Praise for the Third Edition: "This is one of the best books available. Its excellent organizational structure allows quick reference to specific models and its clear presentation . . . solidifies the understanding of the concepts being presented."IIE Transactions on Operations EngineeringThoroughly revised and expanded to reflect the latest developments in the field, Fundamentals of Queueing Theory, Fourth Edition continues to present the basic statistical principles that are necessary to analyze the probabilistic nature of queues. Rather than presenting a narrow focus on the subject, this update illustrates the wide-reaching, fundamental concepts in queueing theory and its applications to diverse areas such as computer science, engineering, business, and operations research.This update takes a numerical approach to understanding and making probable estimations relating to queues, with a comprehensive outline of simple and more advanced queueing models. Newly featured topics of the Fourth Edition include:Retrial queuesApproximations for queueing networksNumerical inversion of transformsDetermining the appropriate number of servers to balance quality and cost of serviceEach chapter provides a self-contained presentation of key concepts and formulae, allowing readers to work with each section independently, while a summary table at the end of the book outlines the types of queues that have been discussed and their results. In addition, two new appendices have been added, discussing transforms and generating functions as well as the fundamentals of differential and difference equations. New examples are now included along with problems that incorporate QtsPlus software, which is freely available via the book's related Web site.With its accessible style and wealth of real-world examples, Fundamentals of Queueing Theory, Fourth Edition is an ideal book for courses on queueing theory at the upper-undergraduate and graduate levels. It is also a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners who analyze congestion in the fields of telecommunications, transportation, aviation, and management science.

Fundamentals of Queueing Theory

We describe algorithmic enhancements to a decision-support tool that residential consumers can utilize to optimize their acquisition of electrical energy services. The decision-support tool optimizes energy services provision by enabling end users to first assign values to desired energy services, and then scheduling their available distributed energy resources (DER) to maximize net benefits. We chose particle swarm optimization (PSO) to solve the corresponding optimization problem because of its straightforward implementation and demonstrated ability to generate near-optimal schedules within manageable computation times. We improve the basic formulation of cooperative PSO by introducing stochastic repulsion among the particles. The improved DER schedules are then used to investigate the potential consumer value added by coordinated DER scheduling. This is computed by comparing the end-user costs obtained with the enhanced algorithm simultaneously scheduling all DER, against the costs when each DER schedule is solved separately. This comparison enables the end users to determine whether their mix of energy service needs, available DER and electricity tariff arrangements might warrant solving the more complex coordinated scheduling problem, or instead, decomposing the problem into multiple simpler optimizations.

Coordinated Scheduling of Residential Distributed Energy Resources to Optimize Smart Home Energy Services

Server consolidation using virtualization technology has become increasingly important for improving data center efficiency It enables one physical server to host multiple independent virtual machines (VMs), and the transparent movement of workloads from one server to another Fine-grained virtual machine resource allocation and reallocation are possible in order to meet the performance targets of applications running on virtual machines On the other hand, these capabilities create demands on system management, especially for large-scale data centers In this paper, a two-level control system is proposed to manage the mappings of workloads to VMs and VMs to physical resources The focus is on the VM placement problem which is posed as a multi-objective optimization problem of simultaneously minimizing total resource wastage, power consumption and thermal dissipation costs An improved genetic algorithm with fuzzy multi-objective evaluation is proposed for efficiently searching the large solution space and conveniently combining possibly conflicting objectives The simulation-based evaluation using power-consumption and thermal-dissipation models based on profiling of a Blade Center, demonstrates the good performance, scalability and robustness of our proposed approach Compared with four well-known bin-packing algorithms and two single-objective approaches, the solutions obtained from our approach seek good balance among the conflicting objectives while others cannot

Multi-Objective Virtual Machine Placement in Virtualized Data Center Environments

DC microgrids and distribution systems: An overview

Biosensors and bioelectronics on smartphone for portable biochemical detection.

In this paper we describe the Wireless Power-Controlled Outlet Module (WPCOM) with a scalable mechanism for home power management which we have developed. The WPCOM integrates the multiple AC power sockets and a simple low-power microcontroller into a power outlet to switch the power of the sockets ON/OFF and to measure the power consumption of plugged electric home appliances. Our WPCOM consists of six scalable modules, that is, the Essential Control Module, the Bluetooth Module, the GSM Module, the Ethernet Module, the SD Card Module and the Power Measuring Module, which together provide an indoor wireless, and an outdoor remote control and monitor of electric home appliances. We have designed a PDA control software and remote control software which support the Graphic User Interface, thus allowing the user to easily monitor the electric home appliances through the PDA and the Internet individually. In addition, we use a Short Message Service to achieve control and monitoring through a GSM cellular mobile phone for remote use anytime and anywhere.

Remote-Controllable Power Outlet System for Home Power Management

In this paper we use the accelerometer of a smart phone to design and implement a fall monitor with GPS function for the user. We not only analyze the change of acceleration but also analyze the six typical actions of humans. These are going upstairs, going downstairs, standing up, sitting down, running and jumping. Then we compare the six actions with the characteristics of a fall. These are weightlessness, impact, immobility and overturning of the body. Our design is based on an open source system platform and the accelerometer in the smart phone. If there has been a fall motion our design provides the GPS functionality to obtain the location of the user and draws the help path on both the smart phones and the computers of his family, friends or help center immediately.

Design and implementation of a fall monitor system by using a 3-axis accelerometer in a smart phone

The power consumption of a streaming-media server can be obtained in real time by using the virtual-instrumentation software described in this paper without using an additional hardware meter. We have built a model to estimate the power consumption from the observation of experimental data that consists of tracking the CPU utilization and detecting the operation parameters of the measured servers. When calculated in real time, the CPU utilization can respond to the dynamic change of the power consumption of the measured servers. The operation parameters represent the hardware configuration of the measured servers. We also propose three methods to obtain these parameters: filled- manually, hardware-revised, and software-revised parameter estimating. We have constructed the virtual-instrumentation software according to this power model to measure the power consumption of the streaming-media server. To facilitate the measurement process, we have also designed a suitable graphic-user interface for it. Our virtual-instrumentation software with three parameter-estimating methods has been tested by way of comparison with measurement results obtained by a power meter. The average power values of the hardware-revised method are found to yield mean errors of the estimate within 3%. The mean error of the software-revised method is within 6%. However, the filled- manually method may underestimate the power consumption by as much as 11%.

Estimation by Software for the Power Consumption of Streaming-Media Servers

In this paper we have designed a remote power on/off control and a current measurement for electric outlets, based on both an embedded board and on ZigBee communication. This design consists of two parts: the ZigBee control module and the server module. The ZigBee control module contains several controllable outlets, a current measurement circuit, the ZigBee receiving and transmission circuit and a micro control unit. The measurement circuit senses the current and sends back a signal to the server module through the ZigBee. The measurement data of the current and voltage detection can be stored in the embedded board, and they can be designed to become aware of any overload and to send out a message to the circuit breaker for safety. We use Visual Basic as the interface software for the design of the graphic user interface to provide a user-friendly operation of a typical homepsilas electric outlets.

Remote power On/Off control and current measurement for home electric outlets based on a low-power embedded board and ZigBee communication

In this paper an embedded remote monitoring and controlling power socket (RMCPS) has been developed with high suitability for automatic and power management of home electric appliances. It requires no new layout and has the advantage of low cost, low electricity consumption, small volume and convenient installation to replace the PC with a Web server construction. The RMCPS consists of three modules: the Essential Module, the Power Line Communication (PLC) Module and the Detection Module. This allows the user a remote Internet connection to an embedded power socket to both monitor and control home electric appliances.

Ying-Wen Bai

Papers

Remote-Controllable Power Outlet System for Home Power Management

Design and implementation of a fall monitor system by using a 3-axis accelerometer in a smart phone

Estimation by Software for the Power Consumption of Streaming-Media Servers

Remote power On/Off control and current measurement for home electric outlets based on a low-power embedded board and ZigBee communication

Home appliance energy monitoring and controlling based on Power Line Communication