Our group focuses on researching and prototyping hardware and systems for connected devices and wearables, with applications in healthcare, consumer electronics, and industrial IoT.
Engineering Wearables: Developing ultra-low-power, rigid and flexible wearable devices for health monitoring, supporting on-device machine learning algorithms for anomaly detection, secure short-range communication technologies and PUF-based hardware security measures.
Hardware Security: Developing Physical Unclonable Function (PUF)-based security measures to protect wearable devices from unauthorized access or replacement (e.g., PUFs for wearables).
Tiny-ML: Application of tiny machine learning for resource constrained edge devices such as MCU-based embedded systems. E.g., on-device abnormality detection of vital signs for healthcare applications.
Short-Range Secure Communication: Explore different modalities of secure and ultra-low-power short-range communication between wearables and off-body transceivers. (e.g., visible light communication, human body communication)
GitHub repository hosting the resources and projects for the embedded systems and electronics systems packaging courses offered at IIIT-Bangalore: https://github.com/dr-polachan/Embedded-Systems-by-Dr.-Polachan
[Pinned] Open Positions: Part-Time and Full-Time Ph.D. [More Details]
[Paper Acceptance, December 2025] Ankush Adesh, Medha Boorla, Soumick Majumdar, and Kurian Polachan, Finite Element Analysis of a Human Body Communication Channel with a Wrist-Worn Transmitter and Grounded Receiver, IEEE 44th International Conference on Consumer Electronics (ICCE), 2026, Dubai
[Paper Acceptance, October 2025] Bijeet Basak, Nupur Patil, Kurian Polachan and Srinivas Vivek, Attack on a PUF-based Secure Binary Neural Network, VLSID 2026, Pune, India
[Patent Grant, August 2025] Kurian Polachan, Kavya Agarwal, Ritesh Lalwani, Abeena U, and Arul Vignesh, System and Method for Visible Light Communication, Indian Patent Application No. 202341048494, filed August 11, 2023. Patentee: International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore.
[August 2025] CDWL welcomes, Ph.D. candidate Neelabh Keshav, and MS research students Shashwath Rao, Akshaj Raj
[Patent Grant, March 2025] Pralay Chakrabarty, Ananya Lakshmi Ravi, and Kurian Polachan, System and Method for Identification of IoT Nodes Based on GPIO Pull-Up/Down Resistors, Indian Patent 563531, granted Mar. 25, 2025. Patentee: International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore.
[Paper Acceptance, April 2025] (Accepted) S. Nagarajan S and Kurian Polachan, "An Autoencoder-Based TinyML Model for On-Device Arrhythmia Detection," International Conference on Smart Applications, Communications and Networking, Istanbul, 2025
[Paper Acceptance, January 2025] (Accepted) Dilli Babu Porlapothula, Kurian Polachan, CapPUF: a Tamper-Resistant PUF Utilizing I/O Capacitances for IoT Nodes", has been accepted for presentation at the 2025 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, London, UK from May 25-28, 2025.
[Paper Acceptance, October 2024] (Accepted) Soumick Majumdar, Anshul Madurwar, Anmol Shetty and Kurian Polachan, "hbcLock: Encrypted RF Communication Utilizing Body-Coupled Keys for the Internet of Bodies", VLSID 2024, Bangalore, India
[Paper Acceptance, October 2024] (Accepted) Kurian Polachan, and Bijeet Basak, PyBlkSim: An Open-Source Block-Based Discrete-Time Simulator, COMSNETS 2025, Bangalore, India
[Paper Acceptance, October 2024] (Accepted) Phani Pavan Kambhampati, Jagan P, Kurian Polachan, Madhav Rao, Murmur: A Secure and Low-Energy Audio Communication for the Internet of Bodies, COMSNETS 2025, Bangalore, India
[June, 2024] Prof. Kurian Polachan presented two papers at the IEEE MELECON conference and served as the session chair for the session on Sensors and Cyber Physical Systems
[June, 2024] Travel support offer from SERB (https://serbonline.in/SERB/its) for attending conference IEEE MELECON 2024, Portugal. https://2024.ieee-melecon.org/
Hosted - Online Guest Lecture on RF Systems Design by Dr. Manu Thayyil, Celtro Gmbh, Dresden, Germany.
[New: March, 2024] Congratulations to Kavya Agarwal, Ritesh Lalwani, Abeena U for acceptance of their paper on low-energy visible light communication in IEEE SmartNets, USA, 2024.
[New: March, 2024] Two research papers on Hardware Security is accepted in IEEE MELECON 2024, Portugal. Congratulations to resesarchers of CDWEL - Pralay Chakrabarty, Ananya Lakshmi Ravi, Shab Naz, Ayesha Daniya Mulla, Sumayya H, and Rifa Sameen Sarang.
[August 2023] CDWL Welcomes Postdoc Dr. Pralay Chakrabarty Ph.D., IIT Guwahati) and Research Associate S Ananda Theertan (M.Tech, IIT Hyderabad)
[August 2023] Patent Filed on “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR VISIBLE LIGHT COMMUNICATION”, Indian Patent Application Number: 202341048494
[August 2023] Invited talk on "Introduction to Internet of Bodies and Human Body Communication", Samvaad at IIIT-Bangalore
[July 2023] CDWEL welcome MS by research candidates Soumick Majumdar and Dilli Babu Porlapothula
[June 2023] Invited talk on "Introduction to Internet of Bodies and Human Body Communication" as a part of M2M and IoT Workshop at MVJ College of Engineering, Bangalore. (Link)
[June 2023] CDWEL welcome summer research interns Piyush Kumar (NIT Rourkela), Abeena U (IISER Bhopal), Ananya Ravi (IIITDM Kancheepuram) and Dara Sai (NIT Meghalaya).
[April 2023] RTOS workshop by Peeyush Kumar from Infineon. Organized as a part of Embedded Systems Design Course at IIIT-B.