The Wi-SUN (Wireless Smart Utility Network) launch 2.0 at IIIT Hyderabad campus on 5 May was a highly anticipated event, drawing attendees from academia, government, and industry. The event gained further excitement with the attendance of Mr. Daniel Cooley, the CTO of Silicon Labs along with his Team and Mr. V L Praveen Kumar, Director, HMWSSB and his team.
Initially the team visited the smart city living lab. The Lead Architect of Smart City Living Lab Ms. Anuradha Vattem defined and explained the need for a living lab, its vision, and the implementation done so far. She showed the various IOT nodes deployed and demonstrated the various flavours of data visualization through different dashboard views.
The event kicked off with a welcome address by Prof. P J Narayanan, who talked about the importance of the Wi-SUN technology for smart cities and the need for collaborations between academia and industry to drive innovation. He also highlighted the significance of having Silicon Labs taking the initiative to collaborate with IIITH for the first Wi-SUN deployment in India at IIIT Hyderabad.
The deployment of any new technology comes with its own set of challenges, and the installation of Wi-SUN FAN1.0 and FAN1.1 backhaul network covering the whole campus is no exception. During her presentation on Wi-SUN journey with Silicon Labs, Ms. Anuradha Vattem, recollected some of the challenges faced while deploying the Wi-SUN nodes at IIITH campus.
One of the biggest challenges is the need for extensive planning of the network to ensure proper coverage and connectivity. She also emphasized on the efforts put on site surveys, RF propagation studies, and network simulations in the planning phase to ensure a successful deployment.
She also stressed the importance of having a robust management system that can monitor network performance, troubleshoot issues, and provide remote management capabilities.
In conclusion, she mentioned that in spite of the various challenges, the team has played a key role in successful deployment of both Wi-SUN FAN1.0 and FAN1.1 network in the campus and requested Prof. Ramesh Loganathan to take the honour of requesting Mr. Daniel Cooley to officially launch the Wi-SUN campus wide network.
Amidst of everyone keeping their fingers crossed awaiting the successful launch, The Silicon Labs CTO, Daniel Cooley pressed the launch button after the countdown with guidance from Anuradha Vattem and Prof. Aftab Hussain. And the visual dashboard with all the node status, DODAG connectivity and the analytics was on the screen, along with the hardware dashboard which was showing the status of the live deployment in the form of coloured lights.
To everyone’s surprise, there was a light connected to the Wi-SUN network available in the meeting room which also got turned on. The launch was followed by a demonstration of the technology in action, showcasing its capabilities and potential use cases. Attendees were impressed by the speed and reliability of the technology and its ability to handle large-scale deployments.
They even tried to play around with the network by controlling various lights through the dashboard. Along with it, a drone view of the whole network and live demo on the campus lights was played on the other two screens.
After the inauguration Mr. Daniel Cooley, expressed his thanks to the whole team for making this a memorable occasion to him, and gave an insightful speech on the potential of Wi-SUN technology. He highlighted the significance of the technology for smart cities, stating that it will improve the quality of life for citizens. He talked about how the company has been a pioneer in developing wireless technologies and has been working on Wi-SUN for several years. He concluded saying that he looks forward to being present for the big launch being planned in September 2023 with this experience.
Mr. Praveen Kumar also mentioned that they would like to check the feasibility of using Wi-SUN technology in the water utility network. Prof. Ramesh Loganathan and Mr. Manish Kothari also expressed their words of excitement about the launch event . Then the momentoes were awarded to the team Mr. Vaibhav Naware – Key engineer, Ushasee Mugadali, Gaurav Pal, Leo Francis, Shashidhar, Santoshi, Surya Suhas and Mr.Prabhakar, who worked towards the success of the event by Mr. Daniel Cooley. Dr. .Aftab Hussain gave the vote of thanks. Then the team moved over to one of the streetlights for officially unveiling the plaque on a Wi-SUN-enabled light pole.
This launch of Wi-SUN FAN 1.1 technology leads to the beginning of a new era for providing connectivity to IoT based solutions for utility networks. The event left attendees with a sense of optimism about the future of smart cities and the role that Wi-SUN technology plays in it.
May 2023