• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.1595-1607
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• 2018

In this paper, a hierarchical control strategy is introduced to control a new three-port multidirectional DC-DC converter for integrating an energy storage system (ESS) to a bipolar DC microgrid (BPDCMG). The proposed converter provides a voltage-balancing function for the BPDCMG and adjusts the states of charge (SoC) of the ESS. Previous studies tend to balance the voltage of the BPDCMG buses with active sources or by transferring power from one bus to another. Furthermore, the batteries available in BPDCMGs were charged equally by both buses. However, this power sharing method does not guarantee efficient operation of the whole system. In order to achieve a higher efficiency and lower energy losses, a triple-layer hierarchical control strategy, including a primary droop controller, a secondary voltage restoration controller and a tertiary optimization controller are proposed. Thanks to the multi-functional operation of the proposed converter, its conversion stages are reduced. Furthermore, the efficiency and weight of the system are both improved. Therefore, this converter has a significant capability to be used in portable BPDCMGs such as electric DC ships. The converter modes are analyzed and small-signal models of the converter are extracted. Comprehensive simulation studies are carried out and a BPDCMG laboratory setup is implemented in order to validate the effectiveness of the proposed converter and its hierarchical control strategy. Simulation and experimental results show that using the proposed converter mitigates voltage imbalances. As a result, the system efficiency is improved by using the hierarchical optimal power flow control.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.94-102
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• 2018

Purpose: In this study, a maintenance free super-capacitor battery charging system based on the photovoltaic module, to be used in agricultural electric carriers, was developed and its charging characteristics were studied in detail. Methods: At first, the electric carrier system configuration is introduced and the electric control components are presented. The super-capacitor batteries and photovoltaic module used in the experiment are specified. Next, the developed charging system consisting of a constant current / constant voltage Buck converter as the charging device and a super-capacitor cell as a balancing device are initiated. The proposed circuit design, a developed PCB layout of each device and a proportional control to check the current and voltage during the charging process are outlined. An experiment was carried out using a developed prototype to clarify the effectiveness of the proposed system. A power analyzer was used to measure the current and voltage during charging to evaluate the efficiency of the energy storage device. Finally, the conclusions of this research are presented. Results: The experimental results show that the proposed system successfully controls the charging current and balances the battery voltage. The maximum voltage of the super-capacitor battery obtained by using the proposed battery charger is 16.2 V, and the maximum charging current is 20 A. It was found that the charging time was less than an hour through the duty ratio of 95% or more. Conclusions: The developed battery charging system was successfully implemented on the agricultural electric carriers.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.558-572
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• 2018

In addition to its modular nature, a Hybrid Modular Multilevel Converter (HMMC) assembled from half-bridge and full-bridge sub-modules, is able to block DC faults with a minimum number of switching devices, which makes it attractive for high power applications. This paper introduces a control strategy based on the Root-Least Square (RLS) algorithm to estimate the capacitor voltages instead of using direct measurements. This action eliminates the need for voltage transducers in the HMMC sub-modules and the associated communication link with the central controller. In addition to capacitor voltage balancing and suppression of circulating currents, a fault tolerant control unit (FTCU) is integrated into the proposed strategy to modify the parameters of the HMMC controller. On advantage of the proposed FTCU is that it does not need extra components. Furthermore, a fault detection unit is adapted by utilizing a hybrid estimation scheme to detect sub-module faults. The behavior of the suggested technique is assessed using PSCAD offline simulations. In addition, it is validated using a real-time digital simulator connected to a real time controller under various normal and fault conditions. The proposed strategy shows robust performance in terms of accuracy and time response since it succeeds in stabilizing the HMMC under faults.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.766-775
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• 2007

The use of toxic chemicals was extended as the industry in Korea has grown dramatically during the last three decades. However, list of toxic substances and limit concentrations in the water environment are not consistent within management of ambient water, drinking water and industrial effluent. This article suggests the systematic framework to classify toxic substances in the water environment and deriving their effluent limits. The most important factor for decision-making to classify toxic substances is whether their concentrations in the water environment are higher than the reference concentrations, estimated by considering human health risk and ecological risk. Using a risk-based reference concentration, the ambient water quality criterion, it is possible to derive the regulatory limit concentrations of toxic substances in drinking water and in industrial effluent. The goal concentrations in the effluent, which guarantee the human and ecological safety, should be determined with scientific investigation, balancing environmental benefit and economical effect, considering availability of treatment technology and identifying characteristics of wastewater from different industries.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.16 no.12
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• pp.247-255
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• 2011

Most existing clustering protocols have been aimed to provide balancing the residual energy of each node and maximizing life-time of wireless sensor networks. In this paper, we present the adaptive clustering strategy related to sink position for clustering protocols in wireless sensor networks. This protocol allows networks topology to be adaptive to the change of the sink position by using symmetrical clustering strategy that restricts the growth of clusters based on depth of the tree. In addition, it also guarantees each cluster the equal life-time, which may be extended compared with the existing clustering protocols. We evaluated the performance of our clustering scheme comparing to LEACH and EEUC, and observe that our protocol is observed to outperform existing protocols in terms of energy consumption and longevity of the network.

• KIEAE Journal
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.87-93
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• 2011

This study examines building's power consumption unit cost and Building Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV)'s generation efficiency and load rate with the subjects of university dormitory buildings in order to suggest foundational data for new and recycled energy use and management to plan and operate university dormitories afterwards. Thereby, this research gained the following findings. 1. The quantity of solar radiation and efficiency change in the BIPV system applied to the research subject buildings after the lapse of time was averagely 8.7%, and it is thought that temperature increase determines conversion efficiency with the influence of surrounding outside temperature and the module's temperature. 2. The generation efficiency of the BIPV system in the research subject buildings was averagely 10.9%. In May, it was 13.9%, and in January, it was the lowest as 10.25%. Considering the fact that power consumption reduces during an intermediate period, it will be necessary to establish measures for equipment and power consumption load balancing. 3. The monthly load rate of the BIPV system was averagely 4.09%. In May, it was the highest as 4.94%, and in July, it was the lowest as 3.24%. 4. It is intended to conduct constant follow-up research on estimating university dormitory building's power consumption unit cost and examining the generation efficiency and load rate of the BIPV system.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.6 no.12
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• pp.136-146
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• 2006

In Wireless Sensor Network(WSN) a sensor node transfers sensing data to the base-node through multi-hop because of the limited transmission range. Also because of the limited energy of the sensor node, the sensor nodes are required to consume their energy evenly to prolong the lifetime of the network. LMPR is a routing protocol for WSN, LMPR configures the network autonomously based on level which is the depth from the base-node, and distributes the transmission and computation load of the network to each sensor node. This paper implements LMPR on TinyOS and experiments on the performance of LMPR in WSN. As the result, the average of the received rate of LMPR is 91.39% and LMPR distributes the load of the transmission and computation about 4.6 times compare to the shortest cost routing protocol. We expect LMPR evenly distributes the transmission and computation load of the network to each node, and the lifetime of the network will be longer than it used to be.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.12 no.5
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• pp.131-137
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• 2007

Recently, Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) is emerged as a simple yet powerful optimization algorithm for routing and load-balancing of both wired and wireless networks. However, there are few researches trying to adopt ACO to enhance routing performance in WSN owing to difficulties in applying ACO to WSN because of stagnation effect. In this paper, we propose an energy-efficient path selection algorithm based on ACO for WSN. The algorithm is not by simply applying ACO to routing algorithm but by introducing a mechanism to alleviate the influence of stagnation. By the simulation result, the proposed algorithm shows better performance in data propagation delay and energy efficiency over Directed Diffusion which is one of the outstanding schemes in multi-hop flat routing protocols for WSN. Moreover, we checked that the proposed algorithm is able to mitigate stagnation effect than simple ACO adoption to WSN.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.114-123
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• 2018

Recently, as one of the countermeasures to reduce carbon dioxide($CO_2$) for global warming problems, operation methods in micro-grid systems replacing diesel generator with renewable energy sources including wind power(WP) and photovoltaic(PV) system have been studied and presented in energetic manners. However, it is reported that some operation problems in micro-grid systems without diesel generator for carbon-free island are being occurred when large scaled WP systems are at start-up. To overcome these problems, this paper proposes an operation strategy in micro-grid systems by adapting control devices such as CVCF(constant voltage constant frequency) ESS(energy storage system) for constant frequency and voltage regulation, load control ESS for balancing demand and supply and SVC(static-var compensator) for reactive power compensation. From the simulation results based on the various operation scenarios, it is confirmed that the proposed operation strategy in micro-grid systems without diesel generators is a useful tool to perform a stable operation in micro-grid systems without diesel generator and also make a contribution to reduce carbon dioxide in micro-grid systems.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.283-292
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• 2011

This paper proposed a new multi-level inverter topology based on a H-bridge with two switches and two diodes connected to the DC-link. The output voltage of the proposed topology is quite closer to a sinusoidal waveform compared with a typical single phase inverter. The proposed multi-level inverter is applicable to a power conditioning system for renewable energy sources, and it can be also used as a building block of a cascaded multi-level inverter for a high voltage application. In case of conventional H-bridge type or NPC type multi-level inverter, 8 controllable switches are used to obtain a 5 level output voltage, but the proposed multi-level inverter requires only 6 controllable switches. Thus the circuit configuration is quite simple, reliable and cost-effective implementation is possible. The efficiency can be improved owing to the reduction of the switching loss. A new PWM method based on POD modulation is suggested which requires only one carrier signal. The switching sequence to make the capacitor voltage balanced is also considered. The feasibility is studied through simulation and experiment.