Current aspects of research in communications are manifold. Therefore, the Communication Systems Research (CSG) Group at IFI focuses today on the following topics:

 

The goal of this working area has been set to investigate, evaluate, and apply the blockchain technology for communications, distributed applications, and new business cases. As such, the various different set of functions, applications, and stakeholders being involved in the smart contract arena (considered as the core of a blockchain) are put into interrelated technical, economic, and legal perspectives. Thus, applications have been designed and implemented, systems have been architectured and trialed, and mechanisms are being developed to show the innovation as well as limitations of the blockchain technology today. 

Current Projects: Blockchain Overview, Coinblesk, Blockchain-based Temperature Monitoring for Medical Drugs Transport, Blockchain-based Cooperative DDoS Mitigation 

The goal of this area is to develop a model and architecture for multi-provider technical, socio-economic, and regulatory aspects of telecommunications, to provide guidelines and recommendations to European players (end-users, enterprises, operators, regulators, policy makers, content providers) for the provision of new converged services to citizens and enterprises, and to address the high decentralization aspect of multi-player situations.
Current Projects: FLAMINGO, AbaCUS, ACROSS, Hive2Hive, Coinblesk
Past Projects: SmoothIT, EcoNets,Econ@Tel, SESERV

The application of network management mechanisms in the networking domain has progressed in terms of technical approaches very far. However, the integration of economic management mechanisms into existing network management models remains under strong developments. Thus, this work investigates the use of, e.g., session models, pricing models, or business models, within today's management models. Additionally, it considers a fully integrated accounting infrastructure as a basis for all economic approaches.
Current Projects:SmartenIT,FLAMINGO, AbaCUS, ACROSS, Hive2Hive, Coinblesk
Past Projects:SmoothIT, EMANICS, EC-GIN, EcoNets DaSAHIT, SESERV, Econ@Tel

This area addresses the problem of providing necessary architectural and functional features in an Internet-based environment so that networking customers will be enabled to select services according to their needs and will be charged in a fair, incentive-driven manner. Pre-paid mechanisms for All-IP networks and services are under special investigation. A close relation to the work undertaken in the area of distributed accounting can be observed.
Current Projects: SmartenIT,FLAMINGO, AbaCUS, ACROSS
Past Projects: COST 290, Daidalos II, AMAAIS

Today the Internet connectivity rises and everyone speaks of "The Internet of Thing" (IoT)" that includes all kind of devices that use IP communications. IoT is not limit to notebooks and servers anymore, but includes also constraint devices (e.g., mobiles, sensor nodes). Those devices are limited in memory, power, and computational capacity. Therefore, research is challenging and is not limited to architecture issues, but also includes security aspects and solution design in order to build trust in the network and to support privacy.
Current Projects: SecureWSN, FLAMINGO, SmartenIT, parkITsmart

The popularity of P2P has increased dramatically, but security, digital rights management and copy right issues, and market management aspects have been neglected for quite some time. Work in this area targets at suitable models and technology to enable fast and unstructured search as well as charging support for P2P services.
Current Projects: TomP2P, SmartenIT,FLAMINGO
Past Projects: PeerMart, EC-GIN, DaSAHIT, CoopSC,LiveShift

The application of any network management or charging approach requires in a distributed multi-provider environment a heterogeneous and efficient accounting paradigm to be established. This area addresses interaction schemes, protocols, and parameters for any kind of distributed accounting for Internet services. A close relation with the work on charging and QoS aspects of networks can be observed.
Past Projects: DAMMO II, Akogrimo, PeerMart, EC-GIN, DaSAHIT, SCRIPT, SESERV, AMAAIS

While Grids need to go mobile, the lack of suitable mechanisms in support of such mobile grid users is obvious, since existing networking mechanisms like AAA, A4C, QoS, and security have not been integrated fully into existing grid models. This work focuses on business flow models and related charging processes for mobile grid services. A close relation to charging and distributed accounting work can be observed.
Past Projects: Akogrimo, BEinGRID, EC-GIN

The use of biometrics for access control has shown until today an almost complete proprietary handling of fixed hardware-software pairs. Thus, the design and development of a operating system-independent, decentralized IP-based, and open device-driven management system has been started to ensure a global and secure administration capability.
Past Projects: BioLANCC, BioXes

• CSG-developed software, systems, and tools can be accessed at CSG software, systems, tools.
• CSG provides a number of services and testbed infrastructures in support of research and other activities.
• CSG Seminar for Doctoral Students
• Fast Similarity Search (FastSS) performs an exhaustive similarity search in a dictionary, based on the edit distance model of string similarity.