GUEST EDITORIAL

ULTIMATE TECHNOLOGIES AND ADVANCES FOR FUTURE SMART GRID: UTASG

Jos Neuman de Souza

Pascal Lorenz

Abbas Jamalipour

n light of current worldwide efforts to achieve energy efficiency, intensify usage of renewable energy sources, and reduce CO 2 emissions, current electricity networks face many challenges, stemming from increasing demand for electrical energy, as well as variable and distributed production. Hence, an evolution to so-called smart grids is inevitable. The smart grid is a complex end-to-end system, composed of multiple interconnected power subsystems, interrelated to each other through diverse protocols with additional layers of technology (energy, communications, control/automation, and IT). Developing the smart grid thus has become an urgent global priority, as its economic, environmental, and societal benefit will be enjoyed by generations to come. The feature topic is to address the ultimate technologies required for underlying ICT architectures, monitoring and management improvements for smart grid systems, and highlighting these to the IEEE Communications Magazine readership. Eight papers that cover broadly the selected areas were kept for publication from 26 evaluated, taking into account the high-quality research and practical initiatives in the field. In the first article, Smart Grid Forensic Science: Applications, Challenges, and Open Issues by Melike ErolKantarci et al. , the authors introduce the emerging application areas of smart grid forensic science, discussing the challenges and outlining the open issues in the domain. The contribution from this article can be viewed as a roadmap for future smart grid forensic studies, emerging as a powerful security component in the power system. In the second article, The Role of the RPL Routing Protocol in Smart Grid Communications by Emilio Ancillotti et al., the authors present an overview of the routing protocol for low-power and lossy networks, and provide a critical analysis of its advantages and potential limits in advanced metering infrastructure applications. In the third article, Service-Oriented Middleware for Smart Grid: Principle, Infrastructure, and Application by

Liang Zhou et al. , detailed an efficient, integrated, and general middleware for heterogeneous services in a smart grid. In the fourth article, Standardization of Smart Grid in ITU-T by Gyu Myoung Lee et al., presents the key results of ITU-T FG-Smart including the characteristics of a smart grid, the role of ICT for smart grids, and the functional analysis of smart grid architecture. The fifth article, Learning Automata as a Utility for Power Management in Smart Grids by Sudip Misra et al., proposes using learning automata (LA), a computational learning utility, for efficient power management in smart grids (LAPM). The sixth article, A Multi-Agent-System Architecture for Smart Grid Management and Forecasting of Energy Demand in Virtual Power Plants by Luis Hernndez et al., presents a multi-agent system model for virtual power plants, a new power plant concept in which generation no longer occurs in big installations. The seventh article, Energy Management Systems: State of the Art and Emerging Trends by Saima Aman et al. , introduces a survey of the state of the art in energy management systems, applications, and frameworks. Finally, the last article, SMILAY: An Information Flow Management Framework for Microgrid Applications by Sami Souihi et al. , proposes a new deployable framework called SMILAY based on a hierarchical architecture and a service-specific overlay network.

BIOGRAPHIES
JOS NEUMAN DE SOUZA (neuman@ieee.org) is a full professor at the Federal University of Ceara in the Computer Science Department. He received a Ph.D. degree from Pierre and Marie Curie University (PARIS VI/MASI Laboratory), France, in 1994 and spent a year (20082009) at the National Laboratory for Scientific Computing LNCC, Petropolis, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, developing senior post-doctorate activities. He is an area editor for the following international scientific journals: Computer Networks , Computer Communications , and Journal of Networks and Computer Applications (Elsevier); and International Journal of Network Management (Wiley). From

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1999 to 2005 he was a board member (Directory) of the Brazilian Computer Networks National Laboratory (LARC). He has been a First Class Invited Professor at UMR CNRS 8144 PRISM-Universite de Versailles Saint Quentinen-Yvelines, France (2001); UMR CNRS 7030 LIPN-Universite de Paris 13, France (2005, 2006, 2008, 2009); IMAGINE Lab-University of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada (2007); and IBISC Lab-Universite dEvry Val dEssonne, Evry, France (2011). He has been as well a CNRS invited researcher at LABRI Laboratory-Bordeaux 1 University, France (2010). Since 1999 he has been the Brazilian representative to IFIP TC6 (communication systems). PASCAL LORENZ [SM] (lorenz@ieee.org) received his M.Sc. (1990) and Ph.D. (1994) from the University of Nancy, France. Between 1990 and 1995 he was a research engineer at WorldFIP Europe and Alcatel-Alsthom. He has been a professor at the University of Haute-Alsace, France, since 1995. His research interests include QoS, wireless networks, and high-speed networks. He is the author/co-author of three books, three patents, and 200 international publications in refereed journals and conferences. He was a Editor on the IEEE Communications Magazine Editorial Board (20002006), Chair of Vertical Issues in Communication Systems Technical Committee Cluster (20082009), Chair of the Communications Systems Integration and Modeling Technical Committee (20032009), and Chair of the Communications Software Technical Committee (20082010). He has served as Co-Program Chair of IEEE WCNC 12 and ICC 04, tutorial chair of VTC 13 Spring and WCNC 10, track chair of PIMRC 12, and Symposium Co-Chair at GLOBECOM 0711 and ICC 0810. He has served as Co-Guest Editor for special issues of IEEE Communications Magazine , IEEE Network , IEEE Wireless Communications , Telecommunications Systems, and LNCS. He is an IARIA fellow and member of many international program committees. He has organized many conferences, chaired several technical sessions, and given tutorials at major international conferences. A BBAS J AMALIPOUR [S86, M91, SM00, F07] (a.jamalipour@ieee.org) received his Ph.D. degree from Nagoya University, Japan. He is the Professor of Ubiquitous Mobile Networking with the School of Electrical and Information Engineering, University of Sydney, NSW, Australia. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical, Information, and Communication Engineers (IEICE) and the Institution of Engineers Australia, an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer, and a Technical Editor of several scholarly journals. He has been a Chair of several international conferences, including IEEE ICC and IEEE GLOBECOM, General Chair of the 2010 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference, as well as being the technical program chair of IEEE PIMRC 12 and IEEE ICC 14. He is Vice President Conferences and a member of the Board of Governors of IEEE ComSoc. He is the recipient of several prestigious awards, including the 2010 IEEE ComSoc Harold Sobol Award for Exemplary Service to Meetings and Conferences, the 2006 IEEE ComSoc Distinguished Contribution to Satellite Communications Award, and the 2006 IEEE ComSoc Best Tutorial Paper Award.

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