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Intraoperative Neurophysiological Monitoring is a set of monitoring techniques that reads electrical activity generated by the nervous system structures during surgeries. In non-trivial surgeries, neurophysiologists require a significant number of electrical signals to be picked up to check the effects of the surgeon’s actions in real time or to confirm that the correct nerves are selected. As a result, cabling the patient in the operating room can become cumbersome. The proposed WIONM module solves part of the problem by converting a good part of those cables into a wireless connection that is substantially transparent to the human operator and the existing medical instrumentation.

In this study, the authors present a dielectric-resonator-based sensor to characterize liquids. The sensor is based on a dielectric resonator (DR) fed by a slot-coupling mechanism in the ground plane of a microstrip transmission line (TL). The obtained device is a fully passive sensor that a radiofrequency (RF) signal can interrogate. A small hole was drilled on the DR surface to allocate a drop of the liquid under test (LUT); as a consequence, the resonant frequency of the sensor will depend on the electromagnetic characteristics of the LUT. The device is modeled both with an equivalent circuit model and through an electromagnetic modal analysis. The cavity perturbation technique is used to study the impact of the LUT on the resonant frequency and modal distribution; full-wave simulations corroborate the theoretical results. Finally, a prototype of the proposed sensor tuned to work in the 2.45 GHz band has been designed, manufactured, and measured. The device is cost-effective given the small size and practical to use, thanks to the minimal volume of the pool, which calls for quantities of LUT in the order of $0.13~\mu l$ . The prototype has been tested with an ethanol-water solution set. The experimental results match well with simulations and show good repeatability. The sensitivity of the prototype resulted in being 718 kHz per percentage of ethanol in water.

This chapter focuses on the most relevant wireless Internet of Things (IoT) technologies for the Smart Grid. Multiple sets of wireless IoT technologies coexist today because of the broad range and diversity of communications requirements associated with current and emerging IoT applications. Three dimensions are commonly used to compare the scope of wireless IoT technologies: communications range, achievable data rate, and type of spectrum used. IEEE 802.15.4 is a technical standard for Low‐Rate Wireless Personal Area Networks. Low‐Power Wide Area Network technologies in unlicensed spectrum primarily target IoT use cases that are delay tolerant, do not need high data rates, and typically require very low power consumption and cost on the device side. Several industrial alliances and standardization organizations are promoting the use of IP‐based frameworks and open protocols to connect and managing smart objects and devices. On the management side, there are also several protocols suitable for the management of heterogeneous, resource‐constrained devices.

This chapter introduces and describes the organization and differences between the telecommunication networks, systems, and services. It also includes a section on the fundamental aspects of telecommunication media key for the Smart Grid, namely optical fiber, radio, and power lines. Telecommunication services delivery is the goal of telecommunication networks or systems. Transmission media used in telecommunications are classified into physical and nonphysical. Telecommunication networks spread over territories to connect end users among them, to provide telecommunication services. The traditional world of telecommunication networks was organized around Backbone and Access networks. Any modern telecommunication system combines transport and switching/routing functions in its network devices. The protocol architecture of a telecommunications system is commonly arranged in three separate “planes” to serve different purposes: user plane, control plane, and management plane. Power lines are the supporting medium for the utility communications that travel inside the electricity cables, that is PLC.

This chapter elaborates on a comprehensive definition of what can be understood for a Smart Grid by introducing the basic elements of a power grid and enhancing those with telecommunication technologies. The core underlying criterion supporting the regulation of electric power systems is the maximization of social and environmental welfare in the production and consumption of electric power. Electric power system management is a complex undertaking covering technical, economic, regulatory, social, business, and environmental factors. Information and Communication Technologies, understood as computing and electronic elements coupled with telecommunication networks, have been appreciated and used by the power utility industry at the core of their operations. There are some Smart Grid challenges tightly connected to the use of telecommunications technologies and services. They can be grouped in two broad categories Customer Engagement and Grid Control. The impact of telecommunication services on Smart Grid operations is a key aspect of the enablement of telecommunications for the grid.

This chapter describes the services, applicability scenarios, network architectures, deployment considerations, and main capabilities and features that can be delivered by a cellular system. It focuses on 4G and 5G technologies, addressing the baseline concepts and commonalities among them as well as the main differences and enhancements brought by the latest 5G technologies. The services and features delivered by the latest cellular technologies are commonly grouped as: enhanced mobile broadband services, massive machine‐type communication services, and ultra‐reliable low latency communication services. 3GPP is the organization that brings together the global wireless industry for the development of cellular technology standards. The 5G system architecture allows network functions to store their contexts and data in separate data storage functions. The chapter provides the main capabilities and features of the 4G/Long‐Term Evolution and 5G/New radio interfaces and networks. The support of network slicing features in 5G systems allows operators to customize their network for different applications and customers.

This chapter shows the different domains within Smart Grids, where Telecommunications play a key role to turn the Smart Grid vision into a reality, solving current scenarios and enabling new future‐proof applications. Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition systems, at the core of energy management systems and distribution management systems, are the basis of the remote intervention capabilities of utilities over their assets, and the progressive evolution into the automation of remotely executed operations. A fundamental priority of any power system is the safety of system components and people. The role of the protection mechanism is to quickly detect faults and disconnect the faulted segment minimizing the impact to the grid. Distribution automation covers all aspects of the automation of the entire distribution system operations. Substation automation intends to achieve a more efficient operation and maintenance of substations and the infrastructure that connects to it.

The evolution from analog to digital must be comprehended and specially the implications of the digital world in terms of adaptation of the telecommunication systems. This chapter covers the propagation characteristics of specific telecommunication technologies, that is, optical fiber communications and radiocommunications. The very foundations of telecommunications are the transmission of signals from one point to another. A signal is a mathematical representation of the evolution of a physical quantity concerning some parameters. The main advantage of the Fourier Transform is the opportunity of looking at a signal from the frequency dimension. In telecommunications and computer networks, multiplexing is a method by which multiple analog or digital signals are combined into one signal over a shared medium. Channel Coding is a technique used in digital communications that is focused on the reduction of errors in the receiver side of the systems. Optical communications are based on the transmission of light pulses instead of electrical signals.

Optical fiber‐based technologies and Power Line Communication (PLC) are the most relevant access wireline fixed‐network solutions for the Smart Grid. This chapter elaborates on Passive Optical Network (PON) and PLC technologies, covering the most relevant systems in each of them. PONs are intrinsically different from active optical networks, and electrical power is only required at the transmit and receive points, easing the rollout. PLC technologies are a unique set of technologies that use the power system cables for telecommunication purposes. PLC is undoubtedly recognized as an enabler of the Smart Grid. Broadband‐PLC technologies make use of the spectrum starting at 1.8MHz and offer a higher transmission data rate that comes at the expense of a higher attenuation that limits coverage. Optical fiber allows electric isolation in substations and electricity‐related premises in general, and PLC technology is by default available in Smart Grids.

Metamaterials are widely used as sensors in a large range of applications due to their unusual properties not found in nature. This review’s purpose is to focus on recent metamaterial-based electromagnetic sensors, particularly on the structures that integrate the metamaterials in antenna or transmission lines for their further integration in measurement instruments. The approach followed in the review is to highlight sensitivity and quality factor ( $Q$ -factor) as they are crucial parameters in any sensor; the corpus of literature analyzed leads to the finding that the adoption of metamaterials is a key factor in successfully decreasing the size of the structures while maintaining a high $Q$ -factor value and reducing losses. In addition, a new metamaterial-based sensors’ taxonomy is proposed to classify them into three main categories: frequency-variation sensors, coupling-based sensors, and differential sensors. A tabular comparison of the specifications of different sensors provides further insights into their different capabilities and will allow future researchers to efficiently find and compare their prototypes with state-of-the-art devices.

Under the Internet of Things paradigm, the emergence and use of a wide variety of connected devices and personalized telematics services have proliferated recently. As a result, along with the penetration of these devices in our daily lives, the users’ security and privacy have been compromised due to some weaknesses in connected devices and underlying applications. This article focuses on analyzing the security and privacy of such devices to promote safe Internet use, especially by young people. First, the connected devices most used by the target group are classified, and an exhaustive analysis of the vulnerabilities that concern the user is performed. As a result, a set of differentiated security and privacy issues existing in the devices is identified. The study reveals that many of these vulnerabilities are related to the fact that device manufacturers often prioritize functionalities and services, leaving security aspects in the background. These companies even exploit the data linked to the use of these devices for various purposes, ignoring users’ privacy rights. This research aims to raise awareness of severe vulnerabilities in devices and to encourage users to use them correctly. Our results help other researchers address these issues with a more global perspective.