Research Projects

The Center's research agenda is divided into 11 interacting projects. These projects are shortly described hereafter; please click on their titles for more details. The Center is open for requests to join the network!

IP1 - Mathematics of Self-Organized Communications
The goal of this project is to investigate fundamental properties and limitations of a large population of "Terminodes" (device combining the functionalities of a terminal equipment and of a communication node), and to propose solutions to maximize the throughput (or, more generally, the quality of service) experienced by the users of a Terminode network.

IP2 - Information Theoretic Issues
The goal of this project is to provide a genuine understanding of the fundamental trade-offs in self-organizing networks, with the aim to design communication systems that approach the limits of the trade-offs discovered.

IP3 - Physical Layer and Software Radio Testbed
This project is concerned with the physical and MAC layers. It hosts members of three communities: antennas, software radio and communication theory. Both theoretical and practical aspects are investigated.

IP4 - Self-Organizing Networking Mechanisms
The main goal of this project is the study of issues related to networking, in a broad sense, in ad-hoc networks ("pure" ad-hoc networks, hybrid cellular/ad-hoc networks and sensor networks). In particular, routing, data management and incentive to cooperate are investigated.

IP5 - Self-Organized Distributed Applications in a Mobile Environment
Applications running on top of mobile ad-hoc networks will need to follow the principle of self-organization. They need to be able to flexibly configure and re-organize themselves exploiting mobility. These issues are investigated for the three key aspects of distributed, mobile applications: Information Management, Programming and Communication.

IP6 - Security and Cryptographic Issues
The goal of this project is to address security issues in mobile networks. Security includes regular attacks on communications (interception, modification, impersonation), denial-of-service attacks, privacy issues and reliability (resistance against malicious parties, routing reliability, incentives to collaborate, duplication, disaster recovery).

IP7 - Distributed Signal Processing and Communications
This project is concerned with the change of paradigm induced by large distributed sensing and communications. This leads to questions on (i) distributed signal acquisition and sampling, (ii) representation of dependent data (eg plenoptic/plenacoustic function), (iii) distributed compression of correlated data, (iv) transmission and joint sorce-channel coding, and (v) reconstruction of distributed signals. Applications can be found in sensor networks (sensing and transmission of physical phenomena), ad-hoc networks (real-time services) and monitoring (multi-camera systems).

IP8 - System and Software Architecture
Communicating smart objects raise many interesting research problems concerning the structuring and efficient use of the huge amount of distributed data that those objects collect. Turning these data into useful information and supporting applications is a real challenge, requiring new algorithms and protocols, new infrastructures, and new structuring principles. Research topics addressed here are: Performance Evaluation and Design-Space Exploration, Location Awareness, and Software Architecture and Infrastructure.

IP9 - Communicating Embedded Systems
This project investigates algorithms and system design for large populations of small size nodes. In particular, design space exploration methods will be developed for the system architecture under conflicting criteria. Finally, location services will be investigated including routing, location detection and a service infrastructure to transform local information into useful knowledge.

IP10 - Terminodes, Wireless E-business Models and Scenario Planning
The objectives of this project are (a) to assess the wireless technology and its commercial usage, (b) to describe emergent business models in wireless e-commerce, for the different actors (established businesses and start-ups), and (c) to implement a scenario strategic planning approach and design dynamic simulation models for assessing the wireless e-commerce.

IP11 - Wireless Sensor Networks
Energy consumption is a critical parameter of wireless networks of distributed sensors and actuators, since each node is assumed to be energetically autonomous. The main objective of this project is to reduce the overall energy dissipation to levels that are about two to three orders of magnitude smaller than what is available today (with the Bluetooth standard for example). IP 11 mainly focuses on the digital radio and on the MAC layer, which are the most critical parts within the system hierarchy.