Smart Industry 4.0
Smart Industry 4.0 brings together classical subjects and novel trends in the fields of digital transmission, networking, signal processing, and electromagnetism with a special focus on their industrial applications.
This curriculum is highly flexible, and it can be declined towards countless applications of communication engineering, internet, and multimedia in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
The “Smart Industry 4.0” track is closely connected to the “Communication Technologies” one (click here for more information about it).
How does the study plan work
A list of the courses available in the “Industry 4.0” curriculum for the 2022-2023 academic year is reported below.
There are two mandatory courses: Telecommunication Principles (composed of Wireless Networks and Digital Communications) and Internet.
The other courses can be freely chosen subject to some ground rules: 5 courses among the ICT subjects and 3 courses among the related subjects must be chosen. Furthermore, a soft skill course must be selected and students must pass the B2 English exam.
It is further advised to choose about 30 ECTS credits per semester to keep your workload balanced.
Our core subjects:
- Transmission & Signals;
- Electromagnetism;
- Networks
Our related subjects:
- Computer science & Robotics;
- Math;
- Physics & Electronics;
- Biomedical;
- Soft skills
Mandatory Subjects
The Telecommunication Principles course (composed of Wireless Networks and Digital Communications) and the Internet course are mandatory.
Wireless Networks (mod. A of Telecommunication Principles)
The course aims at providing some advanced knowledge on network protocols for wireless communications, including the analysis of distributed wireless networks, state of the art wireless technologies and current trends.
Digital Communications (mod. B of Telecommunication Principles)
The objective of this course is to illustrate problems, principles and techniques in modern digital communications. The aim is to give tools for evaluating performance, simulate and design modern digital transmission systems. In particular, we cover both single carrier modulation using decision feedback equalization or sequence detection and multicarrier modulation with OFDM using a cyclic prefix.
Internet
The course aims at providing basic knowledge of modern telecommunication architectures, as well as fundamental mathematical tools for the modelling, design and analysis of telecommunications networks and services.
The course will also give you some practical experience with network protocols and devices, thanks to a series of lab experiences that will introduce you to the art of router and socket programming.
Ancillary to all this knowledge, the course will help you develop some basic management skills that shall belong to the baggage of each engineer.
Some of the topics that will be considered by the course are data traffic sources, multimedia streams and content, packet switched networks: basics of data networks, ISO/OSI and TCP/IP protocol stacks, congestion control and scheduling algorithms and the application layer
ICT Subjects
Select 5 courses from the following list
5G Systems
The course discusses forthcoming 5G communication standards, focusing on two key technologies: orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems.
The evolution of mobile networks is presented at different layers (physical: filterbanks, massive MIMO; medium access: mm-wave, OFDMA; network: small cells/cloud), also discussing resource allocation, channel estimation, and decoding techniques for MIMO/OFDM, as well as standard developments.
Antennas
The course will discuss design, implementation, and experimental characterization of antennas and wireless links. Topics include, among others, antenna parameters, dipole, wire and patch antennas, antenna arrays, antennas for satellite, GPS and mobile communications. During the course students will attend a laboratory of antenna design with professional software.
Communication Network Design
The course will explore both technological and methodological aspects related to the design/dimensioning of modern and upcoming communication networks and protocols, touching upon cutting-edge topics such as network funtion virtualization, Quality-of-Experience maximization, cross-layer and cognitive networking, all of this framed by a solid mathematical framework whose application potential goes well beyond the horizon of network design.
Computer Vision
The computer vision course presents the principles and techniques for image processing, understanding and analysis.
The course will focus on how to extract relevant information from visual data that can be used in challenging real-world applications like autonomous driving or smart manufacturing.
It presents the mathematical, programming, and technical issues of these tasks and will include a relevant hands-on laboratory part where students will also develop C++ applications based on the OpenCV library.
Digital Forensics
This course presents machine learning and signal processing technologies that can be used handling digital evidences in investigations.
The aim is to provide students with a set of analysis strategies for hard disk, network streams, image and video data (including authentication and fake detection), data from social networks.
These techniques are reviewed and discussed both theoretically and via some case studies.
The course entails the intervention of legal specialists that describe the procedural implications of the technical analysis and the juridical consequences on expert decisions.
Digital Signal Processing
The course exploits basic signal analysis knowledge that the student is assumed to have acquired from previous studies to explore advanced concepts in the field of digital signal processing.
The course will review Z-transform, linear time-invariant systems, FIR/IIR filters, to investigate the design and usage of digital filters, interpolation/decimation of digital signals, frequency analysis of digital signals.
Practical application examples, useful in many areas of information engineering, will be provided.
ICT for Industrial Applications
The objective of the course is to offer a broad view of the potential of ICT in industry and business domains, through a well-structured sequence of frontal academic lectures, seminars offered by professionals working in top-tier industrial sectors, and lab experience with industrial development kits and cutting-edge networking devices.
For further information, check out the videoclip here
Internet of Things and Smart Cities
This course provides knowledge of the concepts of the "IoT" and "Smart cities," describing their scientific and market trends, as well as the application of these paradigms in practical ICT context.
The students will learn about some key platforms and standards (ZigBee, 6LoWPAN, WiFi, Bluetooth Low Energy, SigFox, Lo-Ra), and will review their applications for home automation, industrial applications, autonomous driving, urban monitoring, privacy and security.
Machine Learning
Intelligent systems capable of automated reasoning are emerging as the most promising application of ICT.
The aim of this course is to provide fundamentals and basic principles of the machine learning problem as well as to introduce the most common techniques for regression and classification. Both supervised and unsupervised learning will be covered, with a brief outlook into more advanced topics such as Support Vector Machines, neural networks and deep learning. The course will be complemented by hands-on experience with Python programming.
Stochastic Processes
This is a theoretical course intended to provide knowledge of the main mathematical tools and modeling techniques for the study of telecommunication networks and networking protocols.
The students will get to know the theoretical basics of Markov chains, renewal processes, queueing theory and traffic models. These instruments will be further applied to the analysis of datalink and networking protocols.
Visible-light and Metasurfaces Communications
Course details will be available soon
Related Subjects
Select 3 courses from the following list
Embedded Real-time Control
Course details will be available soon
ICT for Automotive and Domotics
Course details will be available soon
ICT Robotics
Course details will be available soon
Industrial Communications
Course details will be available soon
Optimization Methods for ICT
Course details will be available soon
Programmable Hardware Devices
This course presents the basics about electronics for real-time data management systems and offers some hands-on laboratories of data management with FPGA
Programming for Telecommunications
The course will provide a solid knowledge of C++ object oriented programming with a special focus on telecommunication applications.
Sensing and Measurement Systems
Course details will be available soon
Soft Skills
Select 1 course from the following list.
Public Speaking Lab
The lab aims to help students improve their oral communication through the study and practice of the elements contributing to successful communication.
The focus is on raising the students' awareness on the importance of verbal and non verbal language in interactions to make communication more effective.
The students will learn the meanings of body language and paralanguage (voice intonation, volume, etc), how they are used in different types of interactions (one-to-one, one-to-many, computer-mediated, etc.), and will have to apply them in a number of assigned tasks.
The lab requires the students' active participation in all class activities, aimed at applying the communication strategies learned.
Project Management
This course will provide the foundations of the project management. Traditional (such as the Project Management Institute approach) as well as more advanced techniques - such as the Agile Methodology - will be reviewed. Special focus will be put on the methodologies more suited for the ICT environment.
Public values in media and ICT
More details will be available soon.
Elective credits
Select one course (6 ECTS) among all the courses of this Master’s (free choice). In addition, you have to select two courses (up to 15 ECTS) from this Master’s or any other one of the University of Padua, submitted to the condition of being relevant for the ICT scientific area.
Internship/Project
These are mandatory activities
English language B2
Students must certify that they have a proficiency level "English B2" according to the CEFR scheme.
To this end, students can:
- Submit a certificate issued by a recognized external certification agency;
- Take an internal test at the University of Padova Language Centre (CLA) to verify that they can interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction with native speakers quite possible without strain for either party.
Final project
Students are asked to carry out a substantial individual project in their final year. The project can be carried out either at the University of Padova (30 ECTS combining a 21 ECTS Final Project and a 9 ECTS Report), or in an external institution, such as an Industry or a Research Center, either national or international (30 ECTS combining a 21 ECTS Final Project and a 9 ECTS Internship). It is also possible to do the internship in an external institution, and the final project at the University, though we suggest to carry out the whole work in a single place.
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