Unibo Team Leader: Prof. Luca Benini, Dip. di Ingegneria dell'Energia Elettrica e dell'Informazione "Guglielmo Marconi" – DEI
The aftermath of too many dramatic events involving public structures and private buildings collapse makes imperative to ask ourselves whether anything can be done to mitigate their effects or avoid them and save the lives taken as a result of their occurrence. Wireless sensor network (WSN)-based systems for structural health monitoring could be the answer to this crucial question were they able to provide long lasting monitoring and robust and reliable data delivery as requested by increasing safety demands. This is unfortunately unavailable today.
The GENESI project proposes research addressing all the critical barriers and challenges that prevent the application of WSNs for monitoring structures, buildings and spaces. In particular, by combining new hardware and software design, the GENESI will produce systems for structural health monitoring that are long lasting, pervasive and totally distributed and autonomous.
New wireless sensor nodes will be build that are capable of achieving virtual infinite lifetime through a well-balanced combination of cutting edge technologies, such as energy harvesting from multiple sources, the first small factor fuel cells, low-cost radio triggering for minimizing idle energy consumption and algorithms for smart interference management.
New software will complement the GENESI hardware in the quest of long lasting system lifetime by taking into account the when and how much of energy availability. At the same time, end user requirements will be met according to a newly defined application driven Quality of Service concept.
Novel task allocation algorithms, cross-layer protocol stacks, situation awareness and context discovery mechanisms complete the definition of a system that addresses the major challenges of the ICT theme of FP7. Finally, involving end users directly into the research cycle as key players, GENESI is poised to address realistic societal needs while fostering technology transfer and market exploitation.
Coordinator
Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza" (Italy)
Other participants
ALMA MATER STUDIORUM-UNIVERSITA DI BOLOGNA
- Dip. di Ingegneria dell'Energia Elettrica e dell'Informazione "Guglielmo Marconi" – DEI
- Team Leader: Prof. Luca Benini
Universiteit Twente (The Netherlands)
Stmicroelectronics S.r.l. (Italy)
Consorziotreesse (Italy)
University College Cork, National University of Ireland, Cork (Eire)
Solexperts AG (Switzerland)
Start date 01/04/2010
End date 31/03/2013
Duration 36 months
Project cost 3.009.859 EURO
Project Funding 2.000.000 EURO
Subprogramme Area ICT-2009.3.5 Engineering of Networked Monitoring and Control Systems
Contract type Collaborative project