3rd Quarter 2014Head of School FeedbackThe School bids farewell toProfessor George Gibbon whoretires at the end of this year.George joined Wits in 1986 andhas served the School and theFaculty in a variety of roles. Onbehalf of everyone in the SchoolI would like thank George andwish him a well-deservedretirement.

With George’s retirement, theSchool will have 31 full-timeacademic staff. In theprofessoriate, there are 5Professors, 7 AssociateProfessors and one Adjunct Professor. In addition, we have 9 SeniorLecturers, 8 Lecturers and one Associate Lecturer. The School hasrecently appointed an Associate Professor from Israel and a SeniorLecturer from Pakistan. I expect them to join us early in 2015. TheSchool is in the process of recruiting an additional lecturer to bolsterour offering in the Digital Arts programme. I therefore expect a totalof 34 full-time academic staff in 2015.

Although this is a respectable number when compared with otherSchools of Electrical and Information Engineering in the country, I stillfeel that to be effective in all our offerings, we need to increase thenumber of academic staff. The School has approximately 950students (undergraduate and postgraduate) and with 34 academicstaff we will be operating at a student to academic staff ratio of 28.There is no universal view on an appropriate student to staff ratio, butit is generally accepted that anything above 25 is way too high. Mytarget therefore is to increase the academic staff number to at least38 so that we improve our student to staff ratio to below 25.

The School is fortunate to have 13 honorary academic staff and 3postdoctoral staff who contribute tremendously to our teaching andresearch activities. We also have 2 Emeritus Professors, HuHanrahan and Jan Reynders who retain links to the School. The

In this issue

EIE Sports Day spectacular:The first sports day indecadesEngineers tackle energysectorLenn Smith ResultsWits alumni David Maynereceives Quazza medal atIFAC World CongressVisit to the National WindIntegration Research andTest Center (NWIC) inZhangbei, Hebei Province,ChinaWits PhD Student AttendsAllerton Conference andVisits Bell LabsPart 1: The Journey South

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School has 6 administrative staff and 9 technical staff.

As 2014 draws to an end, I would like to thank most sincerely all thestaff in the School for their tremendous contribution.

Moeniera IsmailAdministrative Manager

School of Electrical andInformation EngineeringUniversity of the Witwatersrand,Johannesburg

Moeniera.Ismail@wits.ac.zaTel: (011) 717 7244Fax: (011) 403 1929

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EIE Sports Day spectacular: The first sports day in decades

By Yu-Chieh Liu

On 5 September 2014, the School of Electrical and Information Engineering welcomed Spring to campus with aSchool sports fun day. The line-up for the afternoon included soccer and netball knock-out matches andseveral bouts of tug of war. The staff and postgrads formed one team for each sport, and each year of studyhad a representative team. Unfortunately, Mechanics tutorial on Friday afternoon kept first years from officiallyparticipating in the event.

The soccer results were as follows:

Semifinal I: Postgrads/Staff (1) vs 4th Year (2)Semifinal II: 2nd Year (4) vs 3rd Year (0)Final: 4th Year (0) vs 2nd Year (1),The overall soccer winners were 2nd years.

Netball proved to be a multi-gendered sport, where some guys joined the girls in the non-travelling version ofbasketball. The netball scores were as follows:

TBC - The overall netball winners were also 2nd years.

Tug of war was less structured, but no less fun. A group of first year students escaping the Mechanics tutorialmanaged to participate in this event. Second year students seemed to dominate this event too, although noofficial scores were kept. In the final more structured bout, the staff and postgrad team found the true spirit oftug of war and beat the competing mix of undergraduates through rhythmic pulls, which eventually led to a 2-1win.

Well done to all participants, spectators, organisers and winners. It was a day of fun and relaxation away frombooks and the pressures of study. The next sports fun day is bound to be just as successful and fun for allthose associated with the School of EIE.

Engineers tackle energy sector

By Erna van Wyk

This year’s School of Electrical and Information Engineering Open Day tackled South Africa’s energy problemsthrough fourth year projects that focussed on improving the country’s current reliance on Eskom and itselectricity supplying affiliates, as well as improving the battery management for solar power systems.

Held on 15 October 2014, Open Day is an annual feast of projects developed by the School’s final year

students. The six-week project development phase mirrors the industry challenges these students will facesuch as short time frames and resource constraints.

During Open Day students do not only show off their work to parents, fellow students or lecturers, but also toindustry representatives and prospective employers.

Two projects specifically targeted the country’s energy dilemmas and the students came up with innovativesmall changes that could result in huge improvements for electricity suppliers as well as consumers.

Investigation into the use of a medium voltage power cable as a data communicationschannel by Gregory Arendse and Vernon Avis.

Fourth year Electrical Engineering students Arendse and Avis investigated the viability of a power linecommunication system implemented on medium voltage (MV) power cables found within electrical distributiongrids. Arendse explains their system:

“I specialises in Information Engineering and Vernon in Electrical Engineering and with this project we wereable to bring our two fields together. Our worked focussed on smart grids that can monitor power usage andEskom’s assets without having to put in any additional infrastructure.”

“A lot of research has been done on low voltage PLC (Power Line Communication) cables but we looked atmedium voltage cables – the lines that join your substations to the distribution points. Although it is further fromthe house, we wanted to see if it can be used as a backbone network to send data to the electricity supplier.And it worked – we could send data on a medium voltage cable.”

“There could be different applications of this system. For instance, Eskom metres in your house need to bemanually monitored by Eskom workers who would come around to read your metre and take the data back toEskom. In principle we could automate this process, put a metre in your house that could be read remotelyfrom Eskom’s offices rather than through sending someone to your house. It is automated and could be readmore often.”

“This can assist in more control in the accuracy of billing systems. But this is not the main purpose of our

project. It is rather to have more control of the system to improve maintenance and lessen loadshedding.

“An electricity supplier such as Eskom will be able to see where in a city high amounts of electricity are beingused, when a cable is being removed through cable theft or when there are other faults on the system.Because loadshedding occurs when, for instance, transformers get overloaded or damaged and needs to berepaired, this system will alert the electricity supplier who will then be able to put pre-emptive measures inplace to avoid power cuts or loadshedding.”

“Our project is aimed at how we get the information from point A to point B through using the existing cablesthat are already in the ground, and saving the electricity supplier additional infrastructure costs.

“Research into this field is already being done, but we wanted to specifically see the response of 11kW XLPEpower cables – used widely in South Africa – when we put data on the cable. The tests were conducted in avery theoretical closed-environment and more real-world testing is needed, and although we could not do allthe tests we wanted to do, we found that we could send data across the cable.”

Improved battery management for solar energy systems by Claude Simoes Permuy and DavidEdwards

Permuy and Edwards are fourth year Electrical Engineering students and took on the challenge of improvingthe lifespan of batteries in a string. Permuy explains their system:

“The world is relying more and more on renewable energy and batteries are a big part of it. In South Africa wehave great solar and wind energy opportunities. This energy is stored on solar batteries connected together,but the differences in the batteries quickly cause unbalances in the system.

“No two batteries, even from the same factory, are identical. They all have slight differences. Inevitably, whenthe batteries are connected in a series, one of them will start to degrade. This unbalance is the result of under-or overcharging that in turn leads to degradation and a shorter battery life. The degradation is on the wholestring and it results in less charge capacity and less energy.”

“We have developed a battery management system that measures the difference in the two batteries and turns

on a DC-to-DC-convertor that charges each of the batteries separately. The microprocessor decides whichflayback or mini charger it should automatically switch on to charge the batteries that need be charged at aspecific time. It is a system that is beneficial to anyone who uses batteries in a string and the benefits includelonger lasting batteries that save a lot of money in the end.”

Lenn Smith Results

Congratulations to all the participants in the Lenn Smith race. There were 380 people who ran, walked,crawled. Congratulations in particular to Ed Steere who came in fourth, and Carson McAfee who came in 19th.

Wits alumni David Mayne receives Quazza medal at IFACWorld Congress

David Mayne is Professor Emeritus at Imperial College London, UK, where he previously was head ofdepartment. He received his M.Sc. and B.Sc. from Wits. Mayne began his career in 1950 as a lecturer at theUniversity of the Witwatersrand (1950–54; 1957–59).

David Mayne receives Quazza medal at IFAC World Congress in Cape Town, 2014. The Quazza medalhonours life time achievements in control engineering. Colleagues from Wits attended the IFAC WorldCongress in Cape Town.

The IFAC World Congress is the largest gathering of control engineering experts with more than 2,000delegates.

Please find more information of the award under:http://www.ifac-control.org/awards/major-medals

More information on the IFAC World Congress in Cape Town:http://www.ifac2014.org/

And more information on David Mayne on:http://www.ee.ic.ac.uk/CAP/Staff/Dqm/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Mayne

Visit to the National Wind Integration Research and TestCenter (NWIC) in Zhangbei, Hebei Province, China

Dr John Van Coller, who is a Senior Lecturer in the School, visited the above Center during October as a guestof the China Electric Power Research Institute (CEPRI). The Center performs grid integration studies andconducts grid code compliance testing of wind turbines – very relevant to the South African situation wherelarge wind farms are now being connected to the grid, especially in the Western Cape and in the Eastern Cape.The Center has the capability of performing in-situ Low Voltage Ride Through (LVRT) tests on wind turbines toconfirm that they will not disconnect during nearby grid faults. Damage to a wind turbine blade due to lightningwas also inspected. There was also much discussion on the perils of a large penetration of wind energy in apower system (China now has over 90 000 MW of wind energy connected to the grid (Medupi will provide 4800 MW)). A very large wind farm close to the Center was then visited. The visits followed a Cigre C4.30Working Group meeting in Beijing. For more information, john.vancoller@wits.ac.za

Dr Van Coller at the National Wind Power Integration Research and Test Center, China.

Dr Van Coller at a wind farm, China.

Wits PhD Student Attends Allerton Conference and VisitsBell Labs

Reevana Balmahoon is a postgraduate student in the telecommunicationsresearch group in the School of Electrical and Information Engineering atUniversity of the Witwatersrand. She is pursuing a PhD in security aspects ofcorrelated sources across wiretap networks.

Reevana Balmahoon attended the 52nd annual Allerton conference on communication, control and computingin Monticello. There a paper co-authored by Dr Ling Cheng on security for correlated sources was presentedand as a guest of Dr Emina Soljanin, there was a visit to Bell Labs in New Jersey, New York. Bell Labs hasrecently partnered with Alcatel and according to researchers in Dr Soljanin's team the research conducted is

still fundamental in nature.

Bell Labs showcases their 7 Nobel prizes in a Lauret's garden and has a museum that houses some of thegreatest creations; one of which is the world’s first transistor. Researchers such as Hamming, Shannon, andNyquist not only have major aspects of the museum dedicated to their research but they are still spoken aboutfondly by their colleagues at Bell Labs.

Shannon statue at the entrance of Bell Labs, New York