Newsletter January 2015

Issue Number 1

InduStry-acadeMia pArtnership for the design and implementation of an efficient, Reliable and secure smarT eNeRGy network

Project Overview

Smart Energy Networks (SENs) are electric systems that use two-way network technologies, cyber-secure communication technologies and computational intelligence and control in an integrated fashion to efficiently manage energy consumption with the aim of providing a new electricity grid that is clean, safe, secure, reliable, resilient, efficient and environmentally sustainable. SENs can be well regarded as a system of many systems, whose design challenges, requirements and expectations can only be achieved through a holistic analysis, design and optimization of all its components.

SMART-NRG (InduSTry-acadeMia pArtnership for the design and implementation of an efficient, Reliable and secure smarT eneRGy network) project aims at bringing together experts from industry and academia, from cross-sectorial research areas and complementary background, with the long term goal of designing and developing a more efficient smart metering system for the future Smart Grid (SG).

The SMART -NRG project is organized into 7 Work Packages (WPs). WP1 and WP7 are concerned with management and dissemination respectively and are active for the whole duration of the project. WP2-WP6 are 5 technical WPs. The figure below shows the main technical responsibilities and interconnection of the partners.

In this issue:

Project Overview 1

Meetings 2

Secondments 3

Recruitments 4

Research 5

First SMART-NRG workshop 5

Publications 5

SMART-NRG in social media 6

Project partners:

Meetings

Page | 2

Kick off Meeting - Barcelona 17/02/2014

UOA and UB chaired the kick-off meeting on 17/2/2014 at UB premises in Barcelona. The partners presented themselves, their expertise and main interests, followed by a discussion on the project planning. The Project Officer participated through video conference, giving a presentation on instructions and best practices and answering to questions. The agenda consisted of the following topics:

• Welcome, agenda approval and project overview

• Project management & discussion

• Presentation by the PO / Q&A

• Partner presentations (profile, role, experience, tools, technical approach)

• Project implementation & discussion

• Conclusions / Action points

2nd Plenary Meeting – Athens 30/11/2014

The second plenary meeting took place at the University of Athens, Greece, on 30/11/2014. The meeting was organized close to the IEEE CAMAD 2014 conference, where most of the fellows participated. The main focus of the meeting was on finalizing the architectural design of the smart energy system, to be included in the respective deliverable. Also, the partners discussed extensively on the simulation model and implementation. The agenda consisted of the following topics:

• Management: Overview, Status, Reporting, actions towards the progress report

• ToK, Dissemination and Exploitation planning

• WP2 session: Reference architecture

• WP5 session: Overview of the SMART-NRG Common Simulator

• WP3 session: Status of the Definition and Design of Smart Energy Algorithms

• WP4 session: Status of the Definition and Design of Reliable SMART-NRG Communication Protocols

• WP4 session: Network Coding for Reliable SMART-NRG Communications

• Coordination, forthcoming actions, secondments/recruitments, AOB

Secondments

Page | 3

Nikos Passas at WEST Aquila

Dr. Nikos Passas jointed WEST Aquila on Sept 1st 2014 for a 6-month secondment, coming from the University of Athens. Nikos plans to get acquainted with architecture design, simulation modelling and business plans of a real product, through his interplay with WEST experienced researchers and experts, broadening his potential in his experimental research. Together with WEST experts, he will work on designing the architectural components of the smart energy system to be implemented in the context of the project. In the photo on the left, Nikos (first from the right) together with WEST colleagues.

Andrea Colarieti at the University of Athens

Andrea Colarieti joined the GAIN group at the University of Athens on July 1st 2014 for an 18-month secondment, coming from WEST Aquila. He will review the SoA on related algorithms and coordinate the effort for the design of them in order to be easily integrated to the system level simulator. On the other hand, he will be trained on algorithms and protocols for reliable and secure communications for smart metering. In the photo on the left, Andrea (second from the right) together with SMART-NRG fellows from UoA.

Mattia Boschi at the University of Barcelona

Mattia Boschi joined the University of Barcelona on July 1st 2014 for an 18-month secondment coming from WEST. Mattia will perform research on prediction algorithms and network coding for smart energy for the design of SMART-NRG mechanisms under the supervision of researchers with remarkable experience on these issues. When he will return in WEST, he will use the experience gained towards designing new modules for the system level simulator. In the photo on the left, Mattia entering the Department of Electronics at UB.

Andrea Colarieti at UOA

Mattia Boschi at UB

Nikos Passas at WEST

Recruitments

Dr. Georgios Karopoulos

Dr. Georgios Karopoulos was recruited and jointed the GAIN group at UoA on October 1st 2014, to work on the development and optimization of the protocol stack design, by merging and combining where possible data reliability and security solutions. He has deep knowledge on protocol stack and security, as well as long expertise on computer programming. Working together with the seconded experts from LINK and WEST, he will study the proposed solutions in order to merge schemes and perform joint processing where possible. Previously, Georgios has been as a postdoctoral researcher at IIT-CNR (Italy) in 2010-2011 and JRC (Italy) in 2012-2014. In the photo on the left, Georgios (center) together with GAIN members and visitors.

Dr. Georgios Karopoulos at UOA

Page | 4

Second recruitment for UoA

The procedures for the second recruitment for UoA are ongoing. The announcement has been distributed to Euraxess, recruitment sites and relevant mailing lists on 18/12/2014 including the following description:

An experienced researcher, that owns a PhD degree in a relevant field and has between 4 and 10 years of research experience at the time of recruitment (time pursuing the PhD degree counting), will be hired for 12 months to work on custom-made system level simulator extensions and adjustments for the implementation of the designed solutions. He/She will have high expertise in simulation models, environments and procedures. The selected ER will join the GAIN research group (http://gain.di.uoa.gr) and have a unique opportunity to pursue a career in SENs. Working in this ambitious research project, should lead the ER to research development, together with a very strong joint multidisciplinary research training program.

To apply for this position, please send i) a full CV, including publications record, ii) a motivation letter, iii) recommenders’ contact details (up to 3), and iv) any other relevant document, to iapp.smartnrg@gmail.com, not later than 31 January 2015, with subject: "SMART-NRG: Application for position UOA-RE2".

More information on the position and required expertise can be provided by Dr. Nikos Passas (passas@di.uoa.gr).

First SMART-NRG workshop

Research

Publications

The first SMART-NRG workshop will be organized as a special track on “Energy-efficient, Reliable, and Secure Smart Energy Networks” in the context of the “Ad-Hoc, Mobile and Wireless Networks” (ADHOC-NOW) 2015 conference. The conference will be held in Athens, Greece, June29 – July 2 2015. In this special session we encourage the submission of original works describing sophisticated solutions in the areas of smart energy management, reliable communications and networking, cyber-secure and fault-tolerant SEN communications, aiming to fully exploit the benefits of the new technologies in the future SEN.

Important Dates: • Paper submission deadline: February 20, 2015 • Notification of acceptance: March 23, 2015 • Camera-ready due: April 10, 2015 More details on the submission guidelines and the electronic submission can be found here:

http://www.netmode.ntua.gr/adhocnow2015/Track-index.html

Research in the first year of the project was around the identification of smart metering scenarios and related requirements, along with the definition of the system and protocol stack architecture, and the identification of methodologies and metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed solutions. Specific scenarios for smart metering applications were described through a careful review of the state-of-the-art, as well as the analysis of future trends and standardization activities. The overall architecture is shown below.

Page | 5

The project has published one conference paper: D. Tsolkas, N. Passas, L. Merakos, and A. Salkintzis, “A Device Discovery Scheme for Proximity Services in LTE Networks”, IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communications (IEEE ISCC) 2014 , Madeira, Portugal, June 2014. A number of papers are prepared for submission beginning of 2015. The papers are the outcome of the work performed in the architectural design.

Upcoming Events – Save the dates!

SMART-NRG in social media

Page | 6

SMART-NRG Contact persons Prof. Lazaros Merakos Dr. Nikos Passas

Communication Networks Laboratory Department of Informatics and Telecommunications University of Athens Panepistimiopolis, Ilissia Athens, 15784 Greece E-mail iapp.smartnrg@gmail.com Mailing list smart-nrg@di.uoa.gr Linkedin SMART-NRG (open group) Twitter @smart_nrg Wiki (only for members)

We’re on the Web! See us at: http://gain.di.uoa.gr/smart-nrg

SMART-NRG is present in:

So please follow @smart_nrg on Twitter and join “SMART-NRG” group in Linkedin to keep up to date with the project progress!

1st SMART-NRG workshop on “Energy-efficient, Reliable and Secure Smart Energy

Networks”, special track in AD HOC NOW 2015June 29 – July 2 2015, Athens, Greece,