Böcker utgivna av In Tech

This book brings together contributions from experts in the fields to describe the current status of important topics in solid-state circuit technologies. It consists of 20 chapters which are grouped under the following categories: general information, circuits and devices, materials, and characterization techniques. These chapters have been written by renowned experts in the respective fields making this book valuable to the integrated circuits and materials science communities. It is intended for a diverse readership including electrical engineers and material scientists in the industry and academic institutions. Readers will be able to familiarize themselves with the latest technologies in the various fields.

In the last decades the restless evolution of information and communication technologies (ICT) brought to a deep transformation of our habits. The growth of the Internet and the advances in hardware and software implementations modi¿ed our way to communicate and to share information. In this book, an overview of the major issues faced today by researchers in the ¿eld of radio communications is given through 35 high quality chapters written by specialists working in universities and research centers all over the world. Various aspects will be deeply discussed: channel modeling, beamforming, multiple antennas, cooperative networks, opportunistic scheduling, advanced admission control, handover management, systems performance assessment, routing issues in mobility conditions, localization, web security. Advanced techniques for the radio resource management will be discussed both in single and multiple radio technologies; either in infrastructure, mesh or ad hoc networks.

Semiconductor technologies continue to evolve and amaze us. New materials, new structures, new manufacturing tools, and new advancements in modelling and simulation form a breeding ground for novel high performance electronic and photonic devices. This book covers all aspects of semiconductor technology concerning materials, technological processes, and devices, including their modelling, design, integration, and manufacturing.

Modelling and computations in electromagnetics is a quite fast-growing research area. Therecent interest in this field is caused by the increased demand for designing complex microwavecomponents, modeling electromagnetic materials, and rapid increase in computational powerfor calculation of complex electromagnetic problems. The first part of this book is devoted tothe advances in the analysis techniques such as method of moments, finite-difference time-domain method, boundary perturbation theory, Fourier analysis, mode-matching method,and analysis based on circuit theory. These techniques are considered with regard to severalchallenging technological applications such as those related to electrically large devices,scattering in layered structures, photonic crystals, and artificial materials.The second part of the book deals with waveguides, transmission lines and transitions. Thisincludes microstrip lines (MSL), slot waveguides, substrate integrated waveguides (SIW),vertical transmission lines in multilayer media as well as MSL to SIW and MSL to slot linetransitions.

Biomedical imaging is becoming an indispensable branch within bioengineering. This researchfield has recently expanded due to the requirement of high-level medical diagnostics and rapiddevelopment of interdisciplinary modern technologies. This book is designed to present themost recent advances in instrumentation, methods, and image processing as well as clinicalapplications in important areas of biomedical imaging. It provides broad coverage ofthe field of biomedical imaging, with particular attention to an engineering viewpoint.The goal of the book is to provide a wide-ranging forum in the biomedical imaging fieldthat integrates interdisciplinary research and development of interest to scientists, engineers,teachers, students, and clinical providers.

In nature, it is possible to observe a cooperative behaviour in all animals, since, according to Charles Darwin's theory, every being, from ants to human beings, form groups in which most individuals work for the common good. However, although study of dozens of social species has been done for a century, details of how and why cooperation evolved remain to be worked out. Actually, cooperative behaviour has been studied from different points of view. Swarm robotics is a new approach that emerged on the field of artificial swarm intelligence, as well as the biological studies of insects (i.e. ants and other fields in nature) which coordinate their actions to accomplish tasks that are beyond the capabilities of a single individual. In particular, swarm robotics is focused on the coordination of decentralised, self-organised multi-robot systems in order to describe such a collective behaviour as a consequence of local interactions with one another and with their environment. This book has only provided a partial picture of the field of swarm robotics by focusing on practical applications. The global assessment of the contributions contained in this book is reasonably positive since they highlighted that it is necessary to adapt and remodel biological strategies to cope with the added complexity and problems that arise when robot individuals are considered.

Starting a journey on the new path of converging information technologies is the aim of the present book. Extended on 27 chapters, the book provides the reader with some leading-edge research results regarding algorithms and information models, software frameworks, multimedia, information security, communication networks, and applications. Information technologies are only at the dawn of a massive transformation and adaptation to the complex demands of the new upcoming information society. It is not possible to achieve a thorough view of the field in one book. Nonetheless, the editor hopes that the book can at least offer the first step into the convergence domain of information technologies, and the reader will find it instructive and stimulating.

This book by In-Tech publishing helps the reader understand the power of informed decision making by covering a broad range of DSS (Decision Support Systems) applications in the fields of medical, environmental, transport and business. The expertise of the chapter writers spans an equally extensive spectrum of researchers from around the globe including universities in Canada, Mexico, Brazil and the United States, to institutes and universities in Italy, Germany, Poland, France, United Kingdom, Romania, Turkey and Ireland to as far east as Malaysia and Singapore and as far north as Finland. Decision Support Systems are not a new technology but they have evolved and developed with the ever demanding necessity to analyse a large number of options for decision makers (DM) for specific situations, where there is an increasing level of uncertainty about the problem at hand and where there is a high impact relative to the correct decisions to be made. DSS's offer decision makers a more stable solution to solving the semi-structured and unstructured problem. This is exactly what the reader will see in this book.

Lithography, the fundamental fabrication process of semiconductor devices, plays a critical role in micro- and nano-fabrications and the revolution in high density integrated circuits.This book is the result of inspirations and contributions from many researchers worldwide. Although the inclusion of the book chapters may not be a complete representation of all lithographic arts, it does represent a good collection of contributions in this field. We hope readers will enjoy reading the book as much as we have enjoyed bringing it together. We would like to thank all contributors and authors of this book.

Forecasts point to a huge increase in energy demand over the next 25 years, with a direct and immediate impact on the exhaustion of fossil fuels, the increase in pollution levels and the global warming that will have significant consequences for all sectors of society. Irrespective of the likelihood of these predictions or what researchers in different scientific disciplines may believe or publicly say about how critical the energy situation may be on a world level, it is without doubt one of the great debates that has stirred up public interest in modern times. We should probably already be thinking about the design of a worldwide strategic plan for energy management across the planet. It would include measures to raise awareness, educate the different actors involved, develop policies, provide resources, prioritise actions and establish contingency plans. This process is complex and depends on political, social, economic and technological factors that are hard to take into account simultaneously. Then, before such a plan is formulated, studies such as those described in this book can serve to illustrate what Information and Communication Technologies have to offer in this sphere and, with luck, to create a reference to encourage investigators in the pursuit of new and better solutions.

This book provides a timely overview of a current state of knowledge of the use of polymerthin film for important technological applications. Polymer thin film book covers the scientificprinciples and technologies that are necessary to implement the use of polymer electronicdevice. A wide-ranging and definitive coverage of this emerging field is provided for bothacademic and practicing scientists. The book is intended to enable readers with a specificbackground, e.g. polymer nanotechnology, to become acquainted with other specialist aspectsof this multidisciplinary field. Part A of the book covers the fundamental of the key aspect related to thedevelopment and improvement of polymer thin film technology and part B covers moreadvanced aspects of the technology are dealt with nano-polymer layer which provide anup-to-date survey of current research directions in the area of polymer thin film and itsapplication skills.

The book presents several advances in different research areas related to data storage, from the design of a hierarchical memory subsystem in embedded signal processing systems for data-intensive applications, through data representation in flash memories, data recording and retrieval in conventional optical data storage systems and the more recent holographic systems, to applications in medicine requiring massive image databases.

Smart homes are intelligent environments that interact dynamically and respond readily in an adaptive manner to the needs of the occupants and changes in the ambient conditions.  The realization of systems that support the smart homes concept requires integration of technologies from different fields.  Among the challenges that the designers face is to make all the components of the system interact in a seamless, reliable and secure manner. Another major challenge is to design the smart home in a way that takes into account the way humans live and interact.  This later aspect requires input from the humanities and social sciences fields.  The need for input from diverse fields of knowledge reflects the multidisciplinary nature of the research and development effort required to realize smart homes that are acceptable to the general public. The applications that can be supported by a smart home are very wide and their degree of sophistication depends on the underlying technology used.  Some of the application areas include monitoring and control of appliances, security, telemedicine, entertainment, location based services, care for children and the elderly... etc. This book consists of eleven chapters that cover various aspects of smart home systems.

The 14 chapters presented in this book cover a wide variety of representativeworks ranging from hardware design to application development. Particularly, the topicsthat are addressed are programmable and reconfigurable devices and systems, dependabilityof GPUs (General Purpose Units), network topologies, cache coherence protocols, resourceallocation, scheduling algorithms, peertopeer networks, largescale network simulation, andparallel routines and algorithms. In this way, the articles included in this book constitutean excellent reference for engineers and researchers who have particular interests in each ofthese topics in parallel and distributed computing.

The evolution of solid-state circuit technology has a long history within a relatively short period of time. This technology has lead to the modern information society that connects us and tools, a large market, and many types of products and applications. The solid-state circuit technology continuously evolves via breakthroughs and improvements every year. This book is devoted to review and present novel approaches for some of the main issues involved in this exciting and vigorous technology. The book is composed of 22 chapters, written by authors coming from 30 different institutions located in 12 different countries throughout the Americas, Asia and Europe. Thus, reflecting the wide international contribution to the book.The broad range of subjects presented in the book offers a general overview of the main issues in modern solid-state circuit technology. Furthermore, the book offers an in depth analysis on specific subjects for specialists. We believe the book is of great scientific and educational value for many readers. I am profoundly indebted to the support provided by all of those involved in the work. First and foremost I would like to acknowledge and thank the authors who worked hard and generously agreed to share their results and knowledge. Second I would like to express my gratitude to the Intech team that invited me to edit the book and give me their full support and a fruitful experience while working together to combine this book.

Computer-Aided Design and system analysis aim to find mathematical models that allow emulating the behaviour of components and facilities. The high competitiveness in industry, the little time available for product development and the high cost in terms of time and money of producing the initial prototypes means that the computer-aided design and analysis of products are taking on major importance. On the other hand, in most areas of engineering the components of a system are interconnected and belong to different domains of physics (mechanics, electrics, hydraulics, thermal...). When developing a complete multidisciplinary system, it needs to integrate a design procedure to ensure that it will be successfully achieved. Engineering systems require an analysis of their dynamic behaviour (evolution over time or path of their different variables). The purpose of modelling and simulating dynamic systems is to generate a set of algebraic and differential equations or a mathematical model. In order to perform rapid product optimisation iterations, the models must be formulated and evaluated in the most efficient way. Automated environments contribute to this. One of the pioneers of simulation technology in medicine defines simulation as a technique, not a technology, that replaces real experiences with guided experiences reproducing important aspects of the real world in a fully interactive fashion [iii]. In the following chapters the reader will be introduced to the world of simulation in topics of current interest such as medicine, military purposes and their use in industry for diverse applications that range from the use of networks to combining thermal, chemical or electrical aspects, among others.We hope that after reading the different sections of this book we will have succeeded in bringing across what the scientific community is doing in the field of simulation and that it will be to your interest and liking. Lastly, we would like to thank all the authors for their excellent contributions in the different areas of simulation.

Mechatronics, the synergistic blend of mechanics, electronics, and computer science, has evolved over the past twenty five years, leading to a novel stage of engineering design. By integrating the best design practices with the most advanced technologies, mechatronics aims at realizing high-quality products, guaranteeing at the same time a substantial reduction of time and costs of manufacturing.Mechatronic systems are manifold and range from machine components, motion generators, and power producing machines to more complex devices, such as robotic systems and transportation vehicles. With its twenty chapters, which collect contributions from many researchers worldwide, this book provides an excellent survey of recent work in the field of mechatronics with applications in various fields, like robotics, medical and assistive technology, human-machine interaction, unmanned vehicles, manufacturing, and education. We would like to thank all the authors who have invested a great deal of time to write such interesting chapters, which we are sure will be valuable to the readers.Chapters 1 to 6 deal with applications of mechatronics for the development of robotic systems. Medical and assistive technologies and human-machine interaction systems are the topic of chapters 7 to 13.Chapters 14 and 15 concern mechatronic systems for autonomous vehicles. Chapters 16-19 deal with mechatronics in manufacturing contexts. Chapter 20 concludes the book, describing a method for the installation of mechatronics education in schools.

Mobile and wireless communications applications have a clear impact on improving the humanity wellbeing. From cell phones to wireless internet to home and office devices, most of the applications are converted from wired into wireless communication. Smart and advanced wireless communication environments represent the future technology and evolutionary development step in homes, hospitals, industrial, vehicular and transportation systems. A very appealing research area in these environments has been the wireless ad hoc, sensor and mesh networks. These networks rely on ultra low powered processing nodes that sense surrounding environment temperature, pressure, humidity, motion or chemical hazards, etc. Moreover, the radio frequency (RF) transceiver nodes of such networks require the design of transmitter and receiver equipped with high performance building blocks including antennas, power and low noise amplifiers, mixers and voltage controlled oscillators. Nowadays, the researchers are facing several challenges to design such building blocks while complying with ultra low power consumption, small area and high performance constraints. CMOS technology represents an excellent candidate to facilitate the integration of the whole transceiver on a single chip. However, several challenges have to be tackled while designing and using nanoscale CMOS technologies and require innovative idea from researchers and circuits designers. While major researchers and applications have been focusing on RF wireless communication, optical wireless communication based system has started to draw some attention from researchers for a terrestrial system as well as for aerial and satellite terminals. This renewed interested in optical wireless communications is driven by several advantages such as no licensing requirements policy, no RF radiation hazards, and no need to dig up roads besides its large bandwidth and low power consumption. This second part of the book, Mobile and Wireless Communications: Key Technologies and Future Applications, covers the recent development in ad hoc and sensor networks, the implementation of state of the art of wireless transceivers building blocks and recent development on optical wireless communication systems. We hope that this book will be useful for students, researchers and practitioners in their research studies.

In this book "Radar Technology", the chapters are divided into four main topic areas:Topic area 1: "Radar Systems" consists of chapters which treat whole radar systems, environment and target functional chain.Topic area 2: "Radar Applications" shows various applications of radar systems, including meteorological radars, ground penetrating radars and glaciology.Topic area 3: "Radar Functional Chain and Signal Processing" describes several aspects of the radar signalprocessing. From parameter extraction, target detection over tracking and classification technologies.Topic area 4: "Radar Subsystems and Components" consists of design technology of radar subsystem components like antenna design or waveform design.

This book is planned to publish with an objective to provide a state-of-the-art referencebook in the areas of advanced microwave, MM-Wave and THz devices, antennas andsystemtechnologies for microwave communication engineers, Scientists and post-graduatestudents of electrical and electronics engineering, applied physicists. This reference bookis a collection of 30 Chapters characterized in 3 parts: Advanced Microwave and MM-wavedevices, integrated microwave and MM-wave circuits and Antennas and advanced microwavecomputer techniques, focusing on simulation, theories and applications. This book provides acomprehensive overview of the components and devices used in microwave and MM-Wavecircuits, including microwave transmission lines, resonators, filters, ferrite devices, solid state devices, transistor oscillators and amplifiers, directional couplers, microstripeline components,microwave detectors, mixers, converters and harmonic generators, and microwave solid-stateswitches, phase shifters and attenuators. Several applications area also discusses here, likeconsumer, industrial, biomedical, and chemical applications of microwave technology. It alsocovers microwave instrumentation and measurement, thermodynamics, and applications innavigation and radio communication.

This book discusses key aspects of MEMS technology areas, organized in twenty-seven chapters that present the latest research developments in micro electronic and mechanical systems. The book addresses a wide range of fundamental and practical issues related to MEMS, advanced metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) and complementary MOS (CMOS) devices, SoC technology, integrated circuit testing and verification, and other important topics in the field. ?Several chapters cover state-of-the-art microfabrication techniques and materials as enabling technologies for the microsystems. Reliability issues concerning both electronic and mechanical aspects of these devices and systems are also addressed in various chapters.

Nanotechnology will be soon required in most engineering and science curricula. It cannot be questioned that cutting-edge applications based on nanoscience are having a considerable impact in nearly all fields of research, from basic to more problem-solving scientific enterprises. In this sense, books like "Silver Nanoparticles" aim at filling the gaps for comprehensive information to help both newcomers and experts, in a particular fast-growing area of research. Besides, one of the key features of this book is that it could serve both academia and industry. "Silver nanoparticles" is a collection of eighteen chapters written by experts in their respective fields. These reviews are representative of the current research areas within silver nanoparticle nanoscience and nanotechnology.

Nature's evolution has led to the introduction of highly efficient biological mechanisms. Imitating these mechanisms offers an enormous potential for the improvement of our day to day life. Ideally, by bio-inspiration we can get a better view of nature's capability while studying its models and adapting it for our benefit. This book takes us into the interesting world of biomimetics and describes various arenas where the technology is applied. The 25 chapters covered in this book disclose recent advances and new ideas in promoting the mechanism and applications of biomimetics.

From 3rd to 5th March 2008 the International Association of Technology, Education and Development organised its International Technology, Education and Development Conference in Valencia, Spain. Over a hundred papers were presented by participants from a great variety of countries.Summarising, this book provides a kaleidoscopic view of work that is done, all over the world in (higher) education, characterised by the key words 'Education" and 'Development'. I wish the reader an enlightening experience.

Liquid crystal technology is a subject of many advanced areas of science and engineering. It is commonly associated with liquid crystal displays applied in calculators, watches, mobile phones, digital cameras, monitors etc. But nowadays liquid crystals find more and more use in photonics, telecommunications, medicine and other fields. The goal of this book is to show the increasing importance of liquid crystals in industrial and scientific applications and inspire future research and engineering ideas in students,young researchers and practitioners.

The widespread deployment and use of Information Technologies (IT) has paved the way for change in many fields of our societies. The Internet, mobile computing, social networks and many other advances in human communications have become essential to promote and boost education, technology and industry. On the education side, the new challenges related with the integration of IT technologies into all aspects of learning require revising the traditional educational paradigms that have prevailed for the last centuries. Additionally, the globalization of education and student mobility requirements are favoring a fluid interchange of tools, methodologies and evaluation strategies, which promote innovation at an accelerated pace. Curricular revisions are also taking place to achieved a more specialized education that is able to responds to the society¿s requirements in terms of professional training. In this process, guaranteeing quality has also become a critical issue. On the industrial and technological side, the focus on ecological developments is essential to achieve a sustainable degree of prosperity, and all efforts to promote greener societies are welcome. In this book we gather knowledge and experiences of different authors on all these topics, hoping to offer the reader a wider view of the revolution taking place within and without our educational centers. In summary, we believe that this book makes an important contribution to the fields of education and technology in these times of great change, offering a mean for experts in the different areas to share valuable experiences and points of view that we hope are enriching to the reader. Enjoy the book!

This book presents several recent advances on Evolutionary Computation, specially evolution-basedoptimization methods and hybrid algorithms for several applications, from optimization and learning to pattern recognition and bioinformatics. This book also presents new algorithms based on several analogies and metafores, where one of them is based on philosophy, specifically on the philosophy of praxis and dialectics. In this book it is also presented interesting applications on bioinformatics, specially the use of particle swarms to discover gene expression patterns in DNA microarrays. Therefore, this book features representative work on the field of evolutionary computation and applied sciences. The intended audience is graduate, undergraduate, researchers, and anyone who wishes to become familiar with the latest research work on this field.

The signal processing task is a very critical issue in the majority of new technological inventions and challenges in a variety of applications in both science and engineering fields. Classical signal processing techniques have largely worked with mathematical models that are linear, local, stationary, and Gaussian. They have always favored closed-form tractability over real-world accuracy. These constraints were imposed by the lack of powerful computing tools. During the last few decades, signal processing theories, developments, and applications have matured rapidly and now include tools from many areas of mathematics, computer science, physics, and engineering. This book is targeted primarily toward both students and researchers who want to be exposed to a wide variety of signal processing techniques and algorithms. It includes 27 chapters that can be categorized into five different areas depending on the application at hand. These five categories are ordered to address image processing, speech processing, communication systems, time-series analysis, and educational packages respectively. The book has the advantage of providing a collection of applications that are completely independent and self-contained; thus, the interested reader can choose any chapter and skip to another without losing continuity.

Remote Sensing is collecting and interpreting information on targets without being in physical contact with the objects. Aircraft, satellites ...etc are the major platforms for remote sensing observations. Unlike electrical, magnetic and gravity surveys that measure force fields, remote sensing technology is commonly referred to methods that employ electromagnetic energy as radio waves, light and heat as the means of detecting and measuring target characteristics.Geoscience is a study of nature world from the core of the earth, to the depths of oceans and to the outer space. This branch of study can help mitigate volcanic eruptions, floods, landslides ... etc terrible human life disaster and help develop ground water, mineral ores, fossil fuels and construction materials. Also, it studies physical, chemical reactions to understand the distribution of the nature resources. Therefore, the geoscience encompass earth, atmospheric, oceanography, pedology, petrology, mineralogy, hydrology and geology.This book covers latest and futuristic developments in remote sensing novel theory and applications by numerous scholars, researchers and experts. It is organized into 26 excellent chapters which include optical and infrared modeling, microwave scattering propagation, forests and vegetation, soils, ocean temperature, geographic information , object classification, data mining, image processing, passive optical sensor, multispectral and hyperspectral sensing, lidar, radiometer instruments, calibration, active microwave and SAR processing.Last but not the least, this book presented chapters that highlight frontier works in remote sensing information processing. I am very pleased to have leaders in the field to prepare and contribute their most current research and development work. Although no attempt is made to cover every topic in remote sensing and geoscience, these entire 26 remote sensing technology chapters shall give readers a good insight. All topics listed are equal important and significant.

The book generously covers a wide range of aspects and issues related to RFID systems, namely the design of RFID antennas, RFID readers and the variety of tags (e.g. UHF tags for sensing applications, surface acoustic wave RFID tags, smart RFID tags), complex RFID systems, security and privacy issues in RFID applications, as well as the selection of encryption algorithms. The book offers new insights, solutions and ideas for the design of efficient RFID architectures and applications. While not pretending to be comprehensive, its wide coverage may be appropriate not only for RFID novices but also for experienced technical professionals and RFID aficionados.