Introduction to the internet of things

Max amount of FITech students: 15

Persons without a valid study right to a Finnish university have preference to this course.

Understand and learn the fundamental concepts and key enablers of the #InternetofThings and how to identify and design #IoT applications!

Internet of Things (IoT) is an extension of Internet connectivity into everyday objects and physical devices. Initially, IoT focused on adding connectivity to everyday objects, e.g., one of the earliest examples of IoT devices was a vending machine that could be accessed over the Internet. In recent years, however, the vision has evolved from mere connectivity into provisioning of a global platform where devices are not merely passive objects as part of the Internet, but active contributors, e.g., through computational capabilities, sensors, or other functionality. The Introduction to IoT course provides an overview of this exciting field.

Course content

• Introduction: Internet of Things as an application domain, examples of applications, and devices. Overview of different subcomponents of IoT applications and identification of key research directions and connections.
• Implementing IoT: Programming IoT and embedded operating systems
• Sensor layer: Types of sensors and implementation challenges related to sensors for IoT applications
• Network layer: Connectivity types and networking challenges for IoT
• Data management layer: Big data and IoT, IoT analytics and cloud, edge and fog computing
• Other topics: IoT privacy and security and IoT and pervasive data science

Learning outcomes

The course will provide a basic understanding of the Internet of Things and allow the student to understand key principles in the design, development and deployment of Internet of Things systems. The course covers computing, sensing, networking, data management, security and privacy issues surrounding smart devices and helps the student to understand how these relate to each other and provide a “global platform for advanced services of the ICT era”.

After the course the student will be able to

• understand what the Internet of Things is and what makes it unique compared to other computing paradigms
• discover how to identify and conceptualize the key architectural components and challenges of IoT applications
• design IoT applications and determine the best components to be chosen for a given application

Course material

The course does not follow any coursebook or set of papers, but each lecture is prepared individually. The teaching materials give references for further readings at the end of each lecture slide set.

The course material (lectures, exercises and selected solutions) will be available in Moodle.

Teaching schedule

• Lectures Tue 10-12, Fri 10-12 (material will be available after the lectures)
• Exercises Wed 10-12

Completion methods

Grading is based on the home exam and weekly exercises.

More information on the University of Helsinki’s course page.

You can get a digital badge after completing this course.