The fi rst edition of this book came about because Regina Lundgren had always been
fascinated with communication. She started writing novels in the third grade. When she
was asked on her fi rst day at the University of Washington what she hoped to do with her
degree in scientifi c and technical communication, she replied, “I want to write environ-
mental impact statements.” When Patricia Clark hired her to work at the Pacifi c Northwest
National Laboratory to do just that, she was overjoyed.
When 3GPP started standardizing the IMS a few years ago, most analysts expected the
number of IMS deploymentsto grow dramatically as soon the initial IMS specifications were
ready (3GPP Release 5 was functionallyfrozenin the first half of 2002and completedshortly
after that). While those predictions have proven to be too aggressive owing to a number of
upheavals hitting the ICT (Information and Communications Technologies) sector, we are
now seeing more and more commercial IMS-based service offerings in the market. At the
time of writing (May 2008), there are over 30 commercial IMS networks running live traffic,
addingup to over10million IMS users aroundthe world; the IMS is beingdeployedglobally.
In addition, there are plenty of ongoing market activities; it is estimated that over 130 IMS
contracts have been awarded to all IMS manufacturers. The number of IMS users will grow
substantially as these awarded contracts are launched commercially. At the same time, the
number of IMS users in presently deployed networks is steadily increasing as new services
are introduced and operators running these networks migrate their non-IMS users to their
IMS networks.
The first practical examples of mobile communications were used in many countries like
the USA, the UK and Germany in military services, and played a significant role in the
First World War to transfer important information from the front to headquarters to take
further actions. Good and secure wireless communications were an important need for all
military services – army, navy and air force. In this respect, the Second World War was a big
experimental battlefield for the development and evolution of mobile radio. It was in the
interests of governments that after the Second World War the military investment should
be paid back by civilian use, and all western European countries started their so-called first
generation of mobile communication networks.
Having dealt with in-depth analysis of SS#7, GSM and GPRS networks I started to monitor
UTRAN interfaces approximately four years ago. Monitoring interfaces means decoding
the data captured on the links and analysing how the different data segments and messages
are related to each other. In general I wanted to trace all messages belonging to a single
call to prove if the network elements and protocol entities involved worked fine or if there
had been failures or if any kind of suspicious events had influenced the normal call
proceeding or the call’s quality of service. Cases showing normal network behaviour have
been documented in Kreher and Ruedebusch (UMTS Signaling. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd,
2005), which provides examples for technical experts investigating call flows and network
procedures.
This effort started as an answer to the numerous questions the authors have
repeatedly had to answer about electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection and
input/output (1/0) designs. In the past no comprehensive book existed suffi-
ciently covering these areas, and these topics were rarely taught in engineering
schools. Thus first-time I/O and ESD protection designers have had consider-
able trouble getting started. This book is in part an answer to such needs.
It has been over a decade since the Chinese publication of Line Loss in Electric Power Systems. To keep pace
with technological developments, I started a revision as early as 2002, following the main principles that the
theoretical framework and characteristics of the first edition should be retained, with new contents added
according to new problems after the reform of electric power systems and the new requirements for line loss
management practices and in combination with practical experience.
Fun. We (your authors) wanted a word to describe our ultimate goal for this book, as well as a word
we hope you (our reader) will use to describe it, and that’s the one we chose. There are others goals,
of course, but in the end, when you’ve finished the book, we’re hoping you’ll have enjoyed the
activities described in these pages.
Many books use the Introduction to explain exactly what the book is about, what the reader will
learn, what the reader needs (a skill or maybe an item or piece of software), and what the reader
will be left with when that last page is completed. And this Introduction will do those things, but …
hopefully it’ll make you excited to get started.
My association with the theory of controls in continuous time started during my studies at
the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India, in 1974 as an undergraduate student
in the Controls and Power program. The initial introduction by Professors Kesavamurthy,
Y. P. Singh, and Rajagopalan laid the foundation for a good basic understanding of the
subject matter. This pursuit and further advanced study in the field of digital controls
continued during my days as a graduate student in the Electrical and Systems Engineering
Department at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, from 1983 to 1988.
The Industrial Revolution, which started in England around 1760, has replaced
human muscle power with the machine. Artificial intelligence (AI) aims at replacing
human intelligence with the machine. The work on artificial intelligence started in
the early 1950s, and the term itself was coined in 1956.
It all started rather innocuously. I walked into Dr GT Murthy’s office one fine day, andchanged my life. “Doc” was then the General Manager, Central R&D, of a very largeelectrical company headquartered in Bombay. In his new state-of-the-art electronics center,he had hand-picked some of India’s best engineers (over a hundred already) ever assembledunder one roof. Luckily, he too was originally a Physicist, and that certainly helped me gainsome empathy. Nowadays he is in retirement, but I will always remember him as athoroughly fair, honest and facts-oriented person, who led by example. There were severalthings I absorbed from him that are very much part of my basic engineering persona today.You can certainly look upon this book as an extension of what Doc started many years agoin India … because that’s what it really is! I certainly wouldn’t be here today if I hadn’t metDoc. And in fact, several of the brash, high-flying managers I’ve met in recent years,desperately need some sort of crash course in technology and human values from Doc!
