[MUSIC].
Ness Schroff is the Ohio eminent scholar in communications and networking and he's
a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Ohio State University.
Ness is going to do a great job today of laying the foundation of what networking
and sensors are. Ness's passion is around understanding
the cyberphysical networks that connect all of us together, as well as wireless
communications networks. I think we're all going to get a lot out
of his simple explanations of the ways in which we can use these networks in our
cities, and he'll be spending time a little later this week sharing with us a
number of applications specific to different city planning contexts.
let me begin by giving you maybe a one-minute or two-minute tutorial on
Sensa Systems. So if you'll look at the Sensa device
itself, okay, it's a very, very versatile device and it typically consists of a
sensing component as you can see on the, on the right side of your, of your screen
there. And a communication component where you
can see that kind of, you know, tall radio looking looking element.
And both of these are obviously to be deployed in the field, so they need to
have a power source of some sort. And there are various ways in which these
systems are powered. one way is the traditional way where they
are actually wired through an actual s, electrical system and in other case they
are powered through a renewable energy. For example we have a large number of
sensor modes which are nowadays in development, which actually have a solar
panel on top of them. we can also power them through wind
turbines connected to a, to a sensing system or hydroelectric power for example
could be a, could be another means of, of doing this.
Alright. A big question in, in, in the deployment
of these sensing systems is how do you place them?
So that again depends on the environment. On the, on the right you see the
placement of, of a sensor device which is tethered to an electric pole but you
don't have to do it that way for example if you sensing systems are used, let's
say, in military applications. Then they are simply dispersed through
the air. they can be sort of dispersed, you know,
by low hanging, I mean by, by low flying airplanes.
They can be dispersed through UAVs through drones, etc.
So there are a variety of questions that arise in terms of, what is the
application that one needs to encounter and how deployment must take place in
order to provide a certain level of fidelity of what you want to do as well
as cost issues? And one of the reasons why many of these
sensor systems are equipped, for example, with solar panels or renewable devices of
their own, is because of the fact that changing batteries oftentimes, in some
environments, becomes extremely difficult or expensive to do.
Alright, so now, going from the sensing device itself.
Let's now focus on the sensor networks. So is these devices are com-, are
connected to each other they can form what is known as a sensor network.
And usually the sensor network is formed by some type of wireless communications.
So you can use long range wireless technology, which would be like 3G, 4G,
as, as I pointed out in the slides, or you can use medium range wireless
technology. Many of you are familiar with Wifi, you
can also use Zigbee, you know, technologies that are out there right now
in retail outlets can be used for this type of communication.
And also if you want very short range communication, where you want the data to
be relatively private, perhaps you could use, you know Bluetooth, RFID for
short-range communication. Now moving from the sensor network, you
can go to another level of, of abstraction, another level of complexity
that you often see in deployments of sensor networks which is when sensor
networks are actually connected to other systems, other networking systems.
So, for example, they could be connected to, to the internet to form a hybrid
network. And this hybrid network could be used,
for example by engineers for city planning.
Okay? You could have a physical system that's
connected to the sensor networks, like a smart grid, autonomous vehicles, smart
buildings, smart bridges, etc., such that actions that the sensor network might
tell you to take, could be taken either in an automated way, for example, in the
case of a smart building will. The nice thing about a lot of this new
technology that's coming out in sensing systems, is that it's highly
programmable, and not only is it programmable as you can see on, on the
top there, it's also programmable remotely.
Okay, so for example, you can often reprogram a sensor network to take
certain types of measurements, to, to do certain actions, without needing to
physically be there in the field. So you can do it from the comfort of your
home, own home. So this provides a much greater
flexibility in how these systems can be controlled, and therefore they are, you
know, enable a much greater level of applicability in terms of the systems
that they can be applied to.