This book contains the proceedings of the Workshop on Networked Embedded Sensing and Control. This workshop aims at bringing together researchers working on different aspects of networked embedded systems in order to exchange research experiences and to identify the main scientific challenges in this exciting new area.

The vast majority of control systems built today are embedded; that is, they rely on built-in, special-purpose digital computers to close their feedback loops. Embedded systems are common in aircraft, factories, chemical processing plants, and even in cars–a single high-end automobile may contain over eighty different computers. The design of embedded controllers and of the intricate, automated communication networks that support them raises many new questions—practical, as well as theoretical—about network protocols, compatibility of operating systems, and ways to maximize the effectiveness of the embedded hardware. This handbook, the first of its kind, provides engineers, computer scientists, mathematicians, and students a broad, comprehensive source of information and technology to address many questions and aspects of embedded and networked control. Separated into six main sections—Fundamentals, Hardware, Software, Theory, Networking, and Applications—this work unifies into a single reference many scattered articles, websites, and specification sheets. Also included are case studies, experiments, and examples that give a multifaceted view of the subject, encompassing computation and communication considerations.

By exploiting the synergies among available data, information fusion can reduce data traffic, filter noisy measurements, and make predictions and inferences about a monitored entity. Networked Filtering and Fusion in Wireless Sensor Networks introduces the subject of multi-sensor fusion as the method of choice for implementing distributed systems. The book examines the state of the art in information fusion. It presents the known methods, algorithms, architectures, and models of information fusion and discusses their applicability in the context of wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Paying particular attention to the wide range of topics that have been covered in recent literature, the text presents the results of a number of typical case studies. Complete with research supported elements and comprehensive references, this teaching-oriented volume uses standard scientific terminology, conventions, and notations throughout. It applies recently developed convex optimization theory and highly efficient algorithms in estimation fusion to open up discussion and provide researchers with an ideal starting point for further research on distributed estimation and fusion for WSNs. The book supplies a cohesive overview of the key results of theory and applications of information-fusion-related problems in networked systems in a unified framework. Providing advanced mathematical treatment of fundamental problems with information fusion, it will help you broaden your understanding of prospective applications and how to address such problems in practice. After reading the book, you will gain the understanding required to model parts of dynamic systems and use those models to develop distributed fusion control algorithms that are based on feedback control theory.

The new edition of this popular book has been transformed into a hands-on textbook, focusing on the principles of wireless sensor networks (WSNs), their applications, their protocols and standards, and their analysis and test tools; a meticulous care has been accorded to the definitions and terminology. To make WSNs felt and seen, the adopted technologies as well as their manufacturers are presented in detail. In introductory computer networking books, chapters sequencing follows the bottom up or top down architecture of the seven layers protocol. This book starts some steps later, with chapters ordered based on a topic’s significance to the elaboration of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) concepts and issues. With such a depth, this book is intended for a wide audience, it is meant to be a helper and motivator, for both the senior undergraduates, postgraduates, researchers, and practitioners; concepts and WSNs related applications are laid out, research and practical issues are backed by appropriate literature, and new trends are put under focus. For senior undergraduate students, it familiarizes readers with conceptual foundations, applications, and practical project implementations. For graduate students and researchers, transport layer protocols and cross-layering protocols are presented and testbeds and simulators provide a must follow emphasis on the analysis methods and tools for WSNs. For practitioners, besides applications and deployment, the manufacturers and components of WSNs at several platforms and testbeds are fully explored.

Networked Control Systems (NCSs) are spatially distributed systems for which the communication between sensors, actuators and controllers is realized by a shared (wired or wireless) communication network. NCSs offer several advantages, such as reduced installation and maintenance costs, as well as greater flexibility, over conventional control systems in which parts of control loops exchange information via dedicated point-to-point connections. The principal goal of this book is to present a coherent and versatile framework applicable to various settings investigated by the authors over the last several years. This framework is applicable to nonlinear time-varying dynamic plants and controllers with delayed dynamics; a large class of static, dynamic, probabilistic and priority-oriented scheduling protocols; delayed, noisy, lossy and intermittent information exchange; decentralized control problems of heterogeneous agents with time-varying directed (not necessarily balanced) communication topologies; state- and output-feedback; off-line and on-line intermittent feedback; optimal intermittent feedback through Approximate Dynamic Programming (ADP) and Reinforcement Learning (RL); and control systems with exogenous disturbances and modeling uncertainties.

This book provides a broad overview of both the technical challenges in sensor network development, and the real-world applications of distributed sensing. Important aspects of distributed computing in large-scale networked sensor systems are analyzed in the context of human behavior understanding, including topics on systems design tools and techniques. Additionally, the book examines a varied range of applications. Features: contains valuable contributions from an international selection of leading experts in the field; presents a high-level introduction to the aims and motivations underpinning distributed sensing; describes decision-making algorithms in the presence of complex sensor networks; provides a detailed analysis of the design, implementation, and development of a distributed network of homogeneous or heterogeneous sensors; reviews the application of distributed sensing to human behavior understanding and autonomous intelligent vehicles; includes a helpful glossary and a list of acronyms.