Photovoltaic (PV) energy systems have played a major part in meeting renewable energy requirements. However, power production from PV systems faces impediments such as partial shading due to environmental and man-made obstructions. Shading causes voltage and current mismatch losses that can significantly reduce the power supplied to the grid. Reconfiguring...

­Wireless sensor network (WSN) is a distributed network consisting of multi-functional sensors, which can communicate with neighboring sensors over wireless channels. Estimating statistics of sensor measurements in WSNs is necessary for detecting anomalous sensors, supporting nodes with insufficient resources, determining network area estimation,...

Faults in utility-scale solar arrays often lead to increased maintenance costs and reduced efficiency. Since photovoltaic (PV) arrays are generally installed in remote locations, maintenance and annual repairs due to faults incur large costs and delays. To automatically detect faults, PV arrays can be equipped with smart electronics that provide data...

Distributed wireless sensor networks are an essential part of modern Internet-of-Things (IoT) and sensor fusion systems. In such networks, all the distributed agents have to reach consensus on a value of interest. The spectral radius of the graph is the largest eigenvalue of the adjacency matrix, and is a useful characterization of the network graph....

In the last decade, new solar photovoltaic (PV) cell technologies have emerged for grid-connected systems. However, automatic fault detection and accurate diagnostics for PV array systems are still challenging problems. Even with over-current protection devices (OCPD), ground fault detection interrupters (GFDI), and smart monitoring devices (SMDs) with...

Background Despite the upward trends in the solar array industry, adoption of solar technology by main power grids has been challenged by environmental fluctuations. In particular, the shading of arrays caused by cloud cover leads to inconsistent and thus unreliable energy generation. However, effective sensing and characterization of cloud movements...

The production of photovoltaic (PV) energy is affected by numerous external factors such as varying temperatures, soiling of PV panels, and partial shading which can significantly reduce power generated. Off-the-shelf PV arrays are typically connected in a series-parallel (SP) topology, featuring parallel-connected strings of series-connected panels....

Compressed Sensing (CS) technologies are becoming increasingly important in the signal processing field. Sensors in CS do not output the signal of interest, but instead, output a vector of measurement composed of mixtures of the signal’s components. This compressively sensed data can be reconstructed, and the results may be used for purposes such...

Location detection systems employ wireless sensor networks (WSNs) to approximate the physical position of events within an area of interest. WSNs consist of sensor and anchor nodes that are spatially distributed over the area of interest, and are overseen by a fusion center (FC) that collects node information. In applications such as fire or motion...

Wireless sensor networks use spatially distributed sensors (nodes) to monitor physical or environmental conditions, for example, temperature, and pressure. Applications of such networks include battlefield surveillance, environmental monitoring, industrial process monitoring and control, vehicle monitoring and health monitoring. These sensor nodes may...