Skip to main content
European Commission logo
English English
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS
CORDIS Web 30th anniversary CORDIS Web 30th anniversary
Content archived on 2024-06-18

Autonomous Control of Large-scale Water Treatment Plants based on Self-Organized Wireless BioMEM Sensor and Actuator Networks

Project description


New paradigms for embedded systems, monitoring and control towards complex systems engineering
HYDROBIONETS designs the world's first real-time micro-biological wireless networked
The HYDROBIONETS project focuses on the research and development of Self-Organized Wireless BioMEM Networks (WBNs) and their integration in a global system to monitor the complete water cycle in large-scale water treatment and desalination plants.
The key feature is the integration of BioMEM sensors and actuators in motes and the adaptation of the network function to the specific requirements that this type of application imposes. The WBNs will achieve a distributed monitoring of critical parameters, representing a novel instrument that can be successfully applied in a short term to the great challenge that represents the dense wireless networked control of microbiological parameters of water in the different stages of process in these plants.
A world-class interdisciplinary team formed by materials, sensors, microsystems, communications, signal processing, control and networking experts, as well as end-users, has been assembled to investigate, develop and validate the WBNs. This is a novel and ambitious approach in the field of microbiological water monitoring and control where several different disciplines converge.

Recent advances in ICT and MicroElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS) have led to devices incorporating wireless communication, processing and storage capabilities, as well as diverse sensing and actuation functionalities in a single unit that is compact, economical, autonomous and destined to become ubiquitous. This revolution appears in the form of dense and distributed Wireless Sensor Networks, the potential of which is enormous for various applications that are of great interest to society, including water monitoring and management in large-scale industrial plants, where microbiologic control of water quality is crucial. A basic understanding of system performance limits and the optimal design of large-scale, robust in-network practical algorithms associated with such biological signals remains far from mature. This proposal is motivated by the grand challenge of providing: a) a fundamental understanding of the performance bounds of large-scale Self-Organized Wireless BioMEM Networks (WBNs); b) concrete design guidelines, algorithms, software and hardware architectures to assure the required robustness, fault-tolerance, power efficiency, autonomy and adaptation; c) implementation and deployment of a large-scale and reactive WBN for microbiological autonomous monitoring and decentralized control of water quality in industrial environments. HYDROBIONETS will address: a) the distributed acquisition of spatio-temporal biological signals, including the specific design of BioMEMs and their stable integration to motes; b) in-network cooperative processing and distributed intelligence to achieve essential tasks such as inference, detection, and decision-making; c) networked dense control to ensure adequate water quality, productivity and energy fficiency of water treatment plants. The results of this project will be demonstrated in real large-scale industrial water treatment and desalination plants, provided directly by partner ACCIONA, a worldwide leader in Water Industrial.

Call for proposal

FP7-ICT-2011-7
See other projects for this call

Coordinator

UNIVERSITAT DE VALENCIA
EU contribution
€ 554 770,00
Address
AVENIDA BLASCO IBANEZ 13
46010 Valencia
Spain

See on map

Region
Este Comunitat Valenciana Valencia/València
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Administrative Contact
Baltasar Beferull-Lozano (Prof.)
Links
Total cost
No data

Participants (6)