LAB REPORT
C
ENT is an initiative to research how interoperable systems and technologies are converging to provide solutions for industries and economies. The Center’s goal is to create a culture of knowledge management through experiential learning. Through interdisciplinary and applied research, CENT teams focus on the management and use of networks and communication and relevant public policy and industrial organization issues. The space provides a platform for faculty research on digital transformation and networking; a hub for experiential learning for graduate and advanced undergraduate student teams; and a mutually beneficial learning interface between the networking technology industries and the iSchool.
Associate Professor Carlos Caicedo in the CENT lab.
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THE iSCHOOL @ SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY
PROJECTS INCLUDE: Internet of Things (IoT) Testbed CENT’s IoT testbed setup started in the Fall 2017 semester to provide infrastructure for experiential learning and research for IoT. The IoT management and data processing cluster was set up as an aggregate set of containerized applications for data analysis, storage and visualization. Its principal components include: l Several connectivity options for sensor and systems (wired Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and LoRaWAN) l Machine-to-machine communication with a focus on MQTT l A storage and processing cluster leveraging ThingsBoard l An ELK stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana). The connectivity infrastructure includes a dedicated IoT SSID available in Hinds Hall, two LoRaWAN gateways, one located in Hinds Hall and the other on top of a 20-story building in down town Syracuse, and a core network in the CENT lab on the second floor of Hinds Hall. The LoRaWAN infrastructure covers all of metro Syracuse and most of the Syracuse University campus. The testbed working group is presently working on detailed coverage mapping and initial sensor deployment. The LoRaWAN gateways are part of “The Things Network” (https://www. thethingsnetwork.org/) and provide capabilities to capture data from sensors across Syracuse University, the city of Syracuse and beyond, given the deployment of Things Network gateways in many U.S. and international cities. Several Raspberry Pi 3 nodes with a customized sensor board are being deployed in the School’s Hinds Hall building, enabling the building to act as a “living lab” for IoT projects. The data captured by these nodes goes to the data processing cluster. Beyond its use in IoT experiments, the data can be used in several courses at the iSchool related to data analytics and visualization.
