IIIT Hyderabad Smart City Living Lab partners with the company to enable research for smart cities applications
IITH Smart City Living Lab and Silicon Labs recently announced a partnership to unveil a campus-wide Wi-SUN network to enable research and solutions for the Internet of Things (IoT) and smart cities. Wi-SUN is an open-standard protocol enabling interoperable solutions through open-source software with multi-layer security.
As per the official statement, Wi-SUN will enable utilities, municipalities, and other enterprises to deploy long-range, low-power wireless mesh networks connecting thousands of IoT nodes. It is interesting to note that Wi-SUN enables sensors to connect easily to the cloud, without needing any towers or expensive communications infrastructure.
The Plan
The current project aims to convert all 100 streetlights on the IIITH campus to Wi-SUN smart streetlights, to build a dense and steady network to allow other sensors such as energy meters, indoor deployments etc., anywhere on campus to utilize these lights as router nodes to send sensor data.
Quoting the year-old Smart City Living Lab as a testbed for various start-ups and research, Professor Ramesh Loganathan said, “IIITH’s campus consists of sensor networks monitoring different verticals such as water, energy, air pollution, solar generation, etc. as well as a strong standards-based data network”. It must be noted that IIITH Smart City Living Lab is an initiative of MeitY, National Cities Mission, and Govt of Telangana. Intel, Saint Gobain, and Silicon Labs are the three founding corporate partners and EBTC (European Business Technology Council) provides its knowledge support.
SVP of Industrial and Commercial at Silicon Labs, Ross Sabolcik stated: “Industry-academia partnerships, like the Smart City Living Lab, are critical to the growth of the IoT in India. Together, we can solve some of the country’s most complex challenges and improve the quality of life for all with wireless connectivity. This Wi-SUN network launch is an important milestone that will be the foundation for future smart city applications.” It is noteworthy that the Texas-based company has its largest wireless development centre in Hyderabad.
The Future
The partners believe that this project is the foundation for future research studies into the Wi-SUN network and will also include challenges for start-ups to build solutions for smart cities using the Wi-SUN network to help take smart city innovations to cost-effective deployment.
Austin-headquartered Silicon Labs is a leading global wireless technology provider, with integrated hardware and software platform, intuitive development tools, and a thriving ecosystem, to build advanced industrial, commercial, home, and life applications.
Founded in 1998, IIIT-H is an autonomous research university that focuses on the core areas of IT, such as CS, Electronics and Comm, and their applications in other domains through inter-disciplinary research that has a greater social impact.
