Chau Yuen

Globally, the demand for electricity is increasing significantly and thus there is a need for more power generation. As a result, environmental pollution from burning fossil fuels is accelerating climate change at an unprecedented pace, as evidenced by recent extreme weather events across the world. As such, several paradigm shifts in power and energy systems are happening to protect the environment, societies, and economies against climate change. As the world is planning for a future with low carbon emissions, today’s power system is transitioning from its existing traditional hierarchical structure to a more decentralized framework through innovative energy management techniques, such as peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing. Due to the potential benefits that P2P sharing can offer to electricity prosumers, consumers, and the grid, research, development, and pilot trials of P2P are advancing rapidly. To capture these developments in this emerging energy management paradigm, present in this monograph is a comprehensive review of various features of P2P sharing. To do so, first introduced is the network and market structures that are required to facilitate P2P sharing within a local community. Thereafter, a comprehensive overview of various challenges of P2P energy-sharing mechanisms at both virtual and physical layers is provided, followed by a discussion of technical approaches used in literature to address these challenges. Third, some emerging technological innovations that will be relevant to, and important for, the development of P2P sharing in future markets are introduced and discussed. Fourth, a summary of existing pilot P2P projects is provided, and this is followed by a summary of potential future research directions and a conclusion. Thus, by providing a holistic view of challenges and contributions to both virtual and physical layers of P2P energy systems simultaneously and in a structured way, this monograph delivers a comprehensive understanding of the core challenges that hinder the integration of P2P sharing in the current market model.

Quasi-Orthogonal Space-Time Block Code presents an up-to-date, comprehensive and in-depth discussion of an important emerging class of space-time codes, called the Quasi-Orthogonal STBC (QO-STBC). Used in Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) communication systems, they provide transmit diversity with higher code rates than the well-known orthogonal STBC (O-STBC), yet at lower decoding complexity than non-orthogonal STBC. This book will help readers gain a broad understanding of the fundamental principles as well as the state-of-the-art work in QO-STBC, thus enabling them to appreciate the roles of QO-STBC in future broadband wireless systems and to inspire further research.