Geert Deconinck

Control of Microgrids

The motivation to develop microgrids, as a particular form of active networks is explained and presented as an effective solution for the control of grids with high levels of distibuted energy resources. The operation, more in particular the voltage and frequency control, is discussed. Control concepts useful with microgrids are detailed and implemented. Besides technical control aspects, also economical ones are developed. Primary, secondary and tertiary control algorithms are designed operating in a completely distributed way. The theoretical concepts are tested in a extensive laboratory experiment implementing a realistic scenario by using a setup of four inverters able to communicate through an Internet connection.

A Scalable Three-Step Approach for Demand Side Management of Plug-in Hybrid Vehicles

In this paper, we present a scalable approach for DSM (demand side management) of PHEVs (plug-in hybrid electric vehicles). Essentially, our approach consists of three steps: aggregation, optimization, and control. In the aggregation step, individual PHEV charging constraints are aggregated upwards in a tree structure. In the optimization step, the aggregated constraints are used for scalable computation of a collective charging plan, which minimizes costs for electricity supply. In the real-time control step, this charging plan is used to create an incentive signal for all PHEVs, determined by a market-based priority scheme. These three steps are executed iteratively to cope with uncertainty and dynamism. In simulation experiments, the proposed three-step approach is benchmarked against classic, fully centralized approaches. Results show that our approach is able to charge PHEVs with comparable quality to optimal, centrally computed charging plans, while significantly improving scalability.

Reconfigurable instruction set processors from a hardware/software perspective

This paper presents the design alternatives for reconfigurable instruction set processors (RISP) from a hardware/software point of view. Reconfigurable instruction set processors are programmable processors that contain reconfigurable logic in one or more of its functional units. Hardware design of such a type of processors can be split in two main tasks: the design of the reconfigurable logic and the design of the interfacing mechanisms of this logic to the rest of the processor. Among the most important design parameters are: the granularity of the reconfigurable logic, the structure of the configuration memory, the instruction encoding format, and the type of instructions supported. On the software side, code generation tools require new techniques to cope with the reconfigurability of the processor. Aside from traditional techniques, code generation requires the creation and evaluation of new reconfigurable instructions and the selection of instructions to minimize reconfiguration time. The most important design alternative on the software side is the degree of automatization present in the code generation tools.

Correlation between color quality metric predictions and visual appreciation of light sources.

Over the past years there has been increasing evidence that the CIE color rendering index R(a) fails to correspond to the perceived color quality of many light sources, especially some Light-Emitting-Diodes. Several proposals to update, complement or even replace the CIE R(a) have therefore been made. The performance of thirteen color quality metrics was evaluated by calculating the average correlation of the metric predictions with the visual scaling of the perceived color quality obtained in several psychophysical studies. Two aspects of perceived color quality were investigated, appreciation (preference or attractiveness) and naturalness. The memory color quality metric (S(a)) of Smet et al. was found to correlate highly with perceived appreciation (r = 0.88). It was found to be statistically better (p<0.0001) at it than all other metrics. The CIE R(a) performed the worst. A metric that combines the gamut area index (GAI) and the CIE R(a) using an arithmetic mean correlated highly with the perceived naturalness of a light source (r = 0.85). It was found to be statistically better at predicting naturalness than all other metrics (p<0.0001). A negative correlation was found, between the capabilities of a light sources ability to predict appreciation and naturalness, indicating that a complete description of the color quality of a light source probably requires more than one metric.

High power light-emitting diode junction temperature determination from current-voltage characteristics

Optical and electrical characteristics of power light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are strongly dependent on the diode junction temperature. However, direct junction temperature determination is not possible and alternative methods must be developed. Current-voltage characteristics of commercial high power LEDs have been measured at six different temperatures ranging between 295 and 400 K. Modeling these characteristics, including variation in the bandgap with temperature, revealed a linear temperature dependence of the forward voltage if the drive current is chosen within a rather limited current range. Theoretically, the voltage intercept can be deduced from the bulk semiconductor bandgap. However, accurate junction temperature determination is only possible if at least two calibration measurements at a particular drive current are performed. The method described in this paper can be applied to calculate the thermal resistance from the junction to any other reference point for any particular LED configuration.

Review: Analyzing well-known countermeasures against distributed denial of service attacks

This paper reviews and analyzes well-known countermeasures against distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. This paper provides an in-depth analysis of each countermeasure and enumerates strengths and challenges of each technique. If it is possible, the paper designs a countermeasure against each defense mechanism from the attackers point of view. We believe that this survey is the most complete survey that analyzes the most cited DDoS defense techniques in detail. We expect that this survey will assist the potential victims to choose suitable countermeasures against DDoS attacks based on the analysis presented here and as well as the capabilities that they have to implement the techniques. The analysis done in this paper provides a great opportunity for both academic and industrial researchers to improve the state of the art countermeasures against DDoS attacks.

Memory colours and colour quality evaluation of conventional and solid-state lamps

A colour quality metric based on memory colours is presented. The basic idea is simple. The colour quality of a test source is evaluated as the degree of similarity between the colour appearance of a set of familiar objects and their memory colours. The closer the match, the better the colour quality. This similarity was quantified using a set of similarity distributions obtained by Smet et al. in a previous study. The metric was validated by calculating the Pearson and Spearman correlation coefficients between the metric predictions and the visual appreciation results obtained in a validation experiment conducted by the authors as well those obtained in two independent studies. The metric was found to correlate well with the visual appreciation of the lighting quality of the sources used in the three experiments. Its performance was also compared with that of the CIE colour rendering index and the NIST colour quality scale. For all three experiments, the metric was found to be significantly better at predicting the correct visual rank order of the light sources (p < 0.1).

A taxonomy for resource discovery

Resource discovery systems become more and more important as distributed systems grow and as their pool of resources becomes more variable. As such, an increasing amount of networked systems provide a discovery service. This paper provides a taxonomy for resource discovery systems by defining their design aspects. This allows comparison of the designs of the deployed discovery services and is intended as an aid to system designers when selecting an appropriate mechanism. The surveyed systems are divided into four classes that are separately described. Finally, we identify a hiatus in the design space and point out genuinely distributed resource discovery systems that support dynamic and mobile resources and use attribute-based naming as a main direction for future research in this area.

Low Power Coarse-Grained Reconfigurable Instruction Set Processor

Current embedded multimedia applications have stringent time and power constraints. Coarse-grained reconfigurable processors have been shown to achieve the required performance. However, there is not much research regarding the power consumption of such processors. In this paper, we present a novel coarse-grained reconfigurable processor and study its power consumption using a power model derived from Wattch. Several processor configurations are evaluated using a set of multimedia applications. Results show that the presented coarse-grained processor can achieve on average 2.5x the performance of a RISC processor with an 18% increase in energy consumption.

Residential Electrical Load Model Based on Mixture Model Clustering and Markov Models

Detailed large-scale simulations require a lot of data. Residential electrical load profiles are well protected by privacy laws. Representative residential electrical load generators get around the privacy problem and allow for Monte Carlo simulations. A top-down model of the residential electrical load, based on a dataset of over 1300 load profiles, is presented in this paper. The load profiles are clustered by a Mixed Model to group similar ones. Within the group, a behavior model is constructed with a Markov model. The states of the Markov models are based on the probability distribution of the electrical power. A second Markov model is created to randomize the behavior. A load profile is created by first performing a random-walking of the Markov models to get a sequence of states. The inverse of the probability distribution of the electrical power is used to translate the resulting states into electrical power.