Past projects

Bilateral project SLO-BiH

(2020 – 2022)
IJS – Faculty of Electrical Engineering in Banja Luka
Povezan algoritem razvrščanja in usmerjanja za industrijske aplikacije v brezžičnih omrežjih/ Razvoj združenog algoritma raspoređivanja i rutiranja za industrijske aplikacije osjetiljive na kašnjenje.



SLO-ME

(2021 – 2023)
IJS – Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Montenegro
Lokalizacija v zaprtih prostorih podprta s strojnim učenjem/ Machine learning supported indoor localization



BD4OPEM

(H2020, 2020-2023)

Big Data for OPen Innovation Energy Marketplace

Energy power systems face big challenges to cope with grid integration demands of an ever-increasing number of distributed generation and consumption devices in an interconnected world. Technology offers a huge range of opportunities to develop solutions in the uncertain current and upcoming  Energy market situation. This proposal considers Open Innovation as a natural solution to create a seamless link and balance between energy stakeholders needs and the solutions to be developed. Nowadays, old metering, operation and control devices are combined with smart systems with a huge amount of data being available yet unused or underused. This data offers a wide range of possibilities to improve existing energy services and creating new ones, all available in an Open Innovation Marketplace, and processed through an Analytic Toolbox. BD4OPEM will develop this Analytic Toolbox, based on Big data techniques, providing tools for enabling efficient business processes in the energy sector. By extracting more value from available data, a range of innovative services will be created in the fields of grid monitoring, operation and maintenance, network planning, fraud detection, smart houses/buildings/industries energy management, blockchain transactions and flexibility aggregation for demand-response. The Open Innovation Marketplace will ensure secure data flows from data providers to solution providers, always compliant with GDPR requirements, so that asset management is enhanced, consumer participation in energy balancing is promoted and new data-driven business models are created through innovative energy services. The project will demonstrate the above features in four large scale pilots with diverse distributed energy sources (e.g. PV, wind, hydro, EV, storage…), while promoting the competitiveness and synergies of Sustainable innovations and IT Ecosystems in Europe.

RESILOC

(H2020, 2019-2022)

Resilient Europe and Societies by Innovating Local Communities

Resilience is defined by the United Nations as “the ability to resist, absorb and accommodate to the effects of a hazard, in a timely and efficient manner”. Thus, resilient communities are those in which their citizens, environment, businesses, and infrastructures have the capacity to withstand, adapt, and recover in a timely manner from any kind of hazards they face, either planned or unplanned. In recent years efforts have been spent to tackle resilience and there is, still, a long path forward in defining an EU valid and sound approach to the problem. RESILOC aims at studying and implementing a holistic framework of studies, methods, and software instruments that combines the physical with the less tangible aspects associated with human behavior. The study-oriented section of the framework will move from a thorough collection and analysis of literature and stories from the many approaches to resilience adopted all over the World. The results of the studies will lead to the definition of a set of new methods and strategies where the assessment of the resilience indicators of a community will be performed together with simulations on the “what-if” certain measures are taken.

In RESILOC, the role of JSI is primarily focused on technology-related issues and the support of trials. Department of Communication Systems will be mainly concerned with solutions for radio localization of victims or first responders, basic infrastructure-less communication and crowd-sensing solutions. Department of Knowledge Technologies will focus on real-time sentiment analysis from social media and news, and crowdsensing data analytics from device measurements.

Fed4FIRE+

(H2020, 2017-2021)

Fed4FIRE+ is an Integrating Project under the European Union’s Programme Horizon 2020, addressing the work programme topic Future Internet Research and Experimentation. It started in January 2017 and will run for 60 months, until the end of September 2021. The Fed4FIRE+ project is the successor of the Fed4FIRE project.

Our role: Maintaining the federation of LOG-a-TEC with Fed4FIRE platform, adopting new interfaces, components and tools of the Fed4FIRE federation and providing basic support to external experimenters.

Forecasting tap changer regulatory maintenance with advanced analytics

ELES d.o.o. (2021-2022)

The Diagnostics and Analytics Centre (DAC) of the Slovenian power transmission operator (ELES) is a meeting point for mass data, advanced analytics, technical expertise and good engineering practices, which data engineers and scientists transform into modern management of ELES’ assets. DAC is collaborating with JSI in an effort to bring modern data analytics in optimization of maintenance costs of several transformer units that utilize on load tap changers (OTLP). These units units require regular maintenance after they perform a certain number of switching operations. To plan future maintenance, a prediction of the number of switching operations is required per unit on a short- medium, and long-term time horizon. Switching operation is influenced indirectly by many variables, some of which are not predictable themselves. Therefore JSI will develop a prediction model fro the number of switching operations based on domain knowledge, statistics, and machine learning.

The Diagnostics and Analytics Centre control room (left). The phase-shifting transformer in Divača. (right).
The Diagnostics and Analytics Centre control room (left). The phase-shifting transformer in Divača. (right).

Besides developing a model, JSI will deploy software implementation of the model into operative use for DAC. The software will run in real time, poviding regular updates of its predictions based on current and predicted variables that govern the operation of the transformers in question.

Identifikacija topologij energetskih omrežij

GRID INSTRUMENTS d.o.o. (2020-2022)

Electrical Grid Topology Identification

The project addresses the problem of a network topology identification in the low-voltage power distribution grids. We are studying the shortcomings of the existing methods and developing new solutions. We have proposed a topology identification approach that avoids the assumption of a linearized power flow in order to reduce the sensitivity of the reconstruction process to the measurement errors.


Programska oprema za DTR

ELES d.o.o. (2018-2022)

Dynamic Thermal Rating Natural Convection 

DiTeR is the name of the project as a whole and of the resulting software package. The core of the DiTeR is a physical model for the simulation of heat transfer within the transmission power line under realistic weather conditions, where ambient temperature, wind velocity, rain rate, humidity, pressure and solar irradiance are considered as major factors of influence. DiTeR comprises the heat transport through the power line, heat generation by Joule heating and heat exchange with surrounding via convection, solar heating, radiation, rain impinging and evaporation. The DiTeR problem can be stated as the problem of heat transport with non-linear boundary conditions describing different heat terms due to the weather conditions. The results obtained with DiTeR have been compared against available published data as well as measurements provided by in-house testing site.

SAAM

(H2020, 2017-2020)

Supporting Active Ageing through Multimodal coaching – SAAM. As in the rest of the world, Europe faces an on-going crisis in caring for its aging population. Citizens are living much longer than ever before, with increasingly complex medical, social, and infrastructural needs, but most EU social support services and structures are lagging very much behind the growing need. While many efforts have focused on better access to healthcare and the expansion of assisted and social care housing, one of the main intervention points, enabling the aging population to remain in their homes longer, is just now becoming a primary developmental priority. Caring for the aging population as they transition from active and independent lifestyles to those requiring significant external support is a large and complex field, with many approaches to the great diversity of citizen need profiles. Within the SAAM project (Supporting Active Ageing through Multimodal coaching) we focus upon innovative, technology-enabled approaches to support the aging population living at home, with a novel and practical emphasis on ambient sensing and learning of user needs and preferences, and effective coaching by leveraging the user’s social support networks. Over three years, the project’s 10 partners in 5 countries will develop and test new methods allowing Europe’s aging population to remain more independent and longer in their homes.

Our role: Design system architecture and develop devices and algorithms for unobtrusive sensing support for monitoring and identifying the activity of elderly population in their home environment and enable, through multimodal coaching, the aging population to remain in their homes longer. Provide secure communication path for transmision of collected data to cloud based services for advanced processing and application support. Support the deployment and demonstration of baseline pilot in real home environments.

DEFENDER

(H2020, 2017-2020)

Defending the European Energy Infrastructures is a research project funded by is a research project funded by the European Comission under the Horizon2020 programme (Call: CIP-2016-2017-1. Topic: CIP-01-2016-2017). Critical Energy infrastructures (CEI) protection and security are becoming of utmost importance in our everyday life. However, cyber and system-theoretic approaches fail to provide appropriate security levels to CEIs, since they are often used in isolation and build on incomplete attack models, resulting in silos-like security management fragmented operational policies. To face these challenges, DEFENDER will (i) model CEIs as distributed Cyber-Physical Systems for managing the potential reciprocal effects of cyber and physical threats (ii) deploy a novel security governance model, which leverages on lifecycle assessment for cost-effective security management over the time (iii) bring people at centre stage by empowering them as virtual sensors for threat detection, as first level emergency responders to attacks, or by considering workforce as potential threats. DEFENDER will adapt, integrate, upscale and validate a number of TRL 4-5 technologies and deploy them within a TRL7 integrated yet adaptable framework for CEI security, resilience and self-healing “by design”, with a view to address, detect, and mitigate cyber-physical threats.

Our role: Participate in defining a dynamic security service level agreement (DS-SLA) concept to mitigate threats and to optimize protection, service restoration and costs. Modeling security threats and defining protective measures. Design and implementation of advanced data processing algorithms for detection, identification and localization of cyber-physical threats based on data from synchrophasor measurement (SPM) units deployed in the energy grid. Pilot demonstration and validation of SPM based threat detection in a real operating environment.

(2019-2020)

Vzpostavitev naprednih IKT storitev za analizo življenjskega cikla steklene embalaže – eBOTTLE.

Naročnik projekta je RAZVOJNI CENTER eNeM Novi materiali, d.o.o. Sodelovanje se nanaša na izvajanje projekta  pod naslovom »Pametno multikomponentno embalažno steklo» – projekt eBOTTLE, ki je bil s strani Ministrstva za gospodarski razvoj in tehnologijo potrjen za sofinanciranje v okviru Javnega razpisa. Odsek za komunikacijske sisteme sodeluje na operaciji kot zunanji izvajalec raziskovalno-razvojnih aktivnosti pri razvoju in vzpostavitvi naprednih IKT storitev za analizo življenjskega cikla steklene embalaže.

ELES d.o.o. (2019-2020)

Dynamic Thermal Rating Uncertainty modules

High-voltage transmission lines represent an important segment of the electric power transmission network. They not only connect the production and consumption network in Slovenia, but also connect the Slovenian transmission system with neighboring ones. In the last years, we witness an extremely rapid development of the electricity market and services, mainly due to the inclusion of renewable electricity resources in the network. System operators in recent years have faced challenges in how to ensure maximum transmission capacity of the system to satisfy market needs, while maintaining operational safety and permissible impact on the environment. A great help in the decision-making process was introduced with the Dynamic Thermal Rating (DTR) – an instrument to monitor the temperatures of conductors by using weather and load forecasting to estimate their future trend in order to calculate the ampacity of a transmission line.

NRG-5

(H2020, 2017-2019)

The NRG-5 project envisages contributing to the 5G PPP/5G Initiative research and development activities and participation at the relevant 5G Working Groups by delivering a novel 5G-PPP compliant, decentralized, secure and resilient framework, with highly availability able to homogeneously model and virtualize multi-homed, static or moving, hardware constrained (smart energy) devices, edge computing resources and elastic virtualized services over electricity and gas infrastructure assets combined with the telecommunications infrastructure covering the full spectrum of the communication and computational needs. Ultimate goal: The ultimate project goal is to render the deployment, operation and management of existing and new communications and energy infrastructures(in the context of the Smart Energy-as-a-Service)easier, safer, more secure and resilient from an operational and financial point of view.

Our role: Participate in investigating the suitability of the 5G communication network to serve the energy vertical sector, in particular to provide optimal communications of the energy grid services in terms of supporting massive smart metering and very low latency for control and fault localization. Contribute to elastic virtual network functions (VNF) chaining and optimal depoyment and in service level agreement (SLA) monitoring. Participating in two use cases concerned with auto-configuration of smart metering devices to support multi-tenancy in mobility scenarios and with resilience and availability via dispatchable demand response, both requiring high reliability and very low latency.

(H2020, 2017-2019)

It is the purpose of EuConNeCts3, a Supporting Action, to organise the following 2 editions, 2018 and 2019, of the EC sponsored conference in the area of communication networks and systems (EuCNC – European Conference on Networks and Communications), continuing the successful organisation of this conference since 2014. EuCNC will continue to serve as a technical and scientific conference for researchers, namely European ones, to show their work in the area of Telecommunications, focusing on communication networks and systems, and also reaching services and applications. The conference will not be restricted to European researchers, rather aiming at attracting others from all the other regions in the world. It will also serve as a showcase for the work developed by projects co-financed by the EC, namely those arising from H2020 calls, and more specifically, those addressing 5G and beyond. Nonetheless, it also aims at attracting works in the area of communication networks and systems from other objectives.

EuCNC will: 1) be a European conference, but with a large international dimension; 2) showcase the R&D activities performed within EC programmes, directly and indirectly; 3) showcase the cooperation in R&D between European organisations and worldwide ones; 4) bridge between academia / research centres and industry; 5) coordinate its goals with the EC and the main European players; 6) be a high-quality R&D conference; 7) be a well-recognised conference in Telecommunications; 8) provide a forum for the presentation of state-of-the-art technology, in both theoretical and experimental forms; 9) communicate the research results to the wide audience of the general public; 10) foster the participation of both established researchers and students, as well as industry members from various areas; 11) be a transparent and not-for-profit conference; 12) positively differentiate itself from other conferences, which will be achieved by reaching all previous objectives.

Our role: Supporting Action for organisation of the European Conference on Networks and Communications (EuCNC 2018) in Ljubljana in the area of Telecommunications, focusing on 5G and the Next Generation Internet technologies, services and applications.

(2017-2019)

The Alphasat experiment data for the validation of an antenna tracking simulator – HITEC. As a subcontractor to an ESA project, run by the company HITEC Luxembourg, JSI collects the measured data on a satellite ground station operating at Ka- and Q-band. The beacon signals from the Alphasat satellite are received and their power is measured. Along with the satellite signals, antenna tracking parameters are being logged and the rainfall rate is measured. The measured data are finally post-processed and statistically analysed. The motivation of the activity is to test the antenna simulator, developed by HITEC, by means of long term tests with the data from a real measurement system.

Our role: Collect, pre-process analyze and provide access to the long-term measured data from the satellite ground station operating at Ka- and Q-band on Alphasat satellite signal level, antenna tracking parameters and rainfall rate.

(ERDF, 2016 – 2019)

The purpose of the EkoSmart program is to develop a smart city ecosystem with all the support mechanisms necessary for efficient, optimized and gradual integration of individual areas into a unified and coherent system of value chains. The program focuses on three key domains of smart cities: health, active living and mobility; and forms strategic relationships with municipalities and other areas of smart cities, such as energy, smart buildings, the involvement of citizens, smart communities, etc.

ARRS (2016-2019)

The Multi-analysis of fretting fatigue using physcial and virtual experiments is a collaborative project between Ghent University (Belgium), University of Luxembourg (Luxembourg) and Jozef Stefan Institute (Slovenia). The project is funded by Research Foundation – Flanders – (FWO), The Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR) and Slovenian Research Agency (ARRS).

(ESA PECS, 2014-2016, CCN 2017 – 2018)

The aim of SatProSi-Alpha is to participate in the propagation campaign of the Alphasat Aldo Paraboni scientific experiment. For this purpose, a new sophisticated beacon receiver station has been set‑up in August 2015 at Jozef Stefan premises in Ljubljana. It is equipped with a tracking mechanism and it receives 4 channels (co- and cross-polar components of satellite beacons at Ka- and Q-band). The measurements are collected and post-processed. First and second order statistics of attenuation are calculated and the depolarisation behaviour is studied. Rainfall rate statistics are also obtained from a co-located rain gauge. The results are contributed to the common European-wide satellite channel studies.

In 2017, the project was extended for further data collection and analysis. JSI has joined the ASALASCA network.

Our role: Developing and deploying a new sophisticated beacon receiver station with a tracking mechanism, capable of receiving 4 channels (co- and cross-polar components of satellite beacons at Ka- and Q-band). Collecting and post-processing the measurements and participating in the propagation campaign of the Alphasat Aldo Paraboni scientific experiment and the ASALASCA network.

Študija: Ohlajanje vodnikov nadzemnih vodov pri horizontalni hitrosti vetra pod 0,6 m/s

ELES d.o.o. (2017-2018)

Dynamic Thermal Rating Natural Convection

The essential limiting factor of the power transmission line transfer capabilities is the maximal allowed temperature of the conductor that should not be exceeded to avoid excessive sags. A commonly used conservative approach is to limit transfer capability to the worst case scenarios, i.e. hot, sunny, windless days. Of course, system operators strive to raise the limit with more sophisticated models that take into account actual weather conditions or even weather forecasts. As a consequence, there has been substantial research done on Dynamic Thermal Rating (DTR) models in the last few decades. Based on accumulated knowledge the leading standards in the field published guidelines for thermal rating for operative use. However, the proposed models rely only on empirical relations for determination of the temperature gradient on the surface of the conductor that dictates the heat flux due to the advection. This heat flux is the most intense cooling mechanism in play, and also the most complex to model. In this project, we extend the discussion about advective cooling with a direct simulation of temperature and velocity fields near the conductor with the focus on the natural convection regime. The introduced model considers Joule heat generation and heat transport within the power line and its vicinity, fluid flow driven by buoyancy force, solar heating, and radiation. The solution procedure uses RBF-FD numerical method combined with Poisson disk sampling nodal positioning algorithm, both implemented in our in-house library Medusa.

(H2020-RIA, 2016-2018)

The elastic Wireless Networking Experimentation (eWINE) is a research project funded by the European Comission under the Horizon2020 programme (Call: H2020-ICT-2015. Topic: ICT-12-2015). The main goal of eWINE is to realize elastic networks that can scale to a high number of users in a short timespan through the use of an agile infrastructure (intelligent software and flexible hardware), enabling: 1) dynamic on-demand end-to-end wireless connectivity service provisioning, 2) elastic resource sharing in dense heterogeneous and small cell networks (HetSNets), 3) intelligent and informed configuration of the physical layer.

Our role: Development and verification of algorithms for advanced cognitive networks based on experimentally-driven research. Investigation of radio localization procedures and radio spectrum detection and sharing. Studying the use of machine learning algorithms for heterogeneous wireless network optimization with the emphasis on parameters such as communication reliability, throughput and delay.

(2017)

The WiSHFUL project (Wireless Software and Hardware platforms for Flexible and Unified radio and network controL) will reduce the threshold for experimentation in view of wireless innovation creation and by increasing the realism of experimentation. The WiSHFUL project is funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Programme under grant agreement n645274. The project started on January 1st 2015 and will last for 36 months.

Our role: Open call extension of the WiSHFUL project with addition of LOG-a-TEC testbed 5G capillary capabilities and adaptation of WiSHFUL universal programming interfaces for the use in the LOG-a-TEC testbed.

FP7 – IP (2014-2016)

The main objective of Fed4FIRE-ETEL is to fully integrate the existing wireless sensor network testbed LOG-a-TEC into the Fed4FIRE federation. This will be achieved by adopting Fed4FIRE federation interfaces and components, creating the adapters between LOG-a-TEC and the Fed4FIRE federation platform, validating the newly federated testbed and making it available to the community of experimenters through the common Fed4FIRE portal.

Our role: Open call extension of the Fed4FIRE project focusing on full integration of the wireless testbed LOG-a-TEC into the Fed4FIRE federation by adopting common Fed4FIRE federation interfaces, components and tools and creating the adapters between LOG-a-TEC and the Fed4FIRE federation platform. Validating the newly federated testbed and making it available to the community of experimenters through the common Fed4FIRE portal.

(FP7- STREP, 2014-2017)

Sustainable and robust networking for smart electricity distribution – Sunseed proposes an evolutionary approach to exploitation of common, converged communication infrastructures for future smart energy grid services. Its life cycle matches the joint communication networking operations of DSO and telecommunication operator and consists of six steps: overlap, interconnect, interoperate, manage, plan and open. Joint communication networking operations steps start with analysis of regional overlap of DSO and telecommunications operator infrastructures. Overlap is discovering what vital DSO energy grid infrastructure locations (e.g. DEG, substations) are geographically covered by both DSO and telecom communication networks and underlying infrastructure (e.g. ducts, energy cabling). Coverage can be in wireline (PLC, xDSL, fiber) or wireless (WiFi, Gprs, UMTS, HSPA, LTE) technologies. Interconnection step assures communication on the physical layer between DSO and telco, whereas interoperation provides network visibility and reach of smart grid nodes and vital locations from both DSO and telecom sides. A virtual network(s) layer on top of physical infrastructure is formed that ensures secure communication. Monitoring, control and management acts upon measurement data streams from wide are sensors and smart meters. It employs novel intelligent real time analytical knowledge discovery methods. For full utilisation of future network planning, we will integrate various public databases. Applications build on open standards (W3C) with exposed application programming interfaces (API) to 3rd parties enable creation of new businesses related to energy and communication sectors (e.g. virtual power plant operators, energy services providers for optimizing home energy use) or enable public wireless access points (e.g. WiFi nodes at DEG points). SUNSEED life cycle steps promise much lower investments and total cost of ownership for future smart energy grids that will cover large, dense distributed energy generation and e-car charging infrastructures.

Our role: Development and production of prototypes of sensor devices for synchronous measurement of amplitude and phase (SPM) in the distribution electrical systems and for power measurement and power quality management (PMC). Development and deployment of service prototypes for smart grids such as three phase distribution system state estimation, short-term forecasting of events and demand response management. Deployment of SPM and PMC devices into the pilot management system (WAMS). Technical and scientific coordination of the project (Aleš Švigelj).

In February 2014 a severe icing storm hit Slovenia, and caused damage in order of 8.5 million € only on the power transmission network. In cooperation with Milan Vidmar Electric Power Research Institute (EIMV) and Slovenian Environment Agency (SEA) we developed and validated a DTRi model (Dynamic Thermal Rating – icing), which was implemented as a prototype system for operative forecasting and prevention of icing on high voltage transmission lines. We have validated the prototype system with measurements on an experimental site and through reconstruction of two real cases, on 1.2.2014 and 5.1.2016 on Beričevo-Divača line. The results of the study are promising, and therefore the customer decided to promote the system into the operative SUMO environment. For this purpose we also obtained additional founding from EU FP7 TETRACOM project. Both projects are led by members of our program group, while the customer is the company ELES.

  • OVE@PZ (SMER+)

OVE@PZ is a nationally funded applied research project on control modules and information infrastructure for the integration of renewable energy modules in smart buildings.

(FP7- IP, 2012-2015)

Aerial Base Stations with Opportunistic Links for Unexpected & Temporary Events – ABSOLUTE. Recent events have shown that in the aftermath of an emergency, disaster or any related tremendous unexpected events, a reliable communication infrastructure plays an important role in providing critical services including emergency recovery operations, critical infrastructure restoration, post-disaster surveillance etc. In most of the cases, immediately after a large scale disaster, the normal terrestrial network infrastructure is seriously compromised and cannot guarantee reliable and large scale coverage for rescue teams and citizens. Current mission critical communication systems including PPDR (Public Protection for Disaster Relief) systems are heavily limited in terms of network capacity and coverage. They are not designed for or suitable to address large scale emergency communication deployments immediately after the disaster scenarios where these networks can provide dependable and resilient network connectivity at higher data rates over large coverage areas. Moreover, PPDR systems are limited by interoperability barriers and the technological gap with commercial technologies and evolving standards. Furthermore, the first responder devices and terminals are getting smarter with new applications supporting packet data with integrated sensors and other monitoring and the availability of multimode heterogeneous embedded receivers. Such improvements call for a marked increase in capacity and energy demands for the first responder (FR) user terminals. Further, there is a large demand in the PPDR community for higher bandwidth emergency communication infrastructure to cater for the new mission critical services with very high throughput and low-delay requirements during the immediate post-emergency period (including real-time video streaming and video surveillance, exchange of high resolution pictures etc). Also some foreseen/unforeseen events with large aggregation of professional and consumer users such as e.g. big sport events, road shows or concerts require high capacity and/or dedicated coverage that the legacy terrestrial network infrastructure cannot provide rapidly. These factors underline an urgent requirement for a rapidly deployable multi-purpose, multi service and multi-band interoperable and integrated network infrastructure capable of supporting reliable high data rate applications to serve large scale disaster emergency situations and the temporary event scenarios.

Our role: Involved in the definition of the system architecture for large scale emergency communications and temporary events involving satellites and aerial platforms, in network planning and optimization, and in the design and prototyping of sensor network gateway, personal sensing devices and energy management module for the portable terrestrial eNodeB.

  • »Observe, infer, act«

European Regional Development Fund, MIZS (2014-2015)

The projects aims to develop an eLearning tool that promotes interactive learning through integrating and using different data sources (sensors, open data, sensor nodes, RFID etc.). Observe, infer and act eLearning tool is developed as a web-based service and mobile application. It enables its users to: (1) choose data from different data sources and create diverse data visualizations (observe), (2) analyse data, make logical inferences and scenarios for the chosen data streams (infer) and (3) initiate action (e.g. if the temperature is 25°C, send me an SMS). The baseline technologies and solutions are based on VIDEK (lightweight software suite enabling device interaction, data handling and user management) and UMKO (a basic rule engine, which executes tasks sequentially without any indexing and algorithms). It is developed as a modular platform, which allows the users to add additional data streams and develop new functionalities. The project partners and representatives of the Advisory board pay special attention to make the eLearning tool user friendly and easy to use in a variety of school subjects. The developed eLearning service is suitable for primary and secondary schools as well as higher education students; it stimulates new ways of teaching, augments traditional learning processes and promotes personal and data-driven learning.

(FP7 – IP, 2012-2016)

CITI-SENSE will develop “citizens’ observatories” to empower citizens to contribute to and participate inenvironmental governance, to enable them to support and influence community and societal priorities andassociated decision making. CITI-SENSE will develop, test, demonstrate and validate a community-basedenvironmental monitoring and information system using innovative and novel Earth Observation applications.To achieve this, the project will: (i) raise environmental awareness in citizens, (ii) raise user participation insocietal environmental decisions and (iii) provide feedback on the impact that citizens had in decisions. It willaddress the call’s request for effective participation by citizens in environmental stewardship, based on broadstakeholder and user involvement in support of both community and policy priorities. The project aims to learnfrom citizen experience and perception and enable citizenship co-participation in community decision making andco-operative planning. The concept of CITI-SENSE rests on three pillars: technological platforms for distributed monitoring; informationand communication technologies; and societal involvement. Three pilot case studies will focus on a range ofservices related to environmental issues of societal concern: combined environmental exposure and healthassociated with air quality; noise and development of public spaces, and indoor air at schools. Attention willbe given to representativeness of citizen participation. The case studies will be designed in collaboration withcitizens’ groups and decision makers. They will be based on distributed data collection using innovative static,portable and personal devices (low-cost reliable microsensor packs) that communicate with a data repositoriesthrough mobile phones or other devices. Development of participatory methods, data management strategies,and applications to facilitate exploitation of the data and information for policy, and society, will be done.

Our role: Design and development of a personal air-quality monitoring device supporting a set of different gass sensors and sensors for temperature, humidity and accelleration for participatory sensing, fusion of measurements and communication via smartphone application to remote (cloud based) database for further processing and application hosting.

Sensor and information management support (SMER+)

Sensor and information management support is a nationally funded applied research project on intelligent caravans.

  • APRICOT

(ARRS, 2011-2013)

The “Advanced procedures for interactive composition of sensor networks project” starts from the hypothesis that by applying SOA principles it is possible to develop advanced procedures for the interactive composition of sensor networks on demand and thus exploit shared heterogeneous sensor resources assuming the knowledge of their characteristics, functionality, the context and accessibility. Since we will rely on the use of semantic technologies for discovery and composition of sensor resources we refer to the composed networks as semantic sensor networks. The main objective of the project is to use semantic technologies to annotate and subsequently search for, discover, and reason upon sensor and associated communication resources, and on demand compose those resources into dynamic global sensor infrastructure. By having data on shared sensors instead on available sensor data, we make possible the interaction with sensors, so we can reuse them and set their parameters according to the needs of a particular application.

(FP7 – IP, 2011-2015)

The main target of the Cognitive Radio Experimentation World – CREW project is to establish an open federated test platform, which facilitates experimentally-driven research on advanced spectrum sensing, cognitive radio and cognitive networking strategies in view of horizontal and vertical spectrum sharing in licensed and unlicensed bands.

The CREW platform incorporates 5 individual wireless testbeds incorporating diverse wireless technologies (heterogeneous ISM, heterogeneous licensed, cellular, wireless sensor) augmented with State-of-the-Art cognitive sensing platforms.

The CREW project started in October 2010 with a consortium of 7 partners and was enlarged in July 2011 with the 8th partner. To extend the use of the federated testbeds to external researchers, two open calls are planned.

Our role: Deploying an outdoor wireless testbed LOG-a-TEC and establishing an open federated test platform, which facilitates experimentally-driven research on advanced spectrum sensing, cognitive radio and cognitive networking strategies in view of horizontal and vertical spectrum sharing in licensed and unlicensed bands.

(FP7-ENV CA)

The main objective of the Project is to identify and coordinate EO activities in the wider Balkan region and to pave the way for future full inclusion of all Balkan countries into GEO.

(FP7 NoE 2010-2014)

The PlanetData project is built around three objectives that together ensure the creation of a durable community made up of academic and industrial partners. This community will be supported in conducting research in the large-scale data management area through the provision of data sets and access to tailored data management technology. From the research point of view, the focus is on large-scale data management. Sensorlab provides sensor data, raw and annotated and services based on these.

(CC 2010-2013)

In the frame of the OPCOMM Competence Centre we will design an open communication platform for the development of new cutting-edge services and applications for the Future Internet. Special attention is given to the applicability of services, quality of user experience, the applicable value of data and content, and the interaction with the “material world”, i.e. various devices, objects and processes. This requires efficient interaction between the smart user terminals, appliances and objects, contextually dependent services, and the communication network. The programme encompasses research, design, and prototype development with the final demonstration of new solutions.

The SensorLab team is focused on gathering different types of data from sensor networks and on context awareness in support of services and application for object management. Moreover, it is concerned with pre-processing of data and metadata and its transfer to the core platform through appropriate data interfaces. In this respect, SensorLab will give special emphasis on the investigation of semantic technologies for sharing, searching, virtualizing and dynamic composition of sensor nodes.

”Cognitive Radio and Networking for Cooperative Coexistence of Heterogeneous Wireless Networks”. The main objective of the Action is to integrate the cognitive concept across all layers of communication systems, resulting in the definition of a European platform for cognitive radio and networks. The Action proposes coordinated research in the field of cognitive radio and networks. The cognitive concept applies to coexistence between heterogeneous wireless networks, that share the electromagnetic spectrum for maximum efficiency in resource management. Several efforts are currently in place in European research centers and consortia to introduce cognitive mechanisms at different layers of the communications protocol stack. This Action goes beyond the above trend by integrating the cognitive concept across all layers of system architecture, in view of joint optimization of link adaptation based on spectrum sensing, resource allocation, and selection between multiple networks, including underlay technologies. The cross-layer approach will provide a new perspective in the design of cognitive systems, based on a global optimization process that integrates existing cognitive radio projects, thanks to the merge of a wide-range of expertise, from hardware to applications, provided by over 30 academic and industrial partners. The final result will be the definition of a European platform for cognitive radio and networks. To reach this goal, algorithms and protocols for all layers of the communications stack will be designed, and a set of standard interfaces as well as a common reference language for interaction between cognitive network nodes will be defined.

The main objective of WiNeMo is to advance the state-of-the-art concerning networking aspects of scenarios integrating moving objects of the most varied kinds, ranging from personal use devices to sensors, into the Internet of the Future. In particular, the Action will coordinate the development of new algorithms, techniques, protocols models and tools that will facilitate the integration of moving objects into pervasive and ambient communications. The Action will foster cooperation among researchers at European and global level by contributing to the coordination and defragmentation of research efforts across Europe in the area by creating an open forum for academia and industry. As a consequence, the Action will play a supporting role to European industry – including SMEs – and will enhance cooperation between industry and academia in the area of networking support for moving objects. The Action will seek active cooperation with existing COST Actions and foster relationships with external bodies such as Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF); Open Mobile Alliance (OMA); the Standardization and Radiocommunication Sectors of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU); European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). The establishment of links with international (e.g. FP7 programmes) and national research projects is deemed as an essential goal which will be proactively pursued throughout the Action’s lifetime.

Wireless transmission via optical carriers opens doors of opportunity in areas as yet largely unexplored. Offering significant technical and operational advantages, optical wireless communication (OWC) can be, in some applications, a powerful alternative to and, in others, complementary to existing radio frequency (RF) wireless systems. Variations of OWC can be employed in a diverse range of communication applications ranging from very short-range (on the order of millimetres) optical interconnects within integrated circuits through outdoor inter-building links (on the order of kilometres) to satellite links (larger than 10,000 kilometres). In many respects, OWC research is still in its infancy and calls for extensive research to begin to harness the enormous potential of the optical spectrum. This COST Action will serve as a high-profile consolidated European scientific platform for interdisciplinary OWC research activities, spanning from characterization of diverse propagation media to modeling, design and development of devices, components, algorithms/protocols and systems. It will make significant contributions to the fundamental scientific understanding, technical knowledge, engineering design and applications while promoting community awareness of this emerging field. Development of novel and efficient communication technologies resulting from integrated research activities made possible through this Action will be a significant enabler for future-generation heterogeneous communication networks supporting a wide range of wireless services/applications.

Random network coding emerged through an award-winning paper by R. Koetter and F. Kschischang in 2008 and has since then opened a major research area in communication technology with widespread applications for communication networks like the internet, wireless communication systems, and cloud computing. It allows transmitting information through a network by disregarding any of its topological features. As in traditional algebraic coding theory, two main research directions in random network coding are (1) existence and construction of good and optimal network codes, (2) efficient encoding and decoding schemes for a given network code.

Restriction to the so-called Grassmannian codes has proven to be advantageous and leads to the theory of designs over GF(q). Worldwide, there exists a larger number of workgroups focusing on this topic, which includes several groups located in Europe. This COST Action will set up a European research network and establish network coding as a European core area in communication technology. Its aim is to bring together experts from pure and applied mathematics, computer science, and electrical engineering, who are working in the areas of discrete mathematics, coding theory, information theory, and related fields.

  • ESA PECS project “Satellite Propagation Slovenia – SatProSi”

(2011-2014)

ESA_SLIKA_STRANE6

SatProSi, project “Ka/Q-band Propagation Measurements and Modelling for the Design of Prediction and Impairment Mitigation Techniques” is a 3 year project for the European Space Agency (ESA), performed in the scope of Plan for European Cooperating States (PECS). The main goal of the project is to establish a Ka-band band satellite-beacon measuring site in Ljubljana, Slovenia and to statistically analyse the results. The task has already been successfully accomplished. SatProSi has thus become the first such satellite propagation experiment, to be carried out in Slovenia as well as in the broader region of the Balkans.

A low-cost beacon receiver has been developed specifically for the project, based on SDR (Software Defined Radio) technology. A GNU Radio software development toolkit and USRP (Universal Software Radio Peripheral) were used for application development. The application has been made publicly available as an open source code via the GitHub hosting service (https://github.com/urbank/beacon).

In 2013 a network of three low-cost SDR-based Ka-band beacon receivers has been established for the purpose of site diversity experiment, one in Ljubljana and other two at the distance of 26 and 40 km from Ljubljana (Lisec, Krvavec). More than one year of measurements, collected in Ljubljana, has already been processed and statistics of in-excess attenuation and rainfall rate have been calculated.

In the future, the project team aims to take the project to the next level, by conducting measurements of the Q-band beacons from the Alphasat satellite.

Link to the SatProSi files