Highlights

As a part of our cognitive wireless networks research, we have proposed and in large parts implemented a concept of Cognitive Resource Manager (CRM) to coordinate cross-layer optimization and cognitive cycle inside cognitive radios. In principle, CRM architecture replaces classical layered (radio) resource management with machine learning enhanced architecture. This is a sort of software defined networking on steroids.

Universal Link Layer API (ULLA) is a query engine based API and it later extension ULLA-X as a middleware solution to read and set different link-layer parameters. It is a part of our work towards the development of modular architectures that support heterogeneous and multi-mode (wireless) sysems, including cognitive radios. The basic reference implementation of ULLA is available as an open source distribution, and its initial developmen project (called GOLLUM) has got rave reviews from funding agencies and independent evaluators.

We have been doing Internet of Things (IoT) even before the whole term and field was invented. The group has worked over a decade with embedded networking, sensor networking, and wireless control systems. This work lead also to development of nanoTCP and nanoUDP protocols that were precursors towards the development of 6LowPAN. All our work has been widely published, but we have also made successful technology transfer & supported spin-offs in fields that span a number of different fields such as automotive manufacturers, industrial automation, avionics, and weather monitoring, just to mention few. Our staff work in this area has been also cited by a popular press, including international press such as Times, Wall Street Journal, and Le Figaro.

We have been doing Internet of Things (IoT) even before the whole term and One of the best known contributions from our group has been conducting large-scale and accurate spectrum mesurements. So far our team has been all over Germany and beyond, including trips or otherwise obtaining large amount of data from the Netherlands, the UK, France, Macedonia, and Spain. Two of our recent metropolitan measurement campaigns included precision measurements in London and Paris. Apart of analysing and publishing our results, we are sharing data as far as it is possible.

If necessary we make it big and realistic. Over the years we have build a number of very large scale testbed, especially for wireless sensor networking and IoT purposes. Some of these have been a hard work but fun; how about building 100 node microclimate sensing network for a vineyard and testing the products? Or ultra-large network for monitoring different moving devices? It is not only fun and nice engineering, but also a lot of science. This work has been producing fancy sounding Ph.D. thesis work such as “Exploiting Spatial Correlations for Efficient Communication and Deployment Optimisation inWireless Sensor Networks”.

We love to interact and plan. If so, then what is better than organizing an international and well-known conference? We have been involved in different conference organizations, but the largest and the most satisfying challenge we have had was to be the local organizer for IEEE DySPAN 2011. A lot of hard work, but also a lot of fun. We were responsible for local organization, and also one of the co-TPC chairs came from our group.

Environment Map concept not only for cognitive radio use, but also much more widely deployed for cellular systems, WiFi optimization, and Minimisation of Drive Tests (MDT which is now under 3GPP standardization). As a part of this work we have ad an opportunity to collaborate with a dream team of industry specialists and other university researchers, which has lead also to the world first real-time prototype of REM concept.