Daniel J. C. Coura

Demand Planning in Smart Homes

This paper deals with the application of Heuristic and Genetic Algorithms to solve the demand planning problem in smart homes, in order to reduce the total monetary value of consumed energy or offset the seasonality from based electric generators renewable sources such as wind and solar generators. The demand management application takes into account the presence of distributed generation, time-differentiated prices (White Tariff), priority of loads and prepaid rate. The demand planning is a combinatorial problem subjected to the load allocation restrictions. The problem is solved using a heuristic method together with a Genetic Algorithm to get a compromise between comfort and the cost of energy expended. Tests with a radial residential system are performed in order to validate the model.

A passive optical network based on centralized wavelength and bandwidth scalable OFDM signals

In this paper, we propose a simple and cost-effective bandwidth scalable passive optical network (PON) based on orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (BSOFDM-PON). We report performance analysis in terms of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), bit-error-rate (BER) and error vector magnitude (EVM) of a PON system accommodating 32 optical network units (ONUs). Our simulations have successfully demonstrated that throughput of 35.5 and 53.2 Gbps can be achieved using 16 and 64 QAM, respectively, within a total distance ranging from 20 to 30 km. It gives throughputs of 1.10 and 1.66 Gbps per ONU.