A number of recent technological advances are revolutionizing our professional and personal lives by creating new avenues for economic growth and employment, and improving our quality of life.  These technologies facilitate easy access to data and information, and make extensive use of computing and information technologies.  The Internet of Things (IoT) is a key manifestation of these technical advancements and represents the integration of computing technologies with the physical world, with the aim of optimizing the operation of physical infrastructure, social services, and industries.

Some typical IoT applications include wearable health-monitoring devices used to sense vital signs for an individual, devices used to sense seismic activity in oil rig fields, devices that sense thermal activities in a data centre and enable the actuators to control thermal imbalance, devices that provide vision and security solutions for intelligent autonomous vehicles, devices that enable secured financial transactions on a public domain like cloud platforms.

Furthermore, economies around the world, including that of Singapore, are on the verge of the 4th industrial revolution (Industry 4.0), and are increasingly relying on the use of “smart” technologies that harness advanced information collection, storage, and processing technologies.  Smart factories are an essential driver of Industry 4.0 and advanced manufacturing in the Industry Transformation Map (ITM) by Singapore government, and other initiatives.

These transformations require Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) which network machines and components with intelligence and adaptable computing systems, which are another use case of IoT.  Apart from smart factories, IoT plays very important role in communications, infrastructure such as power grids, and services such as transportation systems. In the ITM, IoT is a crosscutting theme that plays a vital role in the transformation of a number of sectors such as automation management, energy and chemicals, electronics, logistics, engineering services, healthcare, and lifestyle.

IoT and its suite of enabling hardware and software components, referred to as IoT systems, are perceived as one of the most influential technologies in the modern era in both industry and academia. In addition, with their ability to increase efficiencies, lower costs, and facilitate new features, IoT based solutions are becoming integral parts of many industries and businesses.  Hence it is of great importance to train manpower in this area where the trained workforce has knowledge and skills in physical devices and sensors, computer hardware, software, and security for IoT systems.

Requirement

Students in the IoT Specialisation are required to complete a minimum of 20 Units consisting of IoT core (3 mandatory courses) and IoT electives.

Note: CS4276, CS5272 and EE5132 are no longer offered, hence removed from list of IoT electives. Notwithstanding, students who have passed the course(s) may still count as IoT elective(s).

*Only applicable to CEG students admitted from AY2021/2022 onwards and subjected to NUS policy on Specialisation double counting rules.

IoT Core Courses

CS3237 gives a broad introduction to all facets of IoT. The topics include IoT Landscape and Applications, IoT System Architectures, IoT Devices, IoT Communications and Information Theory, IoT Edge to Cloud Communication Protocols, Cloud and Fog Computing, Data Analytics and Machine Learning for IoT, IoT Security and Energy Sources and Power Management.

EE4211 is an IoT data science related course. The topics include Introduction To IoT, Bayesian Data Analysis, Regression, Decision Trees, Support Vector Machine, Neural Networks and Unsupervised Learning.

EE4409 covers the physical side of IoT. Major IoT related topics include IoT and Microelectronics, Laser Radar & Driverless Car, MEMS, Sensors (pressure, temperature, flow, strain), and Wearable Energy and Power Sources.

IoT Elective Courses

CS4222 aims to provide a solid foundation for students in the area of wireless networks and introduces students to the emerging area of cyber-physical-system/Internet-of-Things.

Networks play an important role in IoT space. EE4204 covers topics including Network Requirements, Architecture, Protocol Stack Models, Ethernet Token Ring, Wireless and FDDI networks, Bridges, Switching and Routing in IP and ATM networks, and Internetworking.

EE4218 deals with the design of systems with close integration between hardware and software, which is a main characteristic of IoT systems. There is an emphasis on the design of custom hardware accelerators/hardware-software co-design, which can reduce the amount of data (and hence the power) required to be communicated through the network from an IoT node, while keeping the power requirement for computations at an acceptable level. The project for the module will be modified to incorporate the spirit of IoT through the collection of sensory data, and processing it using custom accelerators before sending the processed data to an IoT cloud platform.

Machine learning is important for analysing data. The main objective of CS3244 is to make better use of powerful computers to learn knowledge (or regularities) from the raw data. The ultimate objective is to build self-learning systems to relieve human from some of already-too many programming tasks. At the end of the course, students are expected to be familiar with the theories and paradigms of computational learning, and capable of implementing basic learning systems.

Note: NUS policy on Specialisation Double-counting rules

For AY2021/22 intake onwards, if a student double counts Capstone project, e.g., EE4002D/R (8 units), to fulfil one Specialisation and Common Curriculum, then he/she cannot double count any technical elective for that Specialisation and another programme.  This applies to students who intend to use Robotics, IoT-related, MQM capstone to fulfil their Robotics, IoT and MQM Specialisations respectively.

Students who are using capstone to fulfil Robotics, IoT-related, MQM Specialisations, they cannot map any SEP modules to these specialisations. 

Students are responsible to check and ensure these rules are abided.