1. Leveraging the
smart city
infrastructure
to remotely
train
undergrad
engineering
students
Johann M. Marquez-Barja
Professor
University of Antwerp – imec
johann.marquez-barja@uantwerpen.be
Seminario eMadrid sobre «Herramientas y recursos distribuidos en
educación para la experimentación remota»
25 de febrero, 2022

2. Disclaimer
Disclaimer
Photo by Leone Venter
Within this set of slides some third party copyrighted material is reused under the ‘fair use’
approach, for educational purposes only.

3. imec is
the world-leading R&D and innovation hub
in nanoelectronics and digital technology.

4. USA
SAN FRANCISCO
BELGIUM
LEUVEN HQ - GHENT
THE NETHERLANDS
EINDHOVEN
INDIA
BANGALORE
TAIWAN
HSINCHU
CHINA
SHANGHAI
JAPAN
TOKYO
JAPAN
OSAKA
USA
ORLANDO

5. GHENT
IDLab
ANTWERP
IDLab
BRUSSELS
EU HUB
KORTRIJK
SMART EDUCATION
LEUVEN
HEADQUARTERS
GENK
ENERGYVILLE
5
IMEC Belgium
CITY OF THINGS (CITYLAB)
SMARTHIGWAY

6. SEMICONDUCTOR & SYSTEM TECHNOLOGIES
CORE
CMOS
PATTERNING
TECHNOLOGY
LOGIC
TECHNOLOGY
MEMORY
TECHNOLOGY
INTERCONNECT
TECHNOLOGY
3D INTEGRATION
OPTICAL I/O
SENSOR
TECHNOLOGY
FLEXIBLE
TECHNOLOGY
APPLICATION DOMAINS
SMART HEALTH SMART MOBILITY SMART CITIES SMART INDUSTRIES SMART ENERGY
NETWORKING DIGITAL PRIVACY &
SECURITY
SOFTWARE & DATA
MANAGEMENT SKILLS
DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY PLATFORMS
Centralized team in Leuven (BE) & Eindhoven (NL) Embedded within universities

7. Smart
Connectivity
Solutions
IDLAB COMBINES UNIQUE EXPERTISE IN
INTERNET TECHNOLOGIES & ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Networking technologies
From antenna design to application
behaviour
From the edge to the cloud
Artificial
Intelligence
From cognitive sensing
to real-time control
Applied to many markets
(health, finance, industry 4.0,
media)

8. 8
Flexible Networking Research Group – Johann’s team
Smart industries
Combining edge computing
capabilities with latency
aware mobile nodes
(drones, vessels, cars)
Smart cities
Large-scale broadband access
solutions for new
high demanding services
Connected vehicles
Highly reliable and latency aware
connectivity for mission critical
applications
Programmable Networks
Infusing our expertise in artificial
intelligence in wireless networking.
E.g. smart spectrum usage.
5G

9. Testbeds
PLAYGROUNDS
9

10. IMEC large scale testbeds
10
From lab to various real-life environments
TECHNOLOGY-DRIVEN
Fixed, controlled environment
SoA technologies
TRL 3-4
APPLICATION-DRIVEN
Real-life environment
Well-proven technologies
TRL 6-7
WIRELESS LAB OFFICELAB SMART CAR
SMART HIGHWAY
VIRTUAL WALL HOMELAB SMART SPACES
CITYLAB FACTORYLAB

13. City of things / Citylab
13

14. 14
Things

15. Octa
Plug&play sensor connectivity
LoRA
Sigfox
NFC
UHF
Gen 2
DASH7
BLE
NB-IoT
Communication
CO2 VOC
NO2 SO2
Particle
Other Sensors
Breakout
GPS
Other Shields

16. 16
Connectivity

17. CityLab gateways
17
Three boxes

18. LPWAN protocols in city of things
§ Implemented on own basestations
& Proximus
§ 50kb/s, 250 byte frame, +30s
interval
§ Advantages:
§ Relatively high BW
§ Relatively low latency
§ More sensors available
§ Disadvantages
§ 30s latency can be high
§ Adaptive data rates
§ Not everything available yet
§ Support status
§ Well integrated
18
More than one protocol to connect them all
Implemented through EngieM2M
0,3kb/s, 12byte frame, 140 uplink
+ 4 downlink /day
Advantages:
Good deep coverage
Excellent battery performance
Disadvantages
Low BW
High latency
Limited application domain
Support status
Works for select cases
Implemented today through
Orange
250kb/s, 512 byte frame, 0.3
interval
Advantages
Higher bandwidths
Lower latency
Disadvantages
Limited sensor availability
for now
Higher battery impact
Support status
UDP-only supported today

19. The citylab testbed
19
Gateways
802.11ac (2.4GHz, 5GHz) Bluetooth 4.0 Zigbee (868MHz, 2.4GHz)
(433MHz, 868MHz) (868MHz)
Enable outdoor experimentation
Simultaneous use of multiple technologies for
comparison and multimodal solutions.
50+ gateways outdoors
Enable extensive experiment management
Build on top of stable, well-known FIRE testbed
management technology: jFED/EmuLab

20. CityLab gateway outdoor unit
20
highly flexible network experiments
§ APU 2C4 controller
§ x86 embedded system, running Linux and Windows
§ Offered to testbed user with jFED
§ Ath10k + Intel AC7260
§ 802.11 (mac) experiments at 2.4GHz and 5GHz
§ Intel AC7260
§ Bluetooth Low Energy experiments, including iBeacon
§ OpenMote + OpenUSB
§ 802.15.4 experiments at 2.4GHz and 868MHz
§ Generic radios at 868MHz and 433MHz
§ Sub-GHz experimentation, including DASH-7
§ HopeRF RFM95W
§ LoRa client module for heartbeats
§ USB hub
§ Connect any device over USB (possibly with adapter)

21. CityLab Architecture
21
University of
Antwerp
academic fiber
CityLab
Gateway
CityLab
Gateway
CityLab
Gateway
CityLab
Gateway
CityLab Gateway
Management
CityLab Sensors

22. 22
Deployment

23. City of Things + Citylab - Two deployment sites
23
Smart zone CityLab
Gate016
Gate015
Gate014
Gate013
Gate012
Gate011
Gate010
Gate009
Gate008
Gate007
Gate006
Gate005
Gate004
Gate003
Gate002
Gate001
BZ/SSO
Eigendommen Groep Antwerpen
Bron: AAPD - kadastrale toestand 01.01.2017
verwerking Studiedienst SSO | GIS dd 13.10.2017
Stad Antwerpen
Zorgbedrijf Antwerpen
Afbakening Smartzone
Woonhaven Antwerpen
OCMW Antwerpen
VESPA
Voorstel Gateways IMEC
Bron: IMEC
verwerking Studiedienst SSO | GIS dd 23.03.2018

24. 24

25. 25

26. 26

27. 27
Use Cases

28. 28

29. Water Quality
29
Air Quality People Flows Flooding Risk Traffic Situation Climate

30. 30
How can education
benefit from it?

31. Remote Laboratories
"Adaptive remote experimentation for engineering students", Nina Slamnik-Krijestorac, Joao Francisco
Nunes Pinheiro, Thomas Huybrechts, Daniel van den Akker, and Johann M. Marquez-Barja. ACM
International Conference on Information Technology for Social Good (GoodIT 2021). pp 73-78. September,
2021. Rome, Italy . ISBN 9781450384780. DOI 10.1145/3462203.3475931.
Online labs
Remote labs Virtual Labs

32. 6NET – Network Management Laboratories
Third year of Bachelor study at the University of Antwerp
"Utilizing the Smart City to train Engineering Students on Network Management Topics during the
COVID-19 pandemic", Henrique Carvalho de Resende, Nina Slamnik-Krijestorac, Cristiano Bonato Both,
and Johann M. Marquez-Barja. IEEE Revista Iberoamericana de Tecnologias del Aprendizaje (IEEE-RITA)
(Latin-American Learning Technologies Journal). pp 1-10. February, 2022. ISBN 1932-8540. DOI
10.1109/RITA.2022.3149774. [Early access]. (English Version)

33. Relation of the content with industry needs
"Introducing Engineering Undergraduate Students to
Network Management Techniques: a Hands-on
approach using the Citylab Smart City", Henrique
Cesar Carvalho de Resende, Nina Slamnik-Krijestorac,
Cristiano Both, Johann M. Marquez-Barja. IEEE Global
Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON2020).
pp 1-10. April, 2020. Porto, Portugal..

34. Using the Smartcity for remote labs
"Introducing Engineering Undergraduate Students to Network Management Techniques: a Hands-on approach using the Citylab Smart City", Henrique Cesar
Carvalho de Resende, Nina Slamnik-Krijestorac, Cristiano Both, Johann M. Marquez-Barja. IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON2020).
pp 1-10. April, 2020. Porto, Portugal..

35. Teaching approach
- online/remote -
§ Teaching practices:
§ Highly scalable platform that can respond
to massive enrollment, and massive large-
scale interaction during online lessons
§ Students join classes from any suitable
place with internet connection
§ Homogeneous experience to all groups of
students
§ Laboratory on top of the smart city
§ Polls for students created during lectures
and laboratory exercises to clarify study
material
§ Extensive survey created at the end of
semester to assess students’ experience
with our remote module, tackling:
lectures, lab. exercises, polls, general
study material, online seminars,
interaction with students, and lecture
recordings
35
"Reacting to COVID-19 campus imminent closure: Enabling remote networking laboratories via MOOCs", Nina Slamnik-Krijestorac, Johann M.
Marquez-Barja. IEEE learning with MOOCS 2020 (LWMOOCS VII). pp 195-200. October, 2020. Antigua Guatemala, Guatemala . ISBN 978-1-
7281-9728-9. DOI 10.1109/LWMOOCS50143.2020.9234321. [Best Student Paper Award]

36. Assessing the experience of students…
36
"Utilizing the Smart City to train Engineering Students on Network Management Topics during the
COVID-19 pandemic", Henrique Carvalho de Resende, Nina Slamnik-Krijestorac, Cristiano Bonato Both,
and Johann M. Marquez-Barja. IEEE Revista Iberoamericana de Tecnologias del Aprendizaje (IEEE-RITA)
(Latin-American Learning Technologies Journal). pp 1-10. February, 2022. ISBN 1932-8540. DOI
10.1109/RITA.2022.3149774. [Early access]. (English Version)

37. 37

38. Take away
§ Education of tomorrow
§ Based on future societal context
and needs
§ Digitalized educational solutions
§ Students need to learn on top of
facilities that they will phase as
professionals
§ We have integrated the Smart city
into ENGINEERING education
but...
§ That is only one step… STEM in
Primary and Secondary schools!
38

39. 39
JOHANN MARQUEZ-BARJA
PROFESSOR
HEAD OF THE FLEXIBLE NETWORKING GROUP
IMEC-IDLAB UANTWERPEN
BELGIUM
WWW.MARQUEZ-BARJA.COM
johann.marquez-barja@imec.be
johann.marquez-barja@uantwerpen.be