Announcements

Conference: European Symposium on Computer Aided Process Engineering and International Symposium on Process Systems Engineering (ESCAPE34-PSE24)
Date: 2–6 June 2024
Location: Florence, Italy

ESCAPE34-PSE24 combines the 34th European Symposium on Computer-Aided Process Engineering and the 15th International Symposium on Process Systems Engineering (PSE). The keynotes, presentations and discussions will be delivered over 4 days and will cover the progress made in the broad range of the methodologies of the PSE toolkit, including AI, data analytics and digitalization, as well as their impactful application in the energy, food, healthcare, materials and sustainability fields.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Processes;
• Electronics;
• Inventions;
• Technologies;
• Journal of Imaging;
• Modelling;
• Foundations;
• Computers.

Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person at the booth at the conference and answering any questions you may have. For more information regarding the conference, please visit the following link: https://www.aidic.it/escape34-pse24/index.php.

Many forms of powered electronics can convert and control electricity: electrical drives and generators; renewable energy systems; energy storage systems; smart cities and grids; power systems; transport (vehicles, aircraft, ships, and others); industrial, medical, military, telecommunications, and consumable devices, and home apparatus.

“Power Electronics” Section is devoted to publishing original research and state-of-the-art review papers on the emerging technologies and trends in this field, including the components, circuits, design, modeling, simulation, control, implementation, testing, and analysis of power electronics and their applications.

As they are of an open access format, you have free and unlimited access to the full text of all of the articles published in our journal. We welcome you to read our most highly cited papers published in 2022 below.

1. “Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulations: A Historical Overview of Engineering Challenges”
by Franc Mihalič, Mitja Truntič and Alenka Hren
Electronics 2022, 11(15), 2462; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11152462
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/11/15/2462

2. “A Review of Wireless Power Transfer Systems for Electric Vehicle Battery Charging with a Focus on Inductive Coupling”
by Iman Okasili, Ahmad Elkhateb and Timothy Littler
Electronics 2022, 11(9), 1355; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11091355
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/11/9/1355

3. “A Survey on Capacitor Voltage Control in Neutral-Point-Clamped Multilevel Converters”
by Salvador Alepuz, Sergio Busquets-Monge, Joan Nicolás-Apruzzese, Àlber Filbà-Martínez, Josep Bordonau, Xibo Yuan and Samir Kouro
Electronics 2022, 11(4), 527; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11040527
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/11/4/527

4. “Overview of Virtual Synchronous Generators: Existing Projects, Challenges, and Future Trends”
by Mohamed Abuagreb, Mohammed F. Allehyani and Brian K. Johnson
Electronics 2022, 11(18), 2843; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11182843
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/11/18/2843

5. “A Review of the State of the Art of Industrial Microgrids Based on Renewable Energy”
by Daniel Gutiérrez-Oliva, Antonio Colmenar-Santos and Enrique Rosales-Asensio
Electronics 2022, 11(7), 1002; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11071002
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/11/7/1002

6. “Progress on Second-Generation High-Temperature Superconductor Tape Targeting Resistive Fault Current Limiter Application”
by Jiamin Zhu, Sikan Chen and Zhijian Jin
Electronics 2022, 11(3), 297; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11030297
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/11/3/297

7. “Multiple-Output DC–DC Converters: Applications and Solutions”
by Salvador P. Litrán, Eladio Durán, Jorge Semião and Cristian Díaz-Martín
Electronics 2022, 11(8), 1258; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11081258
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/11/8/1258

8. “Stochastic Optimal Strategy for Power Management in Interconnected Multi-Microgrid Systems”
by Mahshid Javidsharifi, Hamoun Pourroshanfekr Arabani, Tamas Kerekes, Dezso Sera and Josep M. Guerrero
Electronics 2022, 11(9), 1424; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11091424
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/11/9/1424

9. “A Novel Adaptive PID Controller Design for a PEM Fuel Cell Using Stochastic Gradient Descent with Momentum Enhanced by Whale Optimizer”
by Mohammed Yousri Silaa, Oscar Barambones and Aissa Bencherif
Electronics 2022, 11(16), 2610; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11162610
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/11/16/2610

The “Circuits and Signal Processing” Section of Electronics (ISSN: 2079-9292) provides comprehensive coverage of all topics of interest in the field of circuits. The aim of the Section is to bring together researchers, engineers and students from academia and industry to present novel ideas and solid research on theoretical and practical aspects of circuits and signal processing applications.

As our journals are open access, you have free and unlimited access to the full text of all articles published in them. You are welcome to read the list of highly cited papers published in 2023 below:

1. “FPGA Implementation of a Chaotic Map with No Fixed Point”
by Claudio García-Grimaldo, Ciro Fabián Bermudez-Marquez, Esteban Tlelo-Cuautle and Eric Campos-Cantón
Electronics 2023, 12(2), 444; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics12020444
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/12/2/444

2. “CMOS-Based Memristor Emulator Circuits for Low-Power Edge-Computing Applications”
by Prosenjit Kumar Ghosh, Shah Zayed Riam, Md Sharif Ahmed and Prabha Sundaravadivel
Electronics 2023, 12(7), 1654; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics12071654
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/12/7/1654

3. “PSO-Based Target Localization and Tracking in Wireless Sensor Networks”
by Shu-Hung Lee, Chia-Hsin Cheng, Chien-Chih Lin and Yung-Fa Huang
Electronics 2023, 12(4), 905; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics12040905
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/12/4/905

4. “Comparative Performance of UPQC Control System Based on PI-GWO, Fractional Order Controllers, and Reinforcement Learning Agent”
by Marcel Nicola, Claudiu-Ionel Nicola, Dumitru Sacerdoțianu and Adrian Vintilă
Electronics 2023, 12(3), 494; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics12030494
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/12/3/494

5. “Distributed Deep Neural-Network-Based Middleware for Cyber-Attacks Detection in Smart IoT Ecosystem: A Novel Framework and Performance Evaluation Approach”
by Guru Bhandari, Andreas Lyth, Andrii Shalaginov and Tor-Morten Grønli
Electronics 2023, 12(2), 298; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics12020298
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/12/2/298

6. “Integrated Circuit Design of Fractional-Order Chaotic Systems Optimized by Metaheuristics”
by Martin Alejandro Valencia-Ponce, Astrid Maritza González-Zapata, Luis Gerardo de la Fraga, Carlos Sanchez-Lopez and Esteban Tlelo-Cuautle
Electronics 2023, 12(2), 413; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics12020413
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/12/2/413

7. “CMOS Widely Tunable Second-Order Gm-C Bandpass Filter for Multi-Sine Bioimpedance Analysis”
by Israel Corbacho, Juan M. Carrillo, José L. Ausín, Miguel Á. Domínguez, Raquel Pérez-Aloe and J. Francisco Duque-Carrillo
Electronics 2023, 12(6), 1326; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics12061326
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/12/6/1326

8. “Rethinking Liquid Crystal Tunable Phase Shifter Design with Inverted Microstrip Lines at 1–67 GHz by Dissipative Loss Analysis”
by Jinfeng Li
Electronics 2023, 12(2), 421; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics12020421
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/12/2/421

MDPI, the leading Open Access (OA) publisher, announced on Monday that it opened its Korean branch office on 29th April 2024. With this addition, MDPI now operates 21 offices in 12 countries worldwide. Claude Seo, with over 20 years of experience in the academic journal publishing industry, including Nature Publishing Group (NPG), has been appointed as the Office Manager of the Seoul office.

With the establishment of a Seoul office, MDPI aims to actively support Korea scientific communities to further promote the publication of OA journals in the region. As of the end of 2023, Korea ranked sixth worldwide in both submissions and publications of MDPI research papers. MDPI is the number one OA publisher in Korea.

Sungkyunkwan University Joins MDPI’s Institutional Open Access Program

In addition, MDPI announced that Sungkyunkwan University joined MDPI’s Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP). This program offers free access to MDPI online submission system for the institutions and APC discounts to affiliated authors. Thirteen major Korean universities, including Sungkyunkwan University, Kyung Hee University, Chung-Ang University and Catholic University of Korea, have adopted IOAP in Korea.

OA aims to break down barriers that have traditionally restricted access to science, ensuring that knowledge is available to all, regardless of financial situation or institutional affiliations. Authors, academia, and scientific communities are rapidly moving toward OA. MDPI has been at the forefront of reshaping the academic publishing landscape, with OA surpassing subscription-based publishing in 2020.

MDPI CEO Visits Seoul, Korea

In March, Stefan Tochev, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of MDPI, visited Korea and met with various stakeholders including government agencies, research and academic institutions, universities. During his visit, Stefan highlighted that MDPI continues to pave the way for a world where science is accessible to all, supporting a global community of inclusive innovation and collaborative solutions.

Stefan expressed excitement about the new venture, stating, "Today marks a significant milestone for MDPI as we celebrate the opening of our new office in Seoul, Korea. This expansion is more than just an increase in our physical footprint, it is a pivotal step in our ongoing commitment to making scientific knowledge more accessible, participatory, and inclusive across the globe."

Claude Seo, reflecting on his new role, commented, "I am delighted to have been offered this position of trust within MDPI, the no. 1 scholarly OA publisher. As we establish our presence in Korea, we are dedicated to integrating into the local community and contributing to its vibrant culture. Our commitment goes beyond business growth; it is about creating a more informed and innovative society by embracing and promoting diversity within the scientific community.”

For further inquiries, please contact our Seoul office directly.

About MDPI

A pioneer in scholarly, open access publishing, MDPI has supported academic communities since 1996. MDPI is leading the transition to open science by making more research free and accessible to everyone. Over 3.3 million researchers have entrusted MDPI with publishing their scientific discoveries. MDPI’s editorial process is bolstered by a network of dedicated reviewers, a team of 6000 diligent, well-trained staff members, and an in-house article submission platform that was designed to ensure efficient processes within its 430 fully OA titles.

We are pleased to announce the winner of the Electronics 2023 Best Ph.D. Thesis Award. This award is for a Ph.D. student or recently qualified researcher who has produced a highly anticipated thesis with impressive academic potential.

The award has been granted to “Analysis and Improvements of Four-Wire Power Converters for Electric Vehicle Chargers” by Dr. Riccardo Mandrioli, University of Bologna, Italy.

The winner will receive CHF 800, a certificate, and a chance to publish a paper free of charge after peer review in Electronics (ISSN: 2079-9292) in 2024.

We congratulate Dr. Riccardo Mandrioli on his accomplishments. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all the applicants for submitting their exceptional theses and the Award Committee for voting for and supporting this award.

Dr. Riccardo Mandrioli is currently a Tenure Track Assistant Professor (RTT) for the academic discipline ING-IND/31, Electrical Engineering, with the Department of Electrical, Electronic, and Information Engineering, University of Bologna. From November 2022 to January 2024, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Adjunct Professor, and he has also been involved as a Teaching Assistant for multiple engineering courses since 2017. In November 2023, he received the National Scientific Habilitation (ASN) for the permanent position of Associate Professor in the academic recruitment fields 09/E1, Electrical Engineering.

The following is an interview with Dr. Riccardo Mandrioli:

1. Could you please give us a brief overview of your research topic and the main objectives of your Ph.D. thesis?
Since my Ph.D. thesis I have focused on power electronic converters for charging electric vehicles (EVs) with particular reference to onboard chargers (OBC). EV chargers usually consist of two parts, active front end and isolated back end. In this way, I could focus both on AC/DC and DC/DC converters, therefore rectification and regulation of the voltage. In this field, the first works I published in MDPI were focused on four-wire inverters, because they were not studied at that time. The idea was to firstly study analytically the harmonic behavior of these converters and provide an easy and precise description that could be used by other researchers, and secondly, technical proposals capable of ensuring new improvements based on this analysis were made.

2. What motivated you to pursue this research topic, and how did you formulate your research questions?
The main motivation was connected to the benefits related to the green shift and transportation electrification. I haven’t developed a full knowledge of every aspect of electric vehicles which were already starting to boom in 2019, the year when I started my Ph.D., in fact, I wanted to focus specifically on the power electronics converters for this application. Additionally, the public body that founded my scholarship also wanted me to focus on smart power converters for electric vehicle charging.

3. How did you manage your time and prioritize your tasks during your Ph.D. program, and what strategies did you use to stay focused and motivated?
When I started my Ph.D., I and the other authors managed to submit a conference paper without experimental results. Afterwards, the lockdown closed us down and we had to stop with the experimental part, but we continued with the research and simulation remotely. In doing so we had set the base for the research for the next 2 years. After the lockdown we could proceed with the experimental work, in a few weeks we could validate what we did during the lockdown, and then we put together many papers and kept on developing the topic of four-wire inverters. The second part of my Ph.D. thesis, dealing with isolated back end, is related with the activities conducted during my 6-month visiting period at the Chair of Power Electronics at the University of Kiel in Germany under the supervision of Prof. Marco Liserre.

4. What were some of the biggest challenges you faced during your Ph.D. journey, and how did you overcome them?
The biggest challenges were mainly related to understanding what we could accomplish with our studies. As I said electric vehicle charging was booming in 2019, in fact, the topic was not entirely new and other studies were conducted around it. We didn't know if our work could cover any meaningful gap. However, with the help of my supervisor Prof. Gabriele Grandi and co-supervisor Prof. Mattia Ricco, I understood that we had the skills to fill in the gap related to harmonic analysis and optimization. So, this was the most difficult part, the beginning.

5. When and how did you discover Electronics? What prompted you to apply for this award, and what has your experience been like with Electronics?
I always had a good collaboration with Electronics and other MDPI journals in general. Regarding the award, I wanted to apply, because I knew the topic could be suitable for this award. As far as I know, other colleagues tried as well here at the University of Bologna. Ph.D. students and professors are aware of this award.

6. Finally, how do you plan to continue building on your research in the future, and what are your long-term career aspirations?
After the Ph.D., I was engaged in one year of post-doctoral research as a research fellow and adjunct professor and now I am officially a faculty member as a tenure-track assistant professor at the University of Bologna. Now, with other professors and our research group of 10 Ph.D. students, we want to shift our study to other aspects and gaps of power electronics like modularity, partial power processing, and reliability.

The “Artificial Intelligence” Section of the journal Electronics (ISSN: 2079-9292) mainly covers topics of interest within unique hardware-based deep learning AI and algorithmic deep learning AI using machine learning. The purpose of this Section is to bring together researchers and engineers, from both academia and industry, to present novel ideas and solid research on the hardware and algorithmic aspects of advanced applications of deep learning-based AI.

As all of the articles published in our journal are in an open access format, you have free and unlimited access to the full texts. We welcome you to read our most highly cited papers published in 2023 listed below:

1. “Deep Learning-Based Attack Detection and Classification in Android Devices”
by Alfonso Gómez and Antonio Muñoz
Electronics 2023, 12(15), 3253; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics12153253
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/12/15/3253

2. “An Empirical Survey on Explainable AI Technologies: Recent Trends, Use-Cases, and Categories from Technical and Application Perspectives”
by Mohammad Nagahisarchoghaei, Nasheen Nur, Logan Cummins, Nashtarin Nur, Mirhossein Mousavi Karimi, Shreya Nandanwar, Siddhartha Bhattacharyya and Shahram Rahimi
Electronics 2023, 12(5), 1092; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics12051092
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/12/5/1092

3. “Robust and Lightweight Deep Learning Model for Industrial Fault Diagnosis in Low-Quality and Noisy Data”
by Jaegwang Shin and Suan Lee
Electronics 2023, 12(2), 409; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics12020409
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/12/2/409

4. “Rotor Fault Diagnosis Method Using CNN-Based Transfer Learning with 2D Sound Spectrogram Analysis”
by Haiyoung Jung, Sugi Choi and Bohee Lee
Electronics 2023, 12(3), 480; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics12030480
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/12/3/480

5. “Experimental Machine Learning Approach for Optical Turbulence and FSO Outage Performance Modeling”
by Antonios Lionis, Antonios Sklavounos, Argyris Stassinakis, Keith Cohn, Andreas Tsigopoulos, Kostas Peppas, Konstantinos Aidinis and Hector Nistazakis
Electronics 2023, 12(3), 506; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics12030506
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/12/3/506

6. “An Efficient Adaptive Noise Removal Filter on Range Images for LiDAR Point Clouds”
by Minh-Hai Le, Ching-Hwa Cheng and Don-Gey Liu
Electronics 2023, 12(9), 2150; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics12092150
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/12/9/2150

7. “Fuzzy Rough Nearest Neighbour Methods for Aspect-Based Sentiment Analysis”
by Olha Kaminska, Chris Cornelis and Veronique Hoste
Electronics 2023, 12(5), 1088; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics12051088
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/12/5/1088

8.  “Towards Deploying DNN Models on Edge for Predictive Maintenance Applications”
by Rick Pandey, Sebastian Uziel, Tino Hutschenreuther and Silvia Krug
Electronics 2023, 12(3), 639; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics12030639
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/12/3/639

9. “LLM-Informed Multi-Armed Bandit Strategies for Non-Stationary Environments”
by J. De Curtò, I. de Zarzà de Curtò, Gemma Roig, Juan Carlos Cano, Pietro Manzoni and Carlos T. Calafate
Electronics 2023, 12(13), 2814; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics12132814
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/12/13/2814

10. “Intelligent Decision Support for Energy Management: A Methodology for Tailored Explainability of Artificial Intelligence Analytics”
by Dimitrios P. Panagoulias, Elissaios Sarmas, Vangelis Marinakis, Maria Virvou, George A. Tsihrintzis and Haris Doukas
Electronics 2023, 12(21), 4430; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics12214430
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/12/21/4430

We are pleased to announce the winners of the Electronics 2024 Best Paper Award. All papers published in 2022 in Electronics (ISSN: 2079-9292) were considered for the award. After a thorough evaluation of the originality and significance of the papers, citations, and downloads, three winners were selected.

One Review:

“A Review of Wireless Power Transfer Systems for Electric Vehicle Battery Charging with a Focus on Inductive Coupling”
by Iman Okasili, Ahmad Elkhateb and Timothy Littler
Electronics 2022, 11(9), 1355; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11091355
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/11/9/1355

Two Research Articles:

“A Deep Learning Model for Network Intrusion Detection with Imbalanced Data”
by Yanfang Fu, Yishuai Du, Zijian Cao, Qiang Li and Wei Xiang
Electronics 2022, 11(6), 898; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11060898
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/11/6/898

“Machine Learning for DDoS Attack Detection in Industry 4.0 CPPSs”
by Firooz B. Saghezchi, Georgios Mantas, Manuel A. Violas, A. Manuel de Oliveira Duarte and Jonathan Rodriguez
Electronics 2022, 11(4), 602; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11040602
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/11/4/602

Each winner will receive CHF 500, a chance to publish a paper free of charge in Electronics in 2024 after peer review, and a certificate.

Please join us in congratulating the winners of the Electronics 2024 Best Paper Award. We would also like to take this opportunity to thank all of our authors for their continued support of Electronics.

This announcement is delivered on behalf of the Assessment Committee—Prof. Dr. Flavio Canavero, Dr. Kostas Karpouzis, Prof. Dr. Manuel Arrebola, and Prof. Dr. Jingyang Fang.

Electronics Editorial Office

We are pleased to announce the winners of the Electronics 2023 Best Ph.D. Thesis Award. This award is for two Ph.D. students or recently qualified Ph.D.’s who have produced a highly anticipated thesis with great academic potential.

The award has been granted to the following:

“Hardware-friendly Low-bit Quantization for Neural Network Compression”
by Dr. Haotong Qin, Beihang University, China

“Analysis and Improvements of Four-Wire Power Converters for Electric Vehicle Chargers”
by Dr. Riccardo Mandrioli, University of Bologna, Italy

Each winner will receive CHF 800, a certificate, and a chance to publish a paper free of charge after peer review in Electronics (ISSN: 2079-9292) in 2024.

On behalf of the evaluation committee—Prof. Dr. George A Tsihrintzis, Prof. Dr. Francisco Falcone, Prof. Dr. Xiongfeng Ma, and Prof. Dr. Giulio Antonini—we congratulate the winners on their accomplishments. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all the applicants for submitting their exceptional theses and thank the Award Committee for voting and helping with this award.

Prof. Dr. Flavio Canavero
Editor-in-Chief of Electronics

MDPI will be attending the ISPRS TC I Mid-term Symposium on Intelligent Sensing and Remote Sensing Application 2024 in Changsha, China, which will take place from the 13 to 17 May 2024. Centering around the research areas of TC I and its subordinate working groups, the symposium includes plenary sessions, technical sessions, paper posters, technology exhibitions, and technical visits. If you are attending the conference, please visit our booth. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person and answering any questions you may have.

The following MDPI journals will be represented at the conference:

• IJGI;
• Remote Sensing;
• Electronics;
• Inventions;
• Drones;
• AI;
• Technologies;
• Journal of Imaging;
• Smart Cities.

If you are attending this conference, please feel free to start a conversation with us at our booth #14. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person and answering any questions that you may have.