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Traditionally, industrial power supplies have been exclusively controlled through analog control to sustain high reliability with low cost. However, with the perpetual decrement in cost of digital controllers, the feasibility of a digitally controlled switch mode power supply has elevated significantly. This paper aims to outline the challenges related to the design of digital proportional-integral (PI) controlled synchronous rectifier (SR) buck converter by comparing controller performance in continuous and discrete time. The trapezoidal approximation-based digital PI control is designed for low voltage and high-frequency SR buck converter operating under continuous conduction mode.

The analog and digital controller are designed using a SISO tool of MATLAB. Here, zero-order hold transform is used to convert the transfer function from continuous to discrete time. Frequency and time domain analysis of continuous plant, discrete plant and close loop system is performed. The designed digital PI control is simulated in MATLAB Simulink. The simulated results is also verified on hardware designed around digital signal processing control.

The continuous and discrete control loops are validated with multiple tests in the time and frequency domain. The detailed steady state theoretical analysis and performance of the SR buck converter is presented and verified by simulation. It is found that the delay in digital control loop results in a low phase margin. This phase margin decreases with higher bandwidth. The hardware experiments with the digital control loop are carried out on a 10 W prototype. The chosen parameters for the SR buck converter are found to be optimum for steady and transient state response.

This paper compares the digital and analog control approach of compensator design. It focuses on the implications created at the time of transforming the control design from continuous to discrete time. Further, it also focuses on the selection of parameters such as phase margin, bandwidth and low pass filter.

This paper aims to overcome the main obstacle to compare the merits of the different control strategies for fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to assess autopilot performances. Up to now, the published studies of control strategies have been carried out over disperse models, thus being complicated, if not impossible, to compare the merits of each proposal. The authors present a worked benchmark for autopilots studies, consisting of generalized models obtained by merging UAVs’ parameters gathered from selected literature (journals) with other parameters directly obtained by the authors to include some relevant UAVs whose models are not provided in the literature. To obtain them it has been used a dedicated software (from U.S. Air Force).

The proposed models have been constructed by averaging both the main aircraft defining parameters (model derivatives) and pole-zero locations of longitudinal transfer functions. The suitability of the used methodologies has been checked from their capability to fit the short period and the phugoid modes. Previous analytical model arrangement has been required to match a uniform set of parameters, as the inner state variables are neither the same along the different published models nor between the additional models the authors have here contributed. Besides, moving models between the space state representation and transfer function is not just a simple averaging process, as neither the parameters nor the model orders are the same in the different published works. So, the junction of the models to a common set of parameters requires some residual’s computation and transient responses assessment (even Fourier analysis has been included to preserve the dominance of the phugoid) to keep the main properties of the models. The least mean squares technique has been used to have better fittings between SISO model parameters with state–space ones.

Both the SISO (Laplace) and state-space models for the longitudinal transfer function of an “averaged” fixed-wing UAV are proposed.

More complicated situations, such as strong wind conditions, need another kind of models, usually based on finite element method simulation. These particular models apply fluid dynamics to study aerostructural aircraft aspects, such as flutter and other aerolastic aspects, the behavior under icing conditions or other distributed parameter problems. Even some models aim to control other aspects than the autopilot, such as the trajectory prediction. However, these models are not the most suitable for the basic UAV autopilot design (early design), so they are outside the objective of this paper. Obviously, the here-considered UAVs are not all the existing ones, but the number is large enough to consider the result as a reliable and realistic representation. The presented study may be seen as a stepping stone, allowing to include other UAVs in future works.

The proposed models can be used as benchmarks, or as a previous step to produce improved benchmarks, in order to have a common and realistic scenario the compare the benefits of the different control actions in UAV autopilots continuously presented in the published research.

A work with the scope of the presented one, merging model parameters from literature with other (often referred in papers and websites) whose parameters have been obtained by the authors has been never published.

The problem of parameter identification for biaxial piezoelectric stages is still a challenging task because of the existing hysteresis, dynamics and cross-axis coupling. This study aims to find an accurate and systematic approach to tackle this problem.

First, a dual-input and dual-output (DIDO) model with Duhem-type hysteresis is proposed to depict the dynamic behavior of the biaxial piezoelectric stage. Then, a systematic identification approach based on a modified differential evolution (DE) algorithm is proposed to identify the unknown parameters of the Duhem-type DIDO model for a biaxial piezostage. The randomness and parallelism of the modified DE algorithm guarantee its high efficiency.

The experimental results show that the characteristics of the biaxial piezoelectric stage can be identified with adequate accuracy based on the input–output data, and the peak-valley errors account for 2.8% of the full range in the X direction and 1.5% in the Y direction. The attained results validated the correctness and effectiveness of the presented identification method.

The classical DE algorithm has many adjustment parameters, which increases the inconvenience and difficulty of using in practice. The parameter identification of Duhem-type DIDO piezoelectric model is rarely studied in detail and its successful application based on DE algorithm on a biaxial piezostage is hitherto unexplored. To close this gap, this work proposed a modified DE-based systematic identification approach. It not only can identify this complicated model with more parameters, but also has little tuning parameters and thus is easy to use.

A recent innovative technology used in wireless communication is recognized as multiple input multiple output (MIMO) communication system and became popular for quicker data transmission speed. This technology is being examined and implemented for the latest broadband wireless connectivity networks. Though high-capacity wireless channel is identified, there is still requirement of better techniques to get increased data transmission speed with acceptable reliability. There are two types of systems comprising of multi-antennas placed at transmitting and receiving sides, of which first is diversity technique and another is spatial multiplexing method. By making use of these diversity techniques, the reliability of transmitting signal can be improved. The fundamental method of the diversity is to transform wireless channel such as Rayleigh fading into steady additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel which is devoid of any disastrous fading of the signal. The maximum transmission speed that can be achieved by spatial multiplexing methods is nearly equal to channel capacity of MIMO. Conversely, for diversity methods, the maximum speed of broadcasting is much lower than channel capacity of MIMO. With the advent of space–time block coding (STBC) antenna diversity technique, higher-speed data transmission is achievable for spatially multiplexed multiple input multiple output (SM-MIMO) system. At the receiving end, detection of the signal is a complex task for system which exhibits SM-MIMO. Additionally, a link modification method is implemented to decide appropriate coding and modulation scheme such as space diversity technique STBC to use two-way radio resources efficiently. The proposed work attempts to improve detection of signal at receiving end by employing STBC diversity technique for linear detection methods such as zero forcing (ZF), minimum mean square error (MMSE), ordered successive interference cancellation (OSIC) and maximum likelihood detection (MLD). The performance of MLD has been found to be better than other detection techniques.

Alamouti's STBC uses two transmit antennas regardless of the number of receiver antennas. The encoding and decoding operation of STBC is shown in the earlier cited diagram. In the following matrix, the rows of each coding scheme represent a different time instant, while the columns represent the transmitted symbols through each different antenna. In this case, the first and second rows represent the transmission at the first and second time instant, respectively. At a time t, the symbol s₁ and symbol s₂ are transmitted from antenna 1 and antenna 2, respectively. Assuming that each symbol has duration T, then at time t + T, the symbols –s₂* and s₁*, where (.)* denotes the complex conjugate, are transmitted from antenna 1 and antenna 2, respectively. Case of one receiver antenna: The reception and decoding of the signal depend on the number of receiver antennas available. For the case of one receiver antenna, the received signals are received at antenna 1 , hij is the channel transfer function from the jth transmit antenna and the ith receiver antenna, n1 is a complex random variable representing noise at antenna 1 and x (k) denotes x at time instant k ( at time t + (k – 1)T.

The results obtained for maximal ratio combining (MRC) with 1 × 4 scheme show that the BER curve drops to 10–4 for signal-to-noise (SNR) ratio of 10 dB, whereas for MRC 1 × 2 scheme, the BER drops down to 10–5 for SNR of 20 dB. Results obtained in Table 1 show that when STBC is employed for MRC with 1 × 2 scheme (one antenna at transmitter node and two antennas at receiver node), BER curve comes down to 0.0076 for Eb/N0 of 12. Similarly, when MRC with 1 × 4 antenna scheme is implemented, BER drops down to 0 for Eb/N0 of 12. Thus, it can be concluded from the obtained graph that the performance of MRC with STBC gives improved results. When STBC technique is used with 3 × 4 scheme, at SNR of 10 dB, BER comes nearer to 10–6 (figure 7.3). It can be concluded from the analytics observed between AWGN and Rayleigh fading channel that for AWGN channel, BER is found to be equal to 0 for SNR value of 13.5 dB, whereas for Rayleigh fading channel, BER is observed nearer to 10–3 for Eb/N0 = 15. Simulation results (in figure 7.2) from the analytics show BER drops to 0 for SNR value of 12 dB.

Optimal design and successful deployment of high-performance wireless networks present a number of technical challenges. These include regulatory limits on useable radio-frequency spectrum and a complex time-varying propagation environment affected by fading and multipath. The effect of multipath fading in wireless systems can be reduced by using antenna diversity. Previous studies show the performance of transmit diversity with narrowband signals using linear equalization, decision feedback equalization, maximum likelihood sequence estimation (MLSE) and spread spectrum signals using a RAKE receiver. The available IC techniques compatible with STBC schemes at transmission require multiple antennas at the receiver. However, if this not a strong constraint at the base station level, it remains a challenge at the handset level due to cost and size limitation. For this reason, SAIC technique, alternative to complex ML multiuser demodulation technique, is still of interest for 4G wireless networks using the MIMO technology and STBC in particular. In a system with characteristics similar to the North American Digital mobile radio standard IS-54 (24.3 K symbols per sec. with an 81 Hz fading rate), adaptive retransmission with time deviation is not practical.

The evaluation of performance in terms of bit error rate and convergence time which estimates that MLD technique outperforms in terms of received SNR and low decoding complexity. MLD technique performs well but when higher number of antennas are used, it requires more computational time and thereby resulting in increased hardware complexity. When MRC scheme is implemented for singe input single output (SISO) system, BER drops down to 10–2 for SNR of 20 dB. Therefore, when MIMO systems are employed for MRC scheme, improved results based on BER versus SNR are obtained and are used for detecting the signal; comparative study based on different techniques is done. Initially ZF detection method is utilized which was then modified to ZF with successive interference cancellation (ZFSIC). When successive interference cancellation scheme is employed for ZFSIC, better performance is observed as compared to the estimation of ML and MMSE. For 2 × 2 scheme with QPSK modulation method, ZFSIC requires more computational time as compared to ZF, MMSE and ML technique. From the obtained results, the conclusion is that ZFSIC gives the improved results as compared to ZF in terms of BER ratio. ZF-based decision statistics can be produced by the detection algorithm for a desired sub-stream from the received vector whichs consist of an interference which occurred from previous transmitted sub-streams. Consequently, a decision on the secondary stream is made and contribution of the noise is regenerated and subtracted from the vector received. With no involvement of interference cancellation, system performance gets reduced but computational cost is saved. While using cancellation, as H is deflated, coefficients of MMSE are recalculated at each iteration. When cancellation is not involved, the computation of MMSE coefficients is done only once, because of H remaining unchanged. For MMSE 4 × 4 BPSK scheme, bit error rate of 10–2 at 30 dB is observed. In general, the most thorough procedure of the detection algorithm is the computation of the MMSE coefficients. Complexity arises in the calculation of the MMSE coefficients, when the antennas at the transmitting side are increased. However, while implementing adaptive MMSE receivers on slow channel fading, it is probable to recover the signal with the complications being linear in the antennas of transmitter node. The performance of MMSE and successive interference cancellation of MMSE are observed for 2 × 2 and 4 × 4 BPSK and QPSK modulation schemes. The drawback of MMSE SIC scheme is that the first detected signal observes the noise interference from (NT-1) signals, while signals processed from every antenna later observe less noisy interference as the process of cancellation progresses. This difficulty could be overcome by using OSIC detection method which uses successive ordering of the processed layers in the decreasing power of the signal or by power allocation to the signal transmitted depending on the order of the processing. By using successive scheme, a computation of NT delay stages is desired to bring out the abandoned process. The work also includes comparison of BER with various modulation schemes and number of antennas involved while evaluating the performance. MLD determines the Euclidean distance among the vector signal received and result of all probable transmitted vector signals with the specified channel H and finds the one with the minimum distance. Estimated results show that higher order of the diversity is observed by employing more antennas at both the receiving and transmitting ends. MLD with 8 × 8 binary phase shift keying (BPSK) scheme offers bit error rate near to 10^–4 for SNR (16 dB). By using Altamonti space ti.

It should come as no surprise that companies everywhere are pushing to get products to market faster. Missing a market window or a design cycle can be a major setback in a competitive environment. It should be equally clear that this pressure is coming at the same time that companies are pushing towards “leaner” organizations that can do more with less. The trends mentioned earlier are not well supported by current test and measurement equipment, given this increasingly high-pressure design environment: in order to measure signals across multiple domains, multiple pieces of measurement equipment are needed, increasing capital or rental expenses. The methods available for making cross-domain, time-correlated measurements are inefficient, reducing engineering efficiency. When only used on occasion, the learning curve to understand how to use equipment for logic analysis, time domain and RF spectrum measurements often requires an operator to re-learn each piece of separate equipment. The equipment needed to measure wide bandwidth, time-varying spectral signals is expensive, again increasing capital or rental expenses. What is needed is a measurement instrument with a common user interface that integrates multiple measurement capabilities into a single cost-effective tool that can efficiently measure signals in the current wide-bandwidth, time-correlated, cross-domain environments. The market of wireless communication using STBCs has large scope of expansion in India. Therefore, the proposed work has techno-commercial potential and the product can be patented. This project shall in turn be helpful for remote areas of the nearby region particularly in Gadchiroli district and Melghat Tiger reserve project of Amravati district, Nagjira and so on where electricity is not available and there is an all the time problem of coverage in getting the network. In some regions where electricity is available, the shortage is such that they cannot use it for peak hours. In such cases, stand-alone space diversity technique, STBC shall help them to meet their requirements in making connection during coverage problem, thereby giving higher data transmission rates with better QOS (quality of service) with least dropped connections. This trend towards wireless everywhere is causing a profound change in the responsibilities of embedded designers as they struggle to incorporate unfamiliar RF technology into their designs. Embedded designers frequently find themselves needing to solve problems without the proper equipment needed to perform the tasks.

Work is original.

The purpose of this paper is to present the methods of concurrent optimization of the analogue and digital parts (software‐hardware) of estimating, identifying and filtering systems with adaptively adjusted analogue parts – adaptive estimation systems (AES).

Concurrent (complete) optimization of AES permits the determination of the most efficient algorithms for computing the estimates and the controls adjusting analogue units of AES in the way maximally improving the quality of observations delivered by them to the digital part. Performance of AES is assessed by the mean square error (MSE) of estimates which is constructed employing the models of input excitation, analogue and digital parts. Global extremum of MSE is searched by Bayesian methods taking into account the always bounded input range of AES and its possible overloading.

There are determined upper boundaries of potentially achievable accuracy of estimates, as well as optimal estimating and controlling observation units' algorithms, ensuring their achievement. New effects appearing in completely optimal AES are analysed.

The paper presents the backgrounds of new and analytically complex approach. To clarify basic ideas and methods, the simplest but useful for applications single input‐single output and single input‐multiple output models of ASE were considered. The obtained results create wide field for further investigations.

The results of the paper can be applied in the development of new classes of high‐efficient adaptive data acquisition, measurement, controlling, communication and other systems.

Concurrent optimisation of AES is important task having no general solution until now. Known approaches allow only the separate optimisation of the analogue and digital parts. Presented original approach enables the correct formalisation and solution of this task that permits the design and realization of systems with characteristics close to theoretically achievable ones and exceeding the characteristics of the known systems of similar predestination.

This paper seeks to present an acceleration‐based force‐impedance controller, applied to a six‐dof parallel mini‐manipulator: the robotic controlled impedance device (RCID).

The proposed control strategy involves three cascade controllers: an inner acceleration controller, built as a set of six single input/single output acceleration controllers (one per manipulator axis), an impedance task‐space controller, and an outer force controller.

The control strategy enables two kinds of manipulator behaviour: force‐limited impedance control and position‐limited force control. The type of behaviour depends only on the chosen manipulator trajectories.

The RCID may be used as a force‐impedance controlled auxiliary device, coupled in series with a position‐controlled commercial industrial robot. The two manipulators combined behave as a single manipulator, having the impedance and force control performance of the RCID, as well as the workspace and trajectory tracking performance of the industrial manipulator. The industrial manipulator should perform free space motion trajectory tracking, the RCID being kept in a “home” position, preserving its small workspace for impedance and force control.

A robust control strategy that enables good performance, while the robot executes tasks that involve interaction with the environment, is being proposed. Experimental results on a force‐impedance controlled six‐dof parallel mini‐manipulator are presented.

This chapter describes the use of project-based learning to foster an enterprising, innovative attitude among students enrolled at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) in the context of the School of Documentation Sciences from the 2013–2014 academic year to the present.

This experiment is based on the experiential intersection of two domains: firstly, innovation and entrepreneurship, in order to drive both entrepreneurship for self-employment and also intrapreneurship in libraries or documentation institutions; secondly, the application of project management methods in library and information science (LIS), using the teaching technique known as project-based learning (PBL).

Over this period of four academic years, 159 students have taken part and have created 42 projects. A trend is seen in the development of intrapreneurship projects (i.e., projects contextualized within preexisting organizations are 79% of total).

The progression of this experiment in the fostering of entrepreneurship and innovation in LIS in Spain has been based on a dynamic in which the application of theoretical bases to a real, practical context has enabled a better exploitation and understanding of the of the contents taught; developing projects has given LIS students experience that makes them more employable.

The purpose of this paper is to present a neural network approach to control performance assessment.

The performance index under study is based on the minimum variance control benchmark, a radial basis function network (RBFN) is used as the pre‐whitening filter to estimate the white noise sequence, and a stable filtering and correlation analysis method is adopted to calculate the performance index by estimating innovations sequence using the RBFN pre‐whitening filter. The new approach is compared with the auto‐regressive moving average model and the Laguerre model methods, for both linear and nonlinear cases.

Simulation results show that the RBFN approach works satisfactorily for both linear and nonlinear examples. In particular, the proposed scheme shows merits in assessing controller performance for nonlinear systems and surpasses the Laguerre model method in parameter selection.

A RBFN approach is proposed for control performance assessment. This new approach, in comparison with some well‐known methods, provides satisfactory performance and potentials for both linear and nonlinear cases.

This paper aims to present the critical issues and methodologies to improve robotic machining performance with flexile industrial robots.

A complete solution using active force control is introduced to address various issues during the robotic machining process.

Programming complex couture parts without a CAD model is made easy by using force control functions such as lead‐through and path‐learning. The problem of process control is treated with a novel methodology that consists of stiffness modeling, real‐time deformation compensation for quality and controlled material removal rate for process efficiency.

Experimental results showed that higher productivity as well as better surface quality can be achieved, indicating a promising and practical use of industrial robots for machining applications that is not available at present.

Research findings provide the professional community with knowledge that enables to better understand healthcare interventions. Many authors point out that whilst these findings are valued, the findings are not always translated into healthcare practise. The purpose of the paper is to assess the applicability of the essential elements of an integrated palliative care system (IPCS) found in research into the practise of Osona Palliative Care System (OPCS).

The study used a qualitative methodology with a case study design. In total, 24 health professionals were interviewed in Osona for the research, and the results were analysed using deductive content analysis.

The study concludes that research findings can better be translated into specific contexts by incorporating the needs and characteristics of the system. The process could be a strategy for bridging the research–practise gap.

Combining the findings from the study and the findings found in the literature reviewed led to the creation of the IPCS-elements-blended model of research and practise. Such a kind of mixed model could be used in other studies seeking to overcome the research and practice gap.