Nowadays, there are many sensors around us embedded in various appliances, consumer electronic devices, and vehicles. The number of embedded sensor devices is rapidly increasing and this trend is expected to accelerate in the coming years. Advances in ultra-low power embedded processor and wireless communication technologies have made these devices smarter and connected, realizing the concept of Internet-of-Things (IoT). Such growth in the scale and features of wireless embedded devices provides golden opportunities to develop a connected world, and paves the road for many new application domains.
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are the basic building block of the IoT concept. A typical WSN is composed of numerous low-power wireless (sensor) devices with the aim of sensing and communication of particular parameters. There are plenty of interesting applications for these networks such as healthcare, smart building and cities, environmental monitoring, disaster management, agriculture, and so on. Networking of such small embedded sensor devices differs from other networks from various aspects. Very stringent power consumption constraints, computation and memory limitations, and short range wireless communication of these devices require dedicated efficient networking protocols for WSNs to satisfy the requirements of the application.
In this course, prominent protocols, mechanisms, standards, and services in various layers in the protocol stack for WSNs are discussed. The course covers both research and industrial advances in this field. It includes applications, characteristics of the physical layer and widely used wireless nodes, medium access control mechanisms, and data dissemination and routing protocols. The main standard technologies for low-power wireless communication such as IEEE 802.15.4 and its variations (e.g., TSCH), Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), Bluetooth mesh, and Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN) such as LoRa are discussed.
As an important part of this course, the students perform a project in a team which is about design, implementation, and evaluation of an application-specific WSN. Hundreds of low-power wireless devices are available to the student to implement their designed WSN.
Learning Goals
This course focuses on design and development of networks of low‐power smart embedded sensor devices. At the end of the course the students will
1.have a broad knowledge about Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), their applications, protocols in different networking layers, and services.
2.have obtained sufficient skills to design, model, and implement a WSN for commercial or research aims.
3.be aware of the state of the art in various aspects of WSNs and challenging issues to be able to start conducting effective research in this field.
4.have a broad knowledge and understanding of low-power wireless communication and networking standards for internet-of-things and WSNs
- Teacher: Majid Nabi