In some months, cable communication will be a thing of the past. The development of a new high-speed technology, long-range (more than 50 kilometres) and much cheaper than UMTS, will change the communication systems existing up to now. WIMAX, which will replace WIFI, has been created for offices or small places; it will also replace ADSL, expanding the access to the Internet, especially in rural areas without network range at present. But these will not be the only applications of WIMAX. A research team of the Department of Computer Architecture and Technology of the University of Granada coordinated by Gonzalo Olivares has been working since months on the application of this new technology and other like ZIGBEE to the control of irrigation systems and distributed industrial processes. This communication technology allows the use of ultra-low consumption communication nodes, supplied by simple alkaline cells.
So far, irrigation systems automatization had been carried out through a communication system developed in collaboration with the company of Granada Ingeniería y Control Remoto S.A. (a spin-off of the UGR) under the name of Hidrobus. Although this method has given very good results in irrigation control (it has been installed in several irrigation regions, especially in banana farms of the Canaries, with a very high number of irrigation hydrants, more than 2,200), the advantages of WIMAX and ZIGBEE can improve the performance of this kind of distributed control networks, according to the head of the department of Computer Architecture and Technology, Alberto Prieto.
More range, less cost
The scientists´ objective is to implement these emerging communication technologies in any kind of process whose elements are geographically distributed, with higher range, more reliability, and in a faster and cheaper way.
But this is not the only research work of the group of Computer Architecture and Technology. In the last years, they have set in motion two essential projects for Granada: the control of water distribution in the city and the automatization of the ski lifts and lighting of Sierra Nevada. Two works in which they have also applied the technologies WIMAX and ZIGBEE to improve its automatization, reduce costs and improve the communication systems of such applications.
Besides this research line, currently, within the group leaded by professor Prieto, a team supervised by professor Ignacio Rojas is developing mathematic models based on artificial neuronal networks and fuzzy logic to improve the design of control systems. This research is giving rise to papers in renowned scientific journals.
Reference
Professor Alberto Prieto. Dpt. of Architecture and Computer Technology. Tel. 958 243 226 / 627 555 336.
E-mail. aprieto@ugr.es
