This book basically comprises the results of many original research papers of the authors' research group, in which many authors of these original papers have done a great deal of detailed and creative research work. Therefore, we are much obliged to our contributing authors for their high-equality work. During the work on this book, we have had the pleasure of discussing its various aspects and results with many cooperators and students. We highly appreciate their contributions, which particularly allowed us to improve our manuscript. Especially valuable help was provided by Liangyu He, Jian Li, Sitong Ding, Huinan Xiao, Jinjin Wang, Dechao Chen, Binbin Qiu, Wan Li, Yang Shi, Zhengli Xiao, Yaqiong Ding, Yinyan Zhang, and Xiaogang Yan. We are grateful to them for their help and suggestions.

The continuous support of our research by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (number 61473323), by the Foundation of Key Laboratory of Autonomous Systems and Networked Control, Ministry of Education, China (number 2013A07), and also by the Science and Technology Program of Guangzhou, China (number 2014J4100057) is gratefully acknowledged. Besides, we would like to thank the editors sincerely for their time and efforts spent in handling this book, as well as the constructive comments and suggestions provided. We are very grateful to the nice people at Wiley and the IEEE for their strong support during the preparation and publishing this book.

In addition, the second author, Long Jin, would like to express his special gratitude to the Guohua Memorial Middle School for the financial and moral support since 2004.

To all these wonderful people, we owe a deep sense of gratitude; especially now when the research projects and the book have been completed.

Yunong Zhang and Long Jin