baseline method and with the average trajectory Cram\ue9r Rao lower bound to show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm

PLC for the smart grid: state-of-the-art and challenges

This paper aims to review systems and applications for power line communications (PLC) in the context of the smart grid. We discuss the main applications and summarise state-of-the-art PLC systems and standards. We report efforts and challenges in channel and noise modelling, as well as in state-of-the-art transmission technology approaches