Dr. Aftab M Hussain  organized a workshop on Hands-on LoRaWAN workshop for IoT applications on 23 March in collaboration with India-EU ICT standardisation collaboration. People from the industry like  Microchip, Senra, CyberEye, TCL etc participated in the workshop and shared their insights, which was attended by 19 student teams from colleges across India.

Interested student teams from colleges across the country were asked to pre-register using a google form and submit a writeup on the importance of IoT and how it can change the way we live. The essays were vetted by IIITH faculty and selected teams were called for the workshop. Based on the availability of the hands-on kits, the workshop was planned for 25 teams (two students per team). The pre-registration phase saw applications from 53 teams from various cities of India (such as Chennai, Coimbatore, Amravati, Tirupati etc.). After careful screening, 25 teams were invited for the workshop. These included 10 teams from IIIT-H (across UG1 to UG4 and PG1), 6 teams from other colleges in Hyderabad (such as JBREC, Vardhaman College, MJCET, Stanley college for Women etc.) and 9 teams from other cities (such as Bhubaneshwar, Chennai, Coimbatore, Vizag, Amravati, Guntur etc.). Of the 25 invited teams, 19 teams attended the workshop.

 

 

 

 

 

The first part of the workshop consisted of lectures from IIIT-H faculty and industry experts on LoRaWAN basics and various use-cases and applications. The second part of the workshop was hands-on with students learning how to connect simple sensors to a LoRa transceiver module and gateway.

LoRa is an upcoming low power wide area network (LPWAN) protocol particularly targeting IoT applications. It is focused towards low data rate applications, such that battery life is maximized. It operates in the free ISM band (865 MHz in India) with a 2 MHz bandwidth divided in 8 channels. It makes use of the Chirp Spread Spectrum (CSS) modulation which utilizes the complete channel width and ensures high signal to noise ratio (SNR) and very good link budget. The communication protocol is compatible with OneM2M, which can be used at the service layer.

 

The workshop was mainly sponsored by India-EU ICT Standardization Collaboration, while various industry partners contributed in kind. The hands-on session was designed and conducted by personnel from Microchip, while the LoRaWAN network was provided by SenRa. The Joint chapter of CAS/EDS of IEEE Hyderabad section helped with promoting the event throughout various colleges in the region.