Hours:
12 hours (3 credits)

Room:

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

To register to the course, click here

Short Abstract:

Electrochemical Energy Storage Systems (EESSs) are vital components in various applications, including electric mobility, portable devices and tools, as well as stationary applications. Optimal control of EESSs requires a sophisticated electronic system, typically called a Battery Management System, which monitors the EESSs, estimates its internal state variables, and identifies the best control actions.

This course aims to provide PhD students with the knowledge and skills to make informed use of EESSs in their research field. It is divided into three modules: an introduction to different types of EESSs and their applications, a description of commonly used models [1], and a focus on Battery Management Systems and their main functions [2, 3].

Course Contents in brief:

• Introduction of Energy storage systems
  • Electrochemical energy storage systems
  • Electric vehicle applications
  • Stationary applications for smart-grids
• Modelling of Lithium-ion battery
  • Introduction of electrochemical models
  • Equivalent circuit models
• Battery management system
  • Introduction of commercial battery stack monitors
  • State estimation algorithms
  • Charge equalization

Schedule:

• Tuesday, January 14, 2025, h. 9:00-13:00
• Wednesday, January 15, 2025, h. 9:00-13:00
• Thursday, January 16, 2025, h. 9:00-13:00

Si informano tutti gli interessati che il corso del Prof. Andrea Alù, City University of New York, NY, US, "Electromagnetic Metamaterials and Metasurfaces: Modeling and Applications", previsto nel periodo 8-12 July 2024 è stato annullato.

Hours:
24 hours (6 credits)

Room:

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

To register to the course, click here

Short Abstract:

The availability of an unprecedented level of computational power and data – both real and synthetic - opens a whole new range of possibilities in several fields. This is strongly impacting the way to plan and control the behavior of systems. The mainstream approach apply supervised/unsupervised machine learning algorithms for which it is hard to provide formal certificates on important properties like convergence and stability.
This course presents an alternative approach able to provide such guarantees leveraging upon a minimalistic model knowledge: the iterative learning control.
First the theoretical foundations of the method will be covered for linear and nonlinear discrete and continuous systems, hence an overview of recent applications pertaining to the robotic filed will be given. Finally theoretical open problems will be discussed.

Course Contents in brief:

1. Introduction (0.5 h)
2. Iterative Learning Control (ILC) for linear systems (3 h)
3. ILC for nonlinear systems (3.5 h)
4. From input-state to input-output (3.5 h)
5. Feed-forward and Feedback ILC (3.5 h)
6. Matlab Implementation (3.5 h)
7. Examples (3.5 h)
8. Open Problems in ILC Theory and Applications (3.5 h)

Schedule:

Monday 29, July – Friday 2 August 2024

Hours:
20 hours (5 credits)

Room:

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

To register to the course, click here

Short Abstract:

The cellular networks such as 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G are already becoming a part of national critical communication infrastructure. In addition, the threat landscape of new network generations (for example, 5G) is changing rapidly, indicating a need of understanding the implication to national critical assets ( focusing on telecommunication networks) and prepare security strategy accordingly. In this regard, this advanced course module provides a brief overview of cellular networks including 5G and demonstrate practical risks associated in every generations to mobile endpoints.

Course Contents in brief:

Topic 1:

• Abstract view of cellular network architecture
• 2G/3G network security and weaknesses

Lab 1 - Get familiar with software and hardware tools to investigate mobile networks and their security configurations. We will be providing extensive knowledge on such low-cost security testing tools and their limitations. We will do a few exercises in understanding practical implications of 2G vulnerabilities.

Topic 2:

• 4G network architecture and security
• Authentication in 4G networks
• Security attacks in 4G networks

Lab 2 – This lab will focus on 4G network related hardware and software tools for performing security analysis of live networks. The candidates will get an opportunity to play with commercial hardware tools which is used for network diagnostic purpose as well.

Topic 3:

• Abstract view of 5G NSA and SA network
• Authentication in 5G networks
• 5G NSA and SA radio/core network issues (covers both vendors and standard specific issues)
• Hardware and software tools for security investigations

Lab 3 – This lab will focus on 5G related tools for debugging and identification of network threats.

Schedule:

1. 07/10/2024 – 9:30 – 13:30
2. 08/10/2024 – 9:30 – 13:30
3. 09/10/2024 – 9:30 – 13:30
4. 10/10/2024 – 9:30 – 13:30
5. 11/10/2024 – 9:30 – 13:30

Hours:
20 hours (5 credits)

Room:

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

To register to the course, click here

Short Abstract:

Safety-critical systems, including those with a high degree of autonomy, provide user interfaces that allow human operators to control and monitor the system. Software modules typically define the functionalities of the user interface, including control safety functions. To gain confidence that the system can fulfil its expected mission goals, it is therefore important that user interface software is designed to make the system easy to use and at the same time capable of correcting foreseeable mistakes that can be committed by the operator.Safety-critical systems, including those with a high degree of autonomy, provide user interfaces that allow human operators to control and monitor the system. Software modules typically define the functionalities of the user interface, including control safety functions. To gain confidence that the system can fulfil its expected mission goals, it is therefore important that user interface software is designed to make the system easy to use and at the same time capable of correcting foreseeable mistakes that can be committed by the operator.This 20-hour course will provide PhD students with knowledge and skills on advanced methods and tools for rigorous verification and validation of user interface software in safety-critical systems. Examples from the avionics and medical domain will be used through the course to ground the discussion on concrete cases and actual systems.The learning outcomes are: (i) understanding of the design challenges with user interface software in safety-critical systems; (ii) understanding of analysis methods and use-related safety requirements; (iii) understanding of verification and validation techniques based on formal (mathematical) methods; (iv) practical experience with toolkits routinely used at NASA Langley for the verification and validation of safety-critical systems, including the PVS theorem prover [3], the VSCode-PVS integrated development environment [4,5], and the DAA-Displays toolkit [6].While the focus of this course is on safety-critical systems, the presented techniques are in fact generally applicable to any software-intensive interactive system, to catch latent design anomalies early in the development process, before important design decisions are made that could be expensive to correct at later stages of the development process. 

Course Contents in brief:

1. Design challenges in user Interface software in safety-critical systems
2. Design challenges in user Interface software in safety-critical systems
3. Hazard analysis methods for software intensive safety-critical systems
4. Formal methods technologies for V&V of user interface software
5. Practical modeling and analysis experience with methods and tools routinely used at NASA Langley for the verification and validation of safety-critical systems 

Schedule:

1. 22/07/2024: 9:00-13:00
2. 23/07/2024: 9:00-13:00
3. 24/07/2024: 9:00-13:00
4. 25/07/2024: 9:00-13:00
5. 26/07/2024: 9:00-13:00

Hours:
20 hours (5 credits)

Room:

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

To register to the course, click here

Short Abstract:

6G will not be a mere exploration of more spectrum at high-frequency THz bands, but it will rather be a convergence of upcoming technological trends for stimulating more out-of-the-box research around 6G. While traditional applications will remain central to 6G, the key determinants of the system performance of future mobile networks will be new application domains such as multisensory extended reality (XR) applications, connected robotics and autonomous systems, human-machine interaction (HMI), as well as blockchain and distributed ledger technologies. Furthermore, haptic and empathic communications and the emergence of new human-centric service classes will lie at the heart of the coming 6G post-smartphone era. While smartphones were central to 4G and 5G, there has been an increase in wearable devices whose functionalities are gradually replacing those of smartphones, fueled by applications such as XR and HMI.6G will not be a mere exploration of more spectrum at high-frequency THz bands, but it will rather be a convergence of upcoming technological trends for stimulating more out-of-the-box research around 6G. While traditional applications will remain central to 6G, the key determinants of the system performance of future mobile networks will be new application domains such as multisensory extended reality (XR) applications, connected robotics and autonomous systems, human-machine interaction (HMI), as well as blockchain and distributed ledger technologies. Furthermore, haptic and empathic communications and the emergence of new human-centric service classes will lie at the heart of the coming 6G post-smartphone era. While smartphones were central to 4G and 5G, there has been an increase in wearable devices whose functionalities are gradually replacing those of smartphones, fueled by applications such as XR and HMI.With the mass digital adoption of remote work and online social activities accelerated by a global pandemic, we may finally find ourselves on the verge of something big and potentially paradigm-shifting: The Metaverse – the next step after the Internet, similar to how the mobile Internet expanded and enhanced the early Internet in the 1990s and 2000s. The Metaverse, underpinned by decentralized Web3 technology, will be about being inside the Internet rather than simply looking at it from a phone or computer screen. It will surround us and will radically reshape society by realizing the fusion of digital and real worlds across all dimensions created and delivered by non-traditional converged service platforms of future 6G and Next G networks, where developers do not hesitate to use technologies from as many disciplines as possible. The Metaverse is widely seen as the precursor of the Multiverse. While the Metaverse primarily focuses on virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), the Multiverse offers eight advanced types of XR realms, which together span the entire reality-virtuality continuum, including but not limited to VR and AR.This course aims at providing the attendants with new cross-disciplinary research material ranging from communication and computer science to cognitive science, social sciences, and behavioral economics. Among others, it reviews 6G paradigm shifts and elaborates on the difference between 6G and Next G research, including Next G Alliance’s audacious goals and their symbiotic relationshipbetween technology and a population’s societal and economic needs. It doubles down on the mutually beneficial symbiosis between digitalization and biologization for the emerging Industry 5.0 as well as for our possible evolution into future metahumans in a stigmergy-enhanced Society 5.0 by leveraging on time-tested self-organization mechanisms borrowed from nature, benefitting from not only emerging generative AIs but also nature’s more-than-human intelligence.

Course Contents in brief:

1. 6G Vision
2. Immersive Tactile Internet Experiences via Edge Intelligence
3. Context- and Self-Awareness for Human-Agent-Robot Task Coordination
4. Cooperative Computation Offloading in FiWi-Enhanced Mobile Networks
5. Decentralization via Blockchain
6. XR in the 6G Post-Smartphone Era
7. Metaverse: The New North Star
8. The Multiverse: Infinite Possibility
9. Beyond 6G: Next G Research
10. Web3 and Token Engineering
11. From Robonomics to Tokenomics
12. Society 5.0: Internet as if People Mattered
13. INTERBEING: Symbiosis between INTERnet and Human BEING in the Era of Generative AI
14. Metahuman: Unleashing the Infinite Potential of Humans

Schedule:

1. 15/07/2024: 9:00-11:00 & 14:30-16:30
2. 16/07/2024: 9:00-11:00 & 14:30-16:30
3. 17/07/2024: 9:00-11:00 & 14:30-16:30
4. 18/07/2024: 9:00-11:00 & 14:30-16:30
5. 19/07/2024: 9:00-11:00 & 14:30-16:30

Hours:
4 hours (1 credit)

Room:

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

To register to the course, click here

Short Abstract:

The course deals with the application of machine learning methods to Web data, in particular in the context of two research problems: detecting Web bots and predicting purchases in online stores. The first problem is due to the presence of artificial agents on the Web which pose a threat to the website security, privacy, and performance. Continuous development of artificial agents’ technology makes detection of Web bot, both in the offline and real-time settings, harder and harder. The second problem is connected with discovering various user profiles on e-commerce websites and identifying user sessions with high probability of making a purchase. The problems under consideration are key issues in the era of the rapid development of e-commerce, advanced Web-based technologies, and big data.

Course Contents in brief:

1. Introduction to Web usage mining (1 hour)
   Web usage data. Web usage mining in the context of online stores.
   Data pre-processing for Web usage mining. Reconstruction of user sessions.
2. Web bot detection (2 hours)
   Problems of offline and online bot detection. Characteristics and differences in bot and human Web traffic. Feature selection and feature extraction for bot detection. Offline bot detection with supervised and unsupervised learning methods. Online bot detection.
3. Online purchase prediction (1 hour)
   Problem of predicting online purchases. Feature selection for online purchase prediction.
   Purchase prediction with machine learning methods.

Schedule:

• Day 1 - 21/05/2024, 9:00-13:00

Hours:
16 hours (4 credits)

Room:

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

To register to the course, click here

Short Abstract:

Today, the use of simulation software is essential for the design of Radio Frequency systems. Year after year, these commercial software are becoming more and more powerful in terms of calculation time, enabling ever more advanced structures to be simulated. Although they all aim to solve the same equations (Maxwell's equations), they are based on different numerical methods, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. The main objective of this course is to understand how these different methods can impact the use of these commercial software. A practical implementation through a labwork will give a precise example of how to implement one of these methods to simulate an antenna with Matlab.

Course Contents in brief:

0. Introduction : EM Simulators

    0.1 Practical implementation of theoretical aspects

    0.2 Numerical methods / simulators

    0.3 Simulators: within the reach of every user?

1. Formulations of a problem – introduction to the main numerical method used in RF

    1.1 Homogeneous wave equation

    1.2 Integral equation

    1.3 Variational approach

    1.4 Semi-analytical approaches

    1.5 Operators approximation

    1.6 Solution domain

2. Numerical methods

    2.1 Method of Moments (MoM)

    2.2 Finite Difference (FD)

    2.3 Basics of the Finite Element Method (FEM)

Schedule:

1. Day 1: 2/7/2024, from 9:00 to 13:00 (4 hours)
2. Day 2: 3/7/2024, from 9:00 to 13:00 (4 hours)
3. Day 3: 4/7/2024, from 9:00 to 13:00 (4 hours)
4. Day 4: 5/7/2024, from 9:00 to 13:00 (4 hours)

Hours:
16 hours (4 credits)

Room:

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

To register to the course, click here

Short Abstract:

Blockchain technology is a fascinating and relatively new technology that has been extensively studied and utilized across multiple sectors. The objective of this course is to provide a comprehensive overview of distributed ledger technologies, with a focus on the core characteristics of blockchain. This will serve as a solid foundation for building further knowledge and expertise in the field.

The course provides a comprehensive overview of the fundamental principles of blockchain, including cryptography, consensus algorithms, and smart contracts. Additionally, practical examples and use cases will be presented throughout the course, with a focus on the most well-known blockchain technologies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Hyperledger Fabric. Furthermore, participants will have the opportunity to engage in practical sessions on programming smart contracts using Solidity.

Course Contents in brief:

1. Blockchain technology in general
2. Basic principles of cryptography
3. Consensus algorithms
4. Ethereum and smart contract development
5. Hyperledger Fabric technology
6. The role of the blockchain in distributed applications (NFT and Metaverse)

Schedule:

1. 24/06/2024: 9:00 - 13:00 (Lesson)
2. 25/06/2024: 9:00 - 13:00 (Lesson)
3. 26/06/2024: 9:00 - 13:00 (Lesson)
4. 27/06/2024: 9:00 - 13:00 (Lesson)
5. 28/06/2024: 9:00 - 11:00 (Exam)

Hours:
16 hours (4 credits)

Room:

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

To register to the course, click here

Short Abstract:

This course aims to provide a summary of the different techniques used to detect and identify a transponder in real environment using radio frequency waves. The first approach allows the transponders to modulate its backscattered field. These transponders are able to generate new frequency components around the carrier frequency sent by the reader. Different examples include NFC, UHF RFID, barcodes… The second approach is based on the non-linearity of the transponders. These transponders can create new frequency components located at multiple of the fundamental frequency used by the reader. These two approaches allow to detect and identify a transponders in complex environment and offer significant advantages in term of read range and coding capacity compared to traditional techniques.
After describing the principle of operation of these two approches, RF instumentation will be used to detect, characterize and identify the previously presented transponders. Measurements will be done in both time and frequency domain using the available instrumentation in the University of Pisa, and instrumentation from the LCIS laboratory. Software defined radio will be used to implement a fully functional reader.

Course Contents in brief:

1. Introduction to Linear Time Invariant Transponders.
2. Modulated Transponders
   1. UHF RFID
   2. Rotating Scatterers
   3. Translated Scatterers
3. Non Linear Transponders
   1. Harmonic Transponders
   2. Non-Linear Modulation
4. Measurement and Characterization of LTV and NL transponders
   1. Reader Architecture
   2. Time domain analysis (VNA)
   3. Frequency domain analysis (Spectrum analyzer)

Schedule:

1. 18/06/2024: 14:00 - 18:00
2. 19/06/2024: 13:30 - 18:30
3. 20/06/2024: 13:30 - 18:30
4. 21/06/2024: 14:00 - 18:00