February 11, 2008

UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA RECEIVES $3 MILLION FOR GLOBALLY SIGNIFICANT WIRELESS SENSOR RESEARCH

Today’s announcement represents the second round of funding under the Ontario Research Fund’s Research Excellence program. In this round, the government is providing $6,089,600 to support three world-class projects at the University of Ottawa.

Creating Secure Wireless Networks For Telemedicine, Home Security And Vehicles

WiSense: Wireless heterogeneous Sensor networks in the e-Society

Lead researcher: Dr Hussein T. Mouftah
Total project cost: $9,223,800
Provincial funding: $3,074,600

Researchers at the University of Ottawa are applying advances in our ability to create smaller, more efficient electronic devices, small-scale energy supplies and wireless communication equipment – to push their vision for wireless sensor networks to the next level.

Wireless sensor networks – consisting of a number of devices that use specialized sensors to monitor physical conditions in various locations – can be used to improve a number of activities from environmental monitoring and traffic control to home security and telemedicine.

The goal of the project is to develop applications that can, for example, improve intelligent vehicle systems (collision avoidance, accident warning) or remote health-care (allow doctors to monitor vital signs in patients that are far away).

Key private sector partners:
Alcatel-Lucent
Bell Canada
IBM

Key facts:

• According to Reed Electronics Research, the world market for non-entertainment automotive electronics was estimated at US$36.8 billion in 2005 and is forecast to reach US$52.1 billion by 2010.
  

• According to Frost and Sullivan, the U.S. Remote Patient Monitoring Market earned revenues of US$81.1 million in 2005 and will reach US$191.5 million in 2009.

Ontario Research Fund – Research Excellence Program

This second round of funding under the Research Excellence program will invest $114,709,614 to support 19 world-class projects at nine Ontario universities, institutes and hospitals. Funding will be matched by 107 major industry and other partners participating in the projects.

For more information about the Ontario Research Fund, please visit www.ontario.ca/innovation.

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