Research group for Media, Innovation and Contemporary Technologies

GreenWeCan - Green wireless efficient city access network

About

Within the GreenWeCan project, a “green” dual wireless city access network infrastructure, consisting of a wireless local area network (WLAN) and a wireless sensor network (WSN), will be investigated. The WLAN part will be a community-based network, offering inhabitants the opportunity of sharing their Internet connection to the community, while the WSN part will make use of energy harvesters, able to aggregate and process (real-time) data. Both network parts will be able to offer innovative services integrated into several geospatial applications by aggregating data from multiple sources. In addition, the community-based WLAN model has prospects to seek for ways to bridge the digital divide. Much attention will be paid to “green” aspects: human exposure to radiation and energy consumption savings. To validate and analyse this, a demonstrator network will be built.

An interdisciplinary research approach will be of key importance to tackle this diversity of network challenges. Socio-economic user and stakeholder research will provide deeper insight into needs and expectations of citizens as well as other stakeholders (both public and private players) and an in-depth understanding of the most important conditions for both access to and use of existing and emerging ICT-services. This must enable true user-centric development of strategies, application and use concepts, and a reliable detection of the most likely opportunities.

An overall project duration of 30 months is proposed for this project. The GreenWeCan network will first be validated as lab proof-of-concept demonstration at the end of year 2. Within the next half year, a demonstrator network will be showed during one of the many events in Ghent, where citizens of Ghent as well as visitors will be able to participate in user-experience testing of the GreenWeCan network and applications. Based on the project outcomes, recommendations will be made for future “green” wireless city access networks.

Duration of the project

The project runs from 01/02/2011 - 31/07/2013.

Staff involved

  • Tom Evens
  • dr. Isabelle Stevens

Clusters

  • Media Production & Distribution
  • ICT & Society

Financed by

  • iMinds