Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

With the rapid development of technology, especially in industries that focus on automating things (Industry 4.0), it is estimated that there will be more than 75 billion devices connected to the internet by 2025. Controlling this huge number of connected devices such as environmental sensors, healthcare devices, autonomous vehicles, and home appliances among others creates a requirement for intelligent monitoring. There are several aspects and challenges in this area which need to be considered for the performance of the Internet-of-Things (IoT) framework. For instance, data transmission and communications, data analysis, security, and so on. In this context, the objective of this research program is to explore a broad range of topics in IoT or any future interdisciplinary areas that will improve the quality of living through the development of systems with artificial intelligence. The plan is to actively participate in the development of such systems by designing online algorithms, artificial intelligent (machine learning) methods, and optimization tools to solve many IoT challenges and problems and to deliver modern services that are essential for future cities and societies. In the long run this research work will take a leading role in contributing to the knowledge set of smart IoT applications and provide suggestions to organizations on how to enhance smart homes, autonomous vehicles, smart grids, smart healthcare, smart cities, and other smart IoT-based systems. We plan to actively participate in the development of this technology by designing online algorithms and optimization tools to solve many IoT challenges and problems. As for the short term, our contributions can be classified into different areas of research, all focusing on automating systems that rely on IoT devices. Some of the projects we aim to undertake in addressing these research topics include: 1) Deploying unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to assist and enhance cellular networks. 2) Managing UAVs to smartly cache and transmit data or content to IoT devices. 3) Using reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) to provide wireless communication for areas with poor network services. 4) Developing an intelligent system for a central (control) unit to assist vehicles in their autonomous driving. 5) Providing IoT-based systems with intelligent data anomaly detection for cyber security. This research grant will provide opportunities to train seven graduate and seven undergraduate students for five years on topics which are highly in-demand in many Canadian research sectors. In addition, the results of this research program will not only contribute to the academic findings, but will also contribute to Canadian industries in enhancing future smart IoT devices.