Current aspects of research in communications are manifold. Therefore, the
Communication Systems Research (CSG) Group at IFI focuses today on the
following topics:
Telecommunications Economics
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
Past Projects:
SmoothIT,
EcoNets,
Econ@Tel,
SESERV
Charging and Quality-of-Service (QoS) Aspects
of Networks
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:
AMAAIS,
SmartenIT,
FLAMINGO
Past Projects:
COST 290,
Daidalos
II
Supporting Networking Mechanisms for Grids
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
Distributed Accounting
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.
Current Projects:
AMAAIS
Past Projects:
DAMMO II,
Akogrimo,
PeerMart,
EC-GIN,
DaSAHIT,
SCRIPT,
SESERV
Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Systems
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:
LiveShift,
TomP2P,
CoopSC,
SmartenIT,
FLAMINGO
Past Projects:
PeerMart,
EC-GIN,
DaSAHIT
Network Management
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
Past Projects:
SmoothIT,
EMANICS,
EC-GIN,
EcoNets
DaSAHIT,
SESERV,
Econ@Tel
Biometric Access Control
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
Further Research Activities and Results
