Hours:
12 hours (3 credits)

Room:
14 maggio 2018: Aula Riunioni del Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Informazione, Largo Lucio Lazzarino, Pisa – Piano 6
15 e 16 maggio 2018: Aula Riunioni del Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Informazione, Via G. Caruso 16, Pisa – Piano Terra

Short Abstract:
The last years have witnessed a considerable growth in the market of wearable technology. Smart devices, like smartwatches and fitness trackers, embed a wide range of sensors and are potentially worn continuously throughout the day. This scenario has brought about the unprecedented opportunity to constantly monitor users' movements. In turn, this massive amount of information has led to an increasing interest in the development of applications related to health and well-being. In this context, a key challenge is represented by the reliable extraction of relevant patterns from collected signals. For instance, gait analysis applications should devise appropriate signal processing techniques to detect walking activity as well as to analyze and classify gait patterns.

In this course, students will be given a practical glimpse into the emerging field of human activity monitoring by means of wearable sensors. This will include a description of the most relevant signal processing methodologies aimed at achieving accurate and unobtrusive wearable systems.

Course Contents in brief:

• Introduction to wearable-based systems for continuous monitoring of human activities
  • Applications
  • Devices and sensors
  • System design
• Fall detection systems
  • Acceleration-based detection of potential falls
  • Pattern recognition techniques to discriminate falls from normal activities
• Gait detection and analysis
  • Lightweight and reliable detection of gait cycles using wearable systems
  • Gait pattern analysis using supervised learning or anomaly detection
    • Gait-based monitoring of medical conditions
    • Gait as a biometric feature
• Design and implementation on wearable systems with constrained resources

Schedule:

• 14/05/2018: 9:30 - 13:30, Largo Lucio Lazzarino
• 15/05/2018: 9:30 - 13:30, Via Caruso
  
• 16/05/2018: 9:30 - 13:30, Via Caruso

Room:
Aula Riunioni del Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Informazione, Via G. Caruso 16, Pisa – Ground Floor

BACKGROUND
The mission of STO is to conduct and promote co-operative research and information exchange. STO consists of a three level organization: the Science and Technology Board (STB), the Panels and the Technical Teams. The Systems and Electronics Technology (SET) Panel is one of the seven Panels under the STB.
The SET Panel mission is to advance technology in elec-tronics and passive/active sensors as they pertain to recon-naissance, surveillance and target acquisition, electronic warfare, communications and navigation; and to enhance sensor capabilities through multi-sensor integration/fusion. This concern the phenomenology related to target signature, propagation and battle space environment, EO, RF, acous-tic and magnetic sensors, antenna, signal and image pro-cessing, components, sensor hardening and electromagnet-ic compatibility.

THEME
The goal of the LS on "Passive Radar Technology" is to provide to the wide military and civil audience the infor-mation about passive radars including passive radar funda-mentals, properties of passive radars using different illumi-nation sources, availability of illuminators, coverage for different altitudes, range, Doppler and localization accuracy, ability of deployment in different scenario etc.

Schedule:

• Day 1: 9:00 - 17:00
• Day 2: 9:00 - 17:00

Hours:
8 hours (2 credits)

Room:
Aula Riunioni del Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Informazione, Via G. Caruso 16, Pisa – Ground Floor

Short Abstract:
The course will be focused on nano-indentation methods for probing material mechanical properties at the micro-scale, with particular reference to soft materials, such as hydrogels and soft tissues [1,2].

First, an overview on material elastic and viscoelastic properties will be provided, presenting the basic mechanical elements (spring, dashpot) and the classical lumped parameter models (Generalised Maxwell Model) typically used to describe material mechanical behavior [3,4]. The focus will be on i) experimental nano-indentation methods to derive both elastic (Oliver-Pharr and Hertz models) and viscoelastic (dynamic nano-indentation and nano-epsilon dot method) properties and ii) data analysis to identify lumped model parameters [1,5–7]. Pros and cons of deriving material viscoelastic properties in the frequency (i.e. dynamic nano-indentation) or in the strain rate (i.e. nano-epsilon dot test) domain will be then discussed, presenting practical examples [3,8]. The course will end with a hands-on lab session dedicated to performing nano-indentation measurements on soft materials.

Course Contents in brief:
1st lesson (seminar, 2h30')

• Introduction to material elastic and viscoelastic properties
• Basic elements (spring, dashpot) and classical lumped models (Generalised Maxwell Model) to describe material mechanical behaviour
• Classical nano-indentation methods to characterise material elastic properties (Oliver-Pharr, Hertz model)

2nd lesson (seminar, 2h30')

• Classical nano-indentation methods to characterise material viscoelastic properties (dynamic nano-indentation, nano-epsilon dot method)
• Pros and cons of deriving material viscoelastic properties in the frequency (i.e. dynamic nano-indentation) or in the strain rate (i.e. nano-epsilon dot test) domain

3rd lesson (lab session, 3h)

• Nano-indentation measurements on soft materials.

Schedule:

• 1st lesson: 10 Sep 2018 / 9.00 – 11.30 a.m.
• 2nd lesson: 12 Sep 2018 / 9.00 – 11.30 a.m.
• 3rd lesson: 17 Sep 2018 / 14.30 – 17.30

Hours:
16 hours (4 credits)

Room:
Aula Riunioni del Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Informazione, Via G. Caruso 16, Pisa – Ground Floor

Short Abstract:
The tutorial will focus on recent advances in sensors, circuits and systems for new generations of vehicles, with driver-assisted/autonomous capability, and smart mobility systems. The social and economic impact of the smart transportation field is huge since every year 90 millions of vehicles are sold worldwide and 1.25 millions of people are killed due to lack of safety. In US 3.1 billions of gallons of fuel are wasted each year due to traffic congestion. Assisted driving, and in the next future autonomous driving, will increase safety, and will enable intelligent management of traffic flows. Key enabling technologies for this scenario are advanced sensors (including Radar, camera, Lidar and inertial sensors), and relevant acquisition and signal processing systems, V2X (vehicle to everything) communication, and on-bard sensor fusion in real-time and with high functional safety levels. During the first day, the course will host the Guest lecture of Dr. Fabrizio Gagliardi entitled “Considerations on Machine-Learned Automated Decision Making”.

Course Contents in brief:
The tutorial will be divided in 4 parts.
In Part 1 innovation and market trends in the field of electronics and ICT (Information and Communication Technology), applied to new generations of vehicles and mobility systems, will be discussed. Automotive operating requirements in terms of ESD (ElectroStaticDischarge), temperature range, over-voltage/current protection and integrated diagnostic, will be discussed too.
In Part 2 real-time acquisition and processing circuits/systems for advanced sensors, including Radar and Lidar, will be presented. These sensors aim at detecting if there are obstacles around the vehicle, and at measuring their distance, relative speeds, and directions.
Part 3 of the tutorial will focus on vision sensors, organized as an array of video cameras operating in visible or infrared spectrum. The problem of reducing the distortions caused by the adoption of large Field of View fish eye lens will be also discussed. Some applications to traffic sign recognition systems, road signs recognition, image mosaicking for all around view during parking assistance, will be discussed.
Part 4 will discuss examples of driver assistance/autonomous navigation by using data fusion, i.e. integrating information coming from Radar and Lidar and video camera sensors, or from on-board MEMS inertial sensors, or acquired through V2X wireless systems (like satellite positioning/navigation or IEEE 802.11p vehicular networks).
During the first day, the course will host the Guest lecture of Dr. Fabrizio Gagliardi entitled “Considerations on Machine-Learned Automated Decision Making”.

Schedule:
12nd, 14th, 15th February 2018

• 12nd February – 9 am to 12 am and 2 pm to 4 pm Prof. S. Saponara, 12 am to 1 pm Dr. F. Gagliardi
• 14th February – 9 am to 2 pm Prof. S. Saponara
• 15th February – 9 am to 2 pm Prof. S. Saponara
  

Hours:
20 hours (5 credits)

Room:
Aula Riunioni del Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Informazione, Via G. Caruso 16, Pisa – Ground Floor

Short Abstract:
The Multimedia over IP (MoIP) is related to applications and services based on the transport of various types of media using the IP packets. Typical media examples include voice, video and messaging. The main goals of the course are the description of the design issues to consider during the development of a MoIP system and the problems of Quality of Service and Security of these systems. The course refers the standards that define architectures and protocols used by MoIP systems. In particular, the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is considered as a reference concerning both the protocol and the system architecture. The IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) is then presented as an example of MoIP service platform based on SIP protocol. In MoIP services, the perceived quality of service (PQoS) is of paramount relevance. On this key aspect, the course presents techniques for the measurement and the monitoring of the PQoS. In particular, the course presents some experimental studies aimed at finding relations between the PQoS and the different problems of the transport service. These studies are focused on the delivery delay, the delay jitter and the packet loss introduced by the IP network. Another key aspect of the MoIP service is the reliability of the system, which depends on the reliability of a large number of devices and their interaction, necessary to provide the different functions related to the offered service. The last part of the course presents some notes on the risks related to the security threats of these systems.

Course Contents in brief:

• Introduction to Multimedia over IP
  • Telephone services over IP Networks
  • Evolution towards Multimedia over IP (MoIP) services
  • Design issues for protocols and MoIP service architecture
  • SIP Architecture
  • IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) Architecture
  • RTP/RTCP protocol
  • Experimental analysis of IMS and SIP signalling traffic
• Design Issues of MoIP systems
  • Definition of Perceived Quality of Service in MoIP systems
  • Techniques for PQoS estimation
  • Techniques for the design of systems with guaranteed PQoS
• Security issues of MoIP systems
  • Security threats in MoIP systems
  • Solutions for the security threats of MoIP systems

Schedule:

• 11/12/2017 – 9.30-12.30 – 15.00-17.30
• 13/12/2017 – 9.30-12.30 – 15.00-17.30
• 14/12/2017 – 9.00-13.00 – 15.00 -17.00
• 15/12/2017 – 9.30-12.30

Hours:
16 hours (4 credits)

Room:
July 10: Aula Riunioni del Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell'Informazione, Piano 6, Largo Lucio Lazzarino 1, Pisa
July 12, 14, 17: Aula Riunioni del Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell'Informazione, via G. Caruso 16, Pisa – Ground Floor

Short Abstract:
The next generation wireless networks need to accommodate around 1000x higher data volumes and 50x more devices than current networks. Since the spectral resources are scarce, particularly in bands suitable for wide-area coverage, the main improvements need to come from a more aggressive spatial reuse of the spectrum; that is, many more concurrent transmissions are required per unit area. This can be achieved by the Massive MIMO (massive multi-user multiple-input multiple output) technology, where the access points are equipped with hundreds of antennas and can serve tens of users on each time-frequency resource by spatial multiplexing. The large number of antennas provides a great separation of users in the spatial domain, which is a paradigm shift from conventional multi-user technologies that mainly rely on user separation in the time or frequency domains.

In recent years, massive MIMO has gone from being a mind-blowing theoretical concept to one of the most promising 5G-enabling technologies. Everybody seems to talk about massive MIMO, but do they all mean the same thing? What is the canonical definition of massive MIMO? What are the main differences from the classical multi-user MIMO technology from the nineties? What are the key characteristics of the transmission protocol? How can massive MIMO be deployed? Is pilot contamination an actual problem? Are there any widespread misunderstandings?

These lectures build upon our recent book:

E. Bjornson, J. Hoydis, L. Sanguinetti
"Massive MIMO Networks: Spectral, Energy, and Hardware Efficiency"
Foundations and Trends in Signal Processing (under review)

which provide answers to all of the above questions and aims at giving a clear and balanced picture of the fundamentals of Massive MIMO, as well as an up-to-date survey of the state-of-the-art results in the main areas of spectral efficiency for spatially correlated channels, channel modeling, array deployments, energy efficiency.

Course Contents in brief:

• Massive MIMO: Motivation and Introduction
  • Introduction: Trends and 5G goals
  • Evolving cellular networks for higher area throughput
  • Key aspects of having massive antenna numbers
  • Achieving a scalable Massive MIMO protocol
• Spectral efficiency
  • Basic communication theoretical results
  • Methodology for performance evaluation
  • Channel estimation
  • Spectral efficiency in uplink and downlink
  • The limiting factors of Massive MIMO
• Asymptotic analysis
  • Linearly independent and orthogonal covariance matrices
  • Asymptotic Insights
  • The unlimited capacity of Massive MIMO
  • Acquiring covariance matrices
• Practical deployment considerations
  • Power allocation
  • Spatial resource allocation
  • Array deployments – different antenna geometries, effect of antenna element spacing
  • Massive MIMO at mmWave frequencies
  • Co-existence with heterogeneous networks
• Energy efficiency
  • Why care about energy efficiency?
  • Transmit power – asymptotic insights
  • Mathematical definition of energy efficiency
  • Importance of accurate power consumption modeling
  • Energy Efficiency and Throughput Tradeoff
  • Network Design for Maximal Energy Efficiency

Schedule:

• July 10: 9am-1pm
• July 12: 9am-1pm
• July 14: 9am-1pm
• July 17: 9am-1pm

Hours:
20 hours (5 credits)

Room:
Aula Riunioni del Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell'Informazione, via G. Caruso 16, Pisa – Ground Floor

Short Abstract:
The growth of wearable health devices is due not only to the curiosity to know more about our physical condition, but also to the dream of having a longer and healthier life by means of improved prevention. The main challenge is that medical grade accuracy needs to be achieved while the subject just lives his own life, without any constrain or discomfort. For allowing this dream to come true, multiple innovations have been done both on circuits and systems. The main challenge has been (and will be) to achieve medical grade signal integrity with very low power consumption, while avoiding any constrain or discomfort for the user.

Course Contents in brief:

• Topic 1: Interface between electronics and body
• Topic 2: System architectures for sensing biopotentials
• Topic 3: Instrumentation amplifier design
• Topic 4: Sensing more than just biopotentials

Schedule:

• 26/06/2017 – 9:00/13:00 and 14:30/17:30
• 27/06/2017 – 9:00/13:00 and 14:30/17:30
• 28/06/2017 – 9:00/13:00 and 14:30/16:30

Hours:
20 hours (5 credits)

Room:
Aula Riunioni del Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell'Informazione, via G. Caruso 16, Pisa – Ground Floor

Short Abstract:
With the spectacular rise of wearable technologies, R&D on microbatteries is rapidly emerging on the world market. For example, smart electronic textiles require new features and battery designs that traditional battery technologies simply cannot provide. This has opened the door to innovation and added a new dimension to the global competition between battery suppliers. The potential sector that can be impacted includes Internet of Things (IoT), healthcare (skin patches, medical sensors, medical diagnostic devices), smart cards, active and battery-assisted passive RFID, etc... To date, the fabrication of thin-films and/or flexible microbatteries is still in its infancy because it requires the marriage of complementary scientific knowledge and expertise besides several technological challenges to overcome.

This course is dedicated to the principle of electrochemical energy storage for flexible microelectronics. It will be presented recent progress achieved in the field of Li-ion microbatteries. The principles will be explained in terms of basic electrochemistry and thermodynamics. The relationship between properties at the atomic level with the performance of the power sources will be highlighted. Particularly, an insight into the use of nanostructured materials to improve the storage capacity, rate capability, and cyclability will be given.

Course Contents in brief:

• Basics of electrochemistry
  • Redox reactions
  • Thermodynamicss of redox reaction
  • Kinetics of redox reaction (activation and diffusion processes)
  • The Electrochemical interfaces (The Helmholtz Model, the Gouy-Chapmann Model, and the Stern Model)
• Electrochemical analysis techniques for batteries
  • Potentiodynamic and potentiostatic experiments
  • Current and potential transients
  • Cyclic voltammetry
  • Charge and discharge profiles
  • Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy
• Lithium-ion microbatteries
  • Principle and applications
  • The negative electrodes for microbatteries (C, oxydes, Si, …)
  • The positive electrodes for microbatteries (spinels, …)
  • The different electrolytes for microbatteries
  • Towards the next generation of microbatteries
• Microfabrication processes for designing microbatteries
  • Optical lithography
  • Electron- and ion-beam lithography
  • Thin-film deposition of battery components (top down and bottom-up)
  • Recent examples dedicated to the fabrication of energy storage microsystems
  • Flexible microbatteries

Schedule:

Monday 10/04: 9:00 – 12:00, 14:00 – 16:00

Tuesday 11/04: 9:00 – 12:00, 14:00 – 16:00

Wednesday 12/04: 9:00 – 12:00, 14:00 – 16:00

Thursday 13/04: 9:00 – 12:00, 14:00 – 16:00

Hours:
16 hours (4 credits)

Room:
Aula Riunioni del Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell'Informazione, via G. Caruso 16, Pisa – Ground Floor

Short Abstract:
In this short course, we will examine energy-related topics in modern nanoelectronics, from fundamentals to systems. Fundamental topics include energy storage and transfer via electrons and phonons, ballistic limits of current and heat, meso- to macroscale mobility and thermal conductivity. Applied topics include power in nanoscale devices (1D nanotubes and nanowires, 2D materials, 3D silicon CMOS, resistive memory and interconnects), circuit leakage, temperature measurements, thermoelectric energy conversion, and thermal challenges in densely integrated systems. The course is intended to bridge knowledge gaps between students with Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science, and Physics backgrounds. Basic knowledge of semiconductors, transistors, and Matlab (or similar) are recommended.

Course Contents in brief:

• Electrons and Phonons: Microscopic Origin of Macroscopic Laws
• Quasi-Ballistic Current and Heat Flow
• Boundary Scattering and Thermal Boundary Resistance
• Self-Heating in Nanomaterials and Nanoscale Devices
• Thermal Effects in Nanoscale Devices (CMOS, 1D, 2D, and memory)
• Thermal Resistance – Device and System Estimates
• Nanoscale Temperature Measurements
• Thermoelectric Energy Conversion

Schedule:

Date: 12-16 June 2017

• June 12, 14.00-17.00
• June 13, 09.00-12.00
• June 14, 09.00-12.00, 12.00-13.00 TBC
• June 15, 09.00-12.00
• June 16, 09.00-12.00

Hours:
16 hours (4 credits)

Room:
Aula Riunioni del Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell'Informazione, via G. Caruso 16, Pisa – Ground Floor or Second Floor

Short Abstract:
The objective of the course is to give the basic principles of finite element modeling (FEM), which is one of the most powerful tools for the numerical solution of partial differential equations in complex domains. The course will not be very rigorous about the mathematical properties of the method, but it will principally deal with practical aspects of the resolution of partial differential equations applied to problems commonly encountered in the modern engineering. Several software for FEM simulations will be illustrated, and particular emphasis will be given to free software tools as FreeFEM and FENICS. During the course, large space will be given to practical examples by using a free FEM tool (as FENICS).

Course Contents in brief:

• Topic 1. Basic mathematical principles of the Finite Element Modeling.
• Topic 2. practical aspects of finite element modeling, applied to engineering problems: domain definition, meshing, boundary conditions.
• Topic 3. Software for FEM simulations: FreeFEM, FENICS, ...
• Topic 4. Example of the applications of FEM to practical problems, using FENICS.

Schedule:

• 19/10/2017: ore 9-13, Aula Riunioni Secondo Piano;
• 20/10/2017: ore 9-13, Aula Riunioni Secondo Piano;
• 26/10/2017: ore 9-13, Aula Riunioni Piano Terra;
• 27/10/2017: ore 9-13, Aula Riunioni Piano Terra;