Course title: Internet of Things (IoT)

Co-ordinator: Rajbabu Velmurugan (IIT Bombay)

Motivation for this curriculum:

In our view, a course on ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) is difficult to be considered as one course.
This is mainly because IoT involves several concepts/components which are themselves taught
in full semester courses. Further, even if offered as a course (or a set of courses) it can have
different focus areas depending on whether it is offered as (i) an Electrical Engineering or (ii)
Computer science. Here, we suggest a curriculum from an Electrical Engineering (EE, EC, or IN
in GATE) perspective. It is better if this course is considered as a two parts course, if an 80
hours curriculum is envisaged.

Pre-requisites:
Microprocessors, Instrumentation, Analog/Digital Circuits, Signal processing, Basics of
Communication Systems, Probability, Programming language (C/Python)

Course content:

Module 1: IoT Introduction and Fundamentals (3 hrs)

● Deciphering the term IoT
● Applications where IoT can be deployed
● Benefits/challenges of deploying an IoT
● IoT components: Sensors, front-end electronics (amplifiers, filtering, digitization), digital
signal processing, data transmission, choice of channel (wired/wireless), back-end data
analysis.
● Understanding packaging and power constraints for IoT implementation.

Module 2: Signals, Sensors, Actuators, Interfaces (15 hrs)

● Sensors: types, signal types, shape and strength
● Sensor non-idealities: Sensitivity and offset drift, noise, minimum detectable signal, non-
linearity
● Read-out circuits: Instrumentation-amplifier, SNR definition, noise-bandwidth-power
tradeoff
● Circuit component mismatch and mitigation techniques (calibration, chopping,
autozeroing etc.)
● Power/energy considerations
● Basic signal processing (filtering, quantization, computation, storage)

Module 3: Networking and Cloud Computing in IoT (15 hrs)

● Review of Communication Networks, Challenges in Networking of IoT Nodes, range,
bandwidth
● Machine-to-Machine (M2M) and IoT Technology Fundamentals, Medium Access Control
(MAC) Protocols for M2M Communications

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 ● Standards for the IoT
● Basics of 5G Cellular Networks and 5G IoT Communications, Low-Power Wide Area
Networks (LPWAN)
● Wireless communication for IoT: channel models, power budgets, data rates
● IoT Security and Privacy, MQTT Protocol, Publisher and Subscriber Model
● Cloud computing platform (open source) and local setup of such environment
● Embedded software relevant to microcontroller and IoT platforms (enterprise or
consumer), user interfaces

Module 4: Data Analysis for IoT applications (7 hrs)

● Statistics relevant to large data
● Linear regression
● Basics of clustering, classification

Module 5: Hardware/software Experiments/labs (40 hrs)

Set of experiments (using Arduino, Raspberry Pi, DSPs, custom board) to understand and
experiment with the theoretical aspects that were covered in various modules, culminating in
one or more mini-projects.

● Identify a hardware/software platform that is open-source with flexibility and students

have some prior exposure (either in a microprocessor or embedded systems lab).
Suggestion: Thingsboard and Arduino
○ Experiment involving a microcontroller with wireless enabled peripheral –
interfacing of sensors, communicating data to a local server, fusion at the server,
sending actuator signals from the server (approximately 3 to 4 experiments)
● Experiment involving simple audio/speech processing on DSP or Raspberry Pi (optional)
● Atleast two or three mini-projects focused on realizing practical IoT applications

References / Books:
(Need to suggest some and will do so later)

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