India’s International Institute of Information Technology in Hyderabad (IIIT-H) worked with Texas-based Silicon Labs to launch a campus-wide Wi-Sun network to enable research into IoT and smart cities.

Wi-Sun is an open-standard protocol enabling interoperability through open-source software with multi-layer security. It can help utilities, municipalities and enterprises deploy long-range, low-power wireless mesh networks connecting thousands of IoT nodes.

The IIITH Smart City Living Lab was set up as an initiative of Meity (Ministry of Electronics & IT), National Cities Mission, and the government of Telangana, with knowledge support from EBTC (European Business Technology Council). Silicon Labs, Intel and Saint Gobain are the other three founding corporate partners.

“The Smart City Living Lab, a year old now, is already a testbed for various start-ups and research,” said Ramesh Loganathan, a professor at IIIT-H. “IIIT-H’s campus consists of sensor networks monitoring different verticals such as water, energy, air pollution, solar generation, as well as a strong standards-based data network.”

The Wi-Sun network will add to the existing modes of sensor communications including wifi and LoRa. Wi-Sun needs no towers or expensive communications infrastructure, and allows sensors to connect easily to the cloud. The project at IIIT-H will convert all 100 streetlights on campus to Wi-Sun smart streetlights, to build a dense and steady network to allow other sensors such as energy meters, indoor deployments and so on anywhere on campus to use these lights as router nodes to send sensor data.

“Industry-academia partnerships, like the Smart City Living Lab, are critical to the growth of the IoT in India,” said Ross Sabolcik, senior vice president at Silicon Labs. “Together, we can solve some of the country’s most complex challenges and improve quality of life for all with wireless connectivity. This Wi-Sun network launch is an important milestone that will be the foundation for future smart city applications.”

This project is the foundation for future research study into the Wi-Sun network and will also include challenges for start-ups to create technologies for smart cities using Wi-Sun to help take smart city innovations to cost-effective deployment.

IIIT-H is an autonomous research university founded in 1998 that focuses on the core areas of IT, such as computer science, electronics and communications, and their applications in other domains through inter-disciplinary research that has a greater social impact.

Silicon Labs is headquartered in Austin, Texas, with its largest wireless development centre in Hyderabad, India.