IIIT Hyderabad's Smart City Living Lab Wins Accolades at IMC 2024

IIIT Hyderabad's Smart City Living Lab was awarded 'Best Education Institute Exhibit of the Year' at the India Mobile Congress Exhibition happening at Pragati Maidan, Delhi.

The eighth edition of India Mobile Congress took place from 15-18 October 2024 at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi, in concurrence with WTSA'24, the governing conference of the ITU Standardization Sector (ITU-T). The event featured global attendance, including international delegates from diverse sectors such as member states, standardization bodies, industries, academia, and start-ups. It also acts as an essential platform for enhancing the standardisation ecosystem across various telecom and ICT technologies.

Based On the invitation from DOT the team, led by Dr. Aftab Hussain participated in IMC 2024 this year. This year Smart City Living Lab showcased live demos of three key solutions addressing the present smart city problems. They are:

Wi-SUN (Wireless Smart Ubiquitous/ Utility Network) based RF-Mesh Network
City IoT operating Platform(ctOP)
Digital Twin for Water Utility Networks (DTWN)

"We are delighted to receive this award, which reflects our efforts to transform the educational landscape through technology, kudos to the Smart City Living Lab team and faculty members for their essential role in making this success possible," said Anuradha Vattem, Chief Technology Architect at Smart City Living Lab-IIITH.

Wi-SUN (Wireless Smart Ubiquitous/ Utility Network) based RF-Mesh Network:

Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) has recently included Wi-SUN as one of the wireless communication protocols for smart city applications. Wi-SUN provides secure, reliable, and low-power communication, enabling efficient management and control of large-scale IoT deployments. At IIIT Hyderabad, India's first large scale Wi-SUN network has been successfully deployed in collaboration with Silicon Labs, to control the streetlights on campus.

This mesh network can be used as a backbone to connect any Wi-SUN based device/sensors within the range of one of the streetlights. At IMC 2024 a complete Wi-SUN network with a border router, two light controllers and a sensor node has been deployed and the functionality demonstrated with interconnectivity through oneM2M. This simple demonstration showcased the ease with which Wi-SUN can be adopted for various smart city applications.

Vaibhav Naware, key contributor for the deployment of Wi-SUN Network in the campus expressed his excitement about the award, "This recognition shows our commitment to excellence in education and our dedication to incorporating technology in learning. The Indian Mobile Congress is a premier platform that showcases advancements in technology and education, and we are honoured to be recognised among such esteemed peers."

The City IoT Operating Platform (ctOP) is a lightweight platform built based on oneM2M standards designed to enhance interoperability and simplify multiple vendor integration for smart city deployments, aiming to streamline the IoT ecosystem for smarter, more efficient cities. The whole functionality has been practically demonstrated with two sensors from different vendors getting seamlessly integrated with ctOP as per standards and the data being visualized through interactive dashboards. Anuradha Vattem confidently states, "ctOP would be the future solution for flawless integration of multiple vendors to the integrated command control centres/analytics/applications without compromising on the standards."

Digital Twin: A collaboration between the Living Lab and ZF India Pvt. Ltd marked a significant advancement in smart city infrastructure management using a Digital Twin for Water Networks. A custom software stack was built for leg of water network comprising of Water quality, Quantity, level and motor nodes. tailored to this project. The same functionality in a miniature form was showcased in the exhibition. One of the engineers Likhith Kanigolla, who contributed to the project said that this implementation is just a beginning of a revolution in the infra management world.

"We have been coming to IMC 2024 for the past three years and we have seen its spectacular growth first hand. It has now become the flagship event in the Indian technology space, with large companies, startups, investors, academic institutes, all showcasing India's technological capabilities. It is a moment of great pride for us that IIIT Hyderabad has been chosen as the Best Educational Institute Exhibit of the year," commented Dr. Aftab Hussain.

The recognition at the Indian Mobile Congress comes at a time when educational institutions are increasingly leveraging technology to enhance learning outcomes. IIITH remains committed to leading this transformation in education. Special thanks to the DOT for supporting IIITH's Smart City Living Lab to present in the exhibition for the past three years.

Smart City Living Lab- an open-innovation ecosystem, an initiative from Smart City research centre has been operational since May'2020. It was funded by the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) and received support from the Smart City mission and the Government of Telangana. The campus is being transformed into a micro representation of a smart city for learning, research, experimentation and for showcasing new ideas and approaches through the concept of Smart City Living Lab. It is a one stop platform to share, connect, and discover smart solutions.

The International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (IIITH) is an autonomous research university founded in 1998 that focuses on the core areas of Information Technology, such as Computer Science, Electronics and Communications, and their applications in other domains through interdisciplinary research that has a greater social impact. Some of its research domains include Visual Information Technologies, Human Language Technologies, Data Engineering, VLSI and Embedded Systems, Computer Architecture, Wireless Communications, Algorithms and Information Security, Robotics, Building Science, Earthquake Engineering, Computational Natural Sciences and Bioinformatics, Education Technologies, Power Systems, IT in Agriculture and e-Governance.