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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

DATE: June 27, 2011

CONTACT: Dr. John Fernandez, 361.825.3622; Dr. Ahmed Mahdy, 361.825.3172

Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi and Interconnect 365 Sign Memorandum of Understanding for Wireless Research Lab

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas – Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi and Interconnect 365, a San Antonio-based technology company, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to establish an Innovation in Wireless Research (iWIRE) laboratory on the University campus.

Interconnect 365, which specializes in research and development of wireless, 4G, high bandwidth IP networks, smart grid/home/business and smart service solutions, will fund iWIRE by providing one percent of its annual revenue with a minimum of $350,000. Dr. Ahmed Mahdy, assistant professor of computer science, will serve as director of the lab which will be staffed with researchers, technicians, and administrative personnel.

“The objective of the lab is to discover new science and technologies in wireless networking,” said Mahdy. “The focus on basic and applied research will bring innovation, competitive products, and novel technology to the local and global communities. iWIRE will nurture the research and education environment promoting the leadership of Texas A&M-Corpus Christi. The creation of this facility will also serve as a catalyst for curriculum development and student recruitment in computing fields.”

According to Dr. John Fernandez, chair of the Department of Computing Sciences, the proposed facility will be furnished with state-of-the-art equipment for research that will establish Texas A&M-Corpus Christi as a hub for wireless innovation. In addition, the partnership will enrich relationships with leading technology companies.

“This partnership will attract national and global partners seeking to take advantage of what this joint venture offers them,” said Fernandez. “This will help ensure the success of iWIRE products in government and industry sectors. Interconnect 365 and its partners are leading providers of end-to-end broadband wireless systems and are 100 percent focused on custom building wireless technology that fits the customer’s specific needs. iWIRE will provide a laboratory to test these systems and help develop improvements.”

In addition to its partnership with Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, Interconnect 365 has made a long-term commitment to the City of Corpus Christi through the creation of a public/private partnership designed to create a living model of a “Smart City.” Projects being undertaken with the City of Corpus Christi include aerial video surveillance, code enforcement and neighborhood improvement, emergency medical services and disaster response, in-car video
policing, and small business economic development. “Interconnect 365 is right in the forefront of developing the component technologies necessary to realize the dream of a smart connected world by protecting public safety agencies and the SMART Grid while also providing high-speed wireless services and applications worldwide where there is lack of broadband and/or connectivity,” said William Hadala, chief technology officer of Interconnect 365. “iWIRE will be instrumental in achieving our shared vision with Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.”

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Despite a growing call for budget cuts in Washington, U.S. Senator Jay Rockefeller hopes to find nearly $13 billion in funding for a program that would establish a dedicated nationwide communications network.

Rockefeller is hoping to secure funding to give 700 MHz spectrum to emergency responders.  That would give emergency officials a nationwide public safety wireless communications network, Rockefeller said.

Rockefeller is hoping to have funding in place before the 10th anniversary of 9/11, the event that brought the issue to the forefront.  On 9/11, first responders were unable to communicate with each other.  The 9/11 Commission recommended the plan Rockefeller is proposing.

The system, known as the D-Block spectrum, would help responders talk to each other when necessary, Rockefeller said.

“On a national basis, everybody, at all levels of public safety, will be on exactly the same system,” Rockefeller said.

Critics say it would be a costly system during a time of budget crunching.

Rockefeller says there are ways to implement the system cheaply by saving money.

“We do that by people who are not using that spectrum to volunteer to give it back, and then we sell that spectrum,” Rockefeller said.  “The proceeds of that will turn out to be about $28 billion.”

That $28 billion can then be used to put the D-Block system in place, while simultaneously paying down parts of the deficit.

“It’ll only cost $12 billion to $13 billion to do this nationwide, interoperable, wireless communications, and then we’ll have $10 billion left over for deficit reduction,” Rockefeller said.

Rockefeller says there’s growing support for the plan, and he’ll continue to work toward getting it enacted.

A communications backbone is the key to achieving that interoperability. If the backbone isn’t developed early, projects may have to be retrofitted later to accommodate the eventual communications standards, adding greatly to time and expense. Moreover, each individual project will be burdened with communications planning and costs, and the business cases for each will become much harder.

To determine what the communications backbone should look like, utilities must collect the timing and data requirements. To make meaningful progress in that area, utilities should focus on five main activities:

1. Gathering data: Collect data from many sources on the grid (sensors, meters, voltage detection, etc.), in the customer premises (sensors for high-consuming appliances, etc.), and from external sources (weather, etc). How many devices, how big is the data and how often do you want to talk to the devices? Finally, what is the latency that is acceptable? Data that can be dibbled to the central location of the course of the day needs less bandwidth than the same amount of data that has time sensitivity. Remember that data travels in two directions and one of the largest transfers of data to devices is firmware updates. A simple spreadsheet can be used to collect the data. Remember to account for future growth.

2. Analyzing and forecasting needs: In the typical world not all the data that a device can send is sent, but there are times when the engineering team needs additional data for forecasting or analysis. In some cases, wave form can be captured by a sensor, but the size of the data makes it prohibitive to send for routine daily traffic. However, when there is an issue in the geographical area, that wave form data may be very useful to the analysis of the issue. In other cases, different data may be required for forecasting for engineering or other use. After large storms you may need additional data to map the causes of the outage, cascading failures, timing of events and so forth. Make sure you account for the transfer of that bulk data.

3. Security Requirements and Security Overhead: Standards like NERC-CIP and emerging standards in Europe require a level of security that adds to the traffic on the network. Additionally, standards like ZigBee and HomePlug can have message traffic which is more than 75 percent security overhead. Adding this to the bandwidth spreadsheet is an important step.

4. Monitoring / managing / acting: Once you know what the grid is doing, you have to act on it, and the latency on those actions is impacted by the traffic level on the communications network. It is important to provide operators with data in time for them to act on it. That does not mean sub-second response for every device; in some cases (e.g. a hot transformer), data within minutes with the right alarm set points is quick enough for the data to be actionable. In other cases, seconds can matter. Careful analysis of who needs what when in order to make a good decision and act on it, is the right way to finish the bandwidth analysis. It also helps determine the right placement of sensors and controls – you could do everything, everywhere and waste a lot of money. It is better to think through the actions that you can take and define the right sensors to support those actions.

5. Rebuilding the grid to support bidirectional power flow, looping circuits and transfer of power from substation to substation: The first four steps will have little impact to the end customers if you cannot act on the information that is collected and analyzed. This will be the most expensive part of the Smart Grid deployment, and will in most cases, take 20 years or more to complete across a whole service territory.

Elements of an intelligent power grid already exist in most electric utilities, but the full transformation involves much more than communications, and much more than just hardware and software. In Part II of this article, we will provide a conceptual view of all the components needed to deliver on the Smart Grid vision.