PORTFOLIO

M2M communications have applications in more and more domains, such as energy management, transportation, home automation, etc…Some actors envision 50 billions connected devices by 2020, mostly using cellular devices and infrastructures.
SMACS consists in developing a platform (a methodology and a set of tools) for making efficient wireless M2M systems affordable to small and medium companies. This platform allows implementing complex control/measurement infrastructures. It is highly modular and flexible in order to allow modifications or adaptations of existing developments, without having to redesign all the layers. Using the SMACS platform, it is possible to seamlessly embed M2M communications in products and services, in a cheap an efficient way. For the academic world, SMACS allows speeding-up the implementation of practical demonstrators, especially for applications in which networks of sensors are involved. The platform will be maintained and developed in the future, in order to provide a value adding service for the industrial as well as the academical world.

The efficiency of the platform will be measured on the basis of criteria such as cost, ease of deployment, performance (radio communication range, power consumption, ability to synchronize data, etc.).

Within this project, a partnership has been set up with about 10 companies and institutions, in order to specify and implement practical demonstrators, which will be operated and maintained beyond the project duration.
A start-up has already benefited from this project.

Gebert Rüf Stiftung is supporting this project because it will allow the realization and demonstration of practical pilot systems. The flexibility of the platform will allow its easy customization to new applications.

A hardware and a software infrastructures have been developed, which allow transferring data between remote sensors and a central database. The hardware infrastructure is made of remote terminals, which are wirelessly connected with a gateway. Routing capabilities have been developed. The gateway is a bridge between the radio and the Ethernet (wired or through GPRS/EDGE).

The software infrastructure is a flexible web-based platform for data processing, storage and publication.

Demonstrators are being developed. A first version may be consulted on http://www.neurocomswiss.ch/energymanager. This system allows displaying the energy consumption of the main appliances in a restaurant.

Two projects have directly benefited from SMACS. They are funded by CTI and BAFU.

The startup «Stignergy» is directly benefiting from the SMACS project. Il offre SEMS (Smart Energy Management System), système de gestion électrique permettant de minimiser dynamiquement la pointe de puissance mensuelle (pic quart-horaire) d'une installation électrique.

D. Puccinelli, M. Zuniga, S. Giordano, and P.J. Marrón, «Broadcast-Free Collection», 10th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SenSys'12), Nov. 2012, Toronto, Canada

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