- Upper organisation
- Waterford Institute of Technology
- Address
ArcLabs Research & Innovation Building
WIT West Campus
Carriganore
Waterford
Co. Waterford
X91 P20H
Ireland
Description
WIT is the major provider of higher education in the South East region of Ireland and one of the largest Institutes of Technology's in Ireland. WIT hosts the Walton Institute, which is an internationally recognized centre of excellence for ICT research and innovation. Walton is unique in the Irish research landscape; it has a very high level inter-disciplinary view of the communications services space, linking basic science research expertise with software engineering expertise. This creates innovative prototype solutions in collaboration with mainly European partners and combining all this with the entrepreneurial business vision to exploit the range of commercial opportunities.
Founded in 1996, as the TSSG, Walton has grown into a large research centre (over 40 active projects per year, with 226 completed projects, 100 active staff and students 1996-2020). Walton creates economic impact by translating their knowledge base and innovation into leading edge products and services by continuing their engagement with industry in collaborative R&D, knowledge generation and transfer.
The Technology Gateway is the commercial / industrial engagement arm of Walton were it has the remit to support start-ups, micro-SME’s, and scaling SME’s in direct industry projects working to improve Ireland’s status as a leader in tech start-ups. Since 2015 the Gateway has serviced over 250 companies, and year to date (in 2020) Walton has worked on over 30 projects with a large portion of the funds contributed directly by the Industry partners.
Walton are also actively engaged in steering the Future Internet agenda in Europe. We are a partner and member of many European technology platforms and strategic groups of Industry collaborators: including the Future Internet Assembly (FIA) ; ETSI, the Industry Specification Group on Identity and Access Management; TiDl, Trust in the Digital Life initiative; and EP3R, European Public-Private Partnership for Resilience. Walton Institute is the only Irish representative holding a leading position on the steering boards of the Net!Works and NEM European Technology Platforms. Participating at a leadership level in initiatives such as these is a critical success factor and once again confirms Walton’s position as one of the leading ICT research organisations nationally and internationally. In addition we host regular events, seminars and workshops for wider industry and meet a large number of companies every year.
Walton Institute
Walton Institute
Contact Person
Kevin Doolin
Miguel Ponce de Leon
Equipment
Walton Institute can offer companies access to cutting edge living lab infrastructure.
The Mixed Reality Lab is a Virtual Reality / Augmented Reality lab with with Hololens, Oculus Quests and a VR Treadmill.
Walton hosts an eTextile Lab were intelligent smart wearable garments for the detection and sensing of data can be knitted into fabric.
The Smart Agriculture IoT Testbed can be utilised for Agricultural technology investigation. This is a highly distributed set of environmental and soil sensors, IoT-enabling radio basestations, gateway servers enabling edge processing capabilities, backhauling solutions and server capacity hosting specific to the agricultural sector.
Finally the Radio Communications Testbed, hosts satellite comms, telecommunications, 5G with SDR nodes; 0 - 6GHz frequency range. Spectrum Analyser and Vector Network Analyser; 0 - 6GHz frequency range, and a Satellite Ground Station.
- Equipment Link
- Walton Living Lab Communications Infrastructure
Services
Industry Services
Walton Institute delivers innovative ICT solutions to our clients across multiple industries, including Agritech, HealthTech, Smart Cities, Communications and Energy Sectors.
We are transforming how companies operate and compete through our scientifically proven R&D knowledge and expertise that has a direct impact on improving our clients’ bottom line.
Every company must innovate to survive. If you do not have a Research, Development and Innovation (RD&I) focus Walton can help you create that focus. If you have an established RD&I function, create an an extension of this function with Walton and we will help you push the boundaries to ensure you stay ahead of the competition and disrupt the marketplace.
Walton have engineers and business development executives that can carry out an Innovation Sprint Service, which will bring people from Idea to ICT Prototype in 2 weeks. We carry out professional software engineering services, were we look at ICT Product Architecture and Roadmapping and offer a service in digital creative design where the ICT user experience and user design are to the fore.
Mobile Ecosystem & Pervasive Sensing
The field of Digital Health and associated Precision Healthcare initiatives is undergoing explosive growth both in academic research and commercial settings. The MEPS Lab at Walton spearhead research in areas such as Biomedical Nano and Molecular Communications, Pervasive Sensing, Embedded Systems Control and Interactive Technologies (Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality) .
Programmable & Autonomous Systems
The Programmable & Autonomous Systems Unit seeks to research, develop and commercialise techniques, tools and algorithms that will ensure that citizens can benefit from the digital evolution. We advocate that future digital platforms, in particular transport and energy, must exhibit a set of fundamental characteristics if they are to cope with rapidly changing requirements in such a complex environment.
Programmable – a system, service or platform whose logic is separated from its operation. By building programmable systems, we ensure that they are future proofed and flexible so that their features and functionalities can evolve as requirements evolve.
Autonomous – a system, service or platform is autonomous if it can perform its activities in a fashion that requires minimal human supervision in the face of complex and changing environmental conditions.
By directing our research into these two highly complementary topics, we can ensure that society can take full advantage of the new digitally connected world.
Emerging Networks Laboratory
The Emerging Networks Laboratory (ENL), is a Walton Research Division comprising 19 researchers focussing on challenges relating to the evolution of the communications networking and service technologies that will see widespread deployment in the next 10 years. ENL is recognised as a leading research group in the network and service management field worldwide, producing high quality scientific publications and graduating highly skilled PhD and MSc graduates. Its work is in large part driven by its research partnerships with the Irish R&D divisions of leading technology companies including IBM, Cisco, Intel, Ericsson, Dell EMC to name a few.
Professional Software Engineering Services
PSES is a team of highly talented Dev-Ops, Software Testers and Software Engineers with a cumulative experience of over 30 years, spanning a broad range of technology and business domains including Mobile, Telecoms, Big Data, eHealth, Autonomics and Network Management.
Infrastructure Group
The Infrastructure Group plays a cross-cutting organisation role in not only pursuing research in its own thematic areas (see below), but by actively engaging in the research and development of facilities, lab spaces, testbeds, other bespoke ICT systems, and providing access to, or generating, data-sets. An important element in the division is the development of connections between testbeds that will help foster inter-disciplinary research between the different fields.
- Services Link
- Walton Industry Innovation Service