The Smart Grid, regarded as the next generation power grid, uses two-way flows of electricity and information to create a widely distributed automated energy delivery network. In this article, we survey the literature till 2011 on the enabling technologies for the Smart Grid. We explore three major systems, namely the smart infrastructure system, the smart management system, and the smart protection system. We also propose possible future directions in each system. colorred{Specifically, for the smart infrastructure system, we explore the smart energy subsystem, the smart information subsystem, and the smart communication subsystem.} For the smart management system, we explore various management objectives, such as improving energy efficiency, profiling demand, maximizing utility, reducing cost, and controlling emission. We also explore various management methods to achieve these objectives. For the smart protection system, we explore various failure protection mechanisms which improve the reliability of the Smart Grid, and explore the security and privacy issues in the Smart Grid.

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Smart Grid — The New and Improved Power Grid: A Survey

Information Theory and Reliable Communication

Smart Grid - The New and Improved Power Grid:

Optical wireless communication (OWC) refers to transmission in unguided propagation media through the use of optical carriers, i.e., visible, infrared (IR), and ultraviolet (UV) bands. In this survey, we focus on outdoor terrestrial OWC links which operate in near IR band. These are widely referred to as free space optical (FSO) communication in the literature. FSO systems are used for high rate communication between two fixed points over distances up to several kilometers. In comparison to radio-frequency (RF) counterparts, FSO links have a very high optical bandwidth available, allowing much higher data rates. They are appealing for a wide range of applications such as metropolitan area network (MAN) extension, local area network (LAN)-to-LAN connectivity, fiber back-up, backhaul for wireless cellular networks, disaster recovery, high definition TV and medical image/video transmission, wireless video surveillance/monitoring, and quantum key distribution among others. Despite the major advantages of FSO technology and variety of its application areas, its widespread use has been hampered by its rather disappointing link reliability particularly in long ranges due to atmospheric turbulence-induced fading and sensitivity to weather conditions. In the last five years or so, there has been a surge of interest in FSO research to address these major technical challenges. Several innovative physical layer concepts, originally introduced in the context of RF systems, such as multiple-input multiple-output communication, cooperative diversity, and adaptive transmission have been recently explored for the design of next generation FSO systems. In this paper, we present an up-to-date survey on FSO communication systems. The first part describes FSO channel models and transmitter/receiver structures. In the second part, we provide details on information theoretical limits of FSO channels and algorithmic-level system design research activities to approach these limits. Specific topics include advances in modulation, channel coding, spatial/cooperative diversity techniques, adaptive transmission, and hybrid RF/FSO systems.

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Survey on Free Space Optical Communication: A Communication Theory Perspective

The reproductive (gametophytic) phase in flowering plants is often highly sensitive to hot or cold temperature stresses, with even a single hot day or cold night sometimes being fatal to reproductive success. This review describes studies of temperature stress on several crop plants, which suggest that pollen development and fertilization may often be the most sensitive reproductive stage. Transcriptome and proteomic studies on several plant species are beginning to identify stress response pathways that function during pollen development. An example is provided here of genotypic differences in the reproductive stress tolerance between two ecotypes of Arabidopsis thaliana Columbia (Col) and Hilversum (Hi-0), when reproducing under conditions of hot days and cold nights. Hi-0 exhibited a more severe reduction in seed set, correlated with a reduction in pollen tube growth potential and tropism defects. Hi-0 thus provides an Arabidopsis model to investigate strategies for improved stress tolerance in pollen. Understanding how different plants cope with stress during reproductive development offers the potential to identify genetic traits that could be manipulated to improve temperature tolerance in selected crop species being cultivated in marginal climates.

Temperature stress and plant sexual reproduction: uncovering the weakest links

Smart grid privacy encompasses the privacy of information extracted by analysing smart metering data. In this paper, we suggest that home electrical power routing can be used to moderate the home's load signature in order to hide appliance usage information. In particular, 1) we introduce a power management model using a rechargeable battery, 2) we propose a power mixing algorithm, and 3) we evaluate its protection level by proposing three different privacy metrics: an information theoretic (relative entropy), a clustering classification, and a correlation/regression one; these are tested on different metering datasets. This paper sets the ground for further research on the subject of optimising home energy management with regards to hiding load signatures.

Privacy for Smart Meters: Towards Undetectable Appliance Load Signatures

Pollen tubes extend through pistil tissues and are guided to ovules where they release sperm for fertilization. Although pollen tubes can germinate and elongate in a synthetic medium, their trajectory is random and their growth rates are slower compared to growth in pistil tissues. Furthermore, interaction with the pistil renders pollen tubes competent to respond to guidance cues secreted by specialized cells within the ovule. The molecular basis for this potentiation of the pollen tube by the pistil remains uncharacterized. Using microarray analysis in Arabidopsis, we show that pollen tubes that have grown through stigma and style tissues of a pistil have a distinct gene expression profile and express a substantially larger fraction of the Arabidopsis genome than pollen grains or pollen tubes grown in vitro. Genes involved in signal transduction, transcription, and pollen tube growth are overrepresented in the subset of the Arabidopsis genome that is enriched in pistil-interacted pollen tubes, suggesting the possibility of a regulatory network that orchestrates gene expression as pollen tubes migrate through the pistil. Reverse genetic analysis of genes induced during pollen tube growth identified seven that had not previously been implicated in pollen tube growth. Two genes are required for pollen tube navigation through the pistil, and five genes are required for optimal pollen tube elongation in vitro. Our studies form the foundation for functional genomic analysis of the interactions between the pollen tube and the pistil, which is an excellent system for elucidation of novel modes of cell–cell interaction.

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Penetration of the Stigma and Style Elicits a Novel Transcriptome in Pollen Tubes, Pointing to Genes Critical for Growth in a Pistil

In this paper, coded multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) communication schemes for data transmission over the optical atmospheric turbulence channels are studied. Two strategies are proposed and compared. The first is based on repetition coding, and the second on space-time (ST) coding. Both approaches employ low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes. The LDPC codes are designed using the concept of pairwise balanced design (PBD), balanced incomplete block design (BIBBD), and block-circulant (array) codes. To improve the spectral efficiency, we employ a bit-interleaved (BI) LDPC-coded modulation based on the pulse amplitude modulation (PAM). A better bit error rate (BER) performance is achieved by the iteration of extrinsic information between a demapper and LDPC decoder. The simulations show that the LDPC-coded MIMO schemes can operate under a strong atmospheric turbulence and at the same time provide excellent coding gains compared with the transmission of uncoded data. To verify the efficiency of the proposed coding schemes, achievable information rates are computed when the turbulence is modeled by a gamma-gamma distribution.

LDPC-Coded MIMO Optical Communication Over the Atmospheric Turbulence Channel

The data collected by a home smart meter can potentially reveal sensitive private information about the home resident(s). In this paper, we study how home energy resources can be used to protect the privacy of the collected data. In particular we: a) introduce a power mixing algorithm to selectively protect a set of consumption events; b) develop a range of different privacy protection metrics; c) analyze real smart metering data sampled twice a minute over a period of 13 days; and d) evaluate the protection offered by different power mixing algorithms. Major factors which determine the efficiency of the proposed power mixing algorithms are identified, such as battery capacity and power, and user preferences for privacy-based allocations of battery energy quotas.

ElecPrivacy: Evaluating the Privacy Protection of Electricity Management Algorithms

The availability of Channel State Information (CSI) and the effects of channel memory on the capacities and the achievable rates of free-space optical communication channels are investigated. For memoryless channels, the capacities and achievable rates are computed and compared for both uniform and ldquopositiverdquo Gaussian inputs subject to different assumptions on the CSI availability. For the strong turbulence regime, it is shown that the knowledge of CSI both at the transmitter and the receiver increases the achievable rates for low-to-moderate Signal-to-Noise Ratios (SNRs) in comparison to the cases for which the CSI is known only at the receiver. For the weak turbulence regime however, the availability of CSI at both ends of the link does not provide any improvement over a system with CSI known at the receiver alone, and we find that a simple channel inversion technique suffices. In addition, for low SNRs, Pulse Amplitude Modulation (PAM) with M ges 4 levels outperforms Gaussian-distributed inputs regardless of the knowledge of CSI at the transmitter. For high SNRs, a Gaussian distribution gives superior results, implying the need for new, more efficient positive signal constellations. For channels with memory and without knowledge of CSI, a change in the channel quasifrequency has negligible effects on the capacity for any turbulence regime.

Stojan Denic

Papers

Privacy for Smart Meters: Towards Undetectable Appliance Load Signatures

Penetration of the Stigma and Style Elicits a Novel Transcriptome in Pollen Tubes, Pointing to Genes Critical for Growth in a Pistil

LDPC-Coded MIMO Optical Communication Over the Atmospheric Turbulence Channel

ElecPrivacy: Evaluating the Privacy Protection of Electricity Management Algorithms

Information Theoretic Limits for Free-Space Optical Channels With and Without Memory