PerT

The Pervasive Technologies (PerT) Research Area studies and develops technologies enabling the emerging paradigm of Internet of Things (IoT), in which every physical object, enriched with communication capabilities, acquires an electronic identity, becomes a source of information and becomes part of a global network consisting of a large number of heterogeneous nodes, enabling the optimization and management of processes in many areas.

The research area is organized into three units:

The IoT Objects and Platforms unit is in charge of technologies and platforms that turn physical objects in IoT nodes. The expertise of the unit includes embedded systems, hardware design, integration of sensors and techniques for harvesting from the surrounding environment the energy needed to operate the nodes.

The Pervasive Secure Networks unit studies the communication paradigms that ensure flexibility, scalability, security and robustness to communications among IoT objects. In particular: cognitive and opportunistic communication techniques that self-adapt to the changing conditions of radio connectivity between nodes, solutions for coexistence and interoperability of nodes with heterogeneous wireless communication technologies.

The IoT Service Management unit develops distributed and cooperative algorithms supporting IoT services, including synchronization and location algorithms for wireless nodes. The unit designs the middleware architectures fostering interoperation between objects that expose heterogeneous services and adopts hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) approaches to develop co-design and co-simulation tools for new IoT features.