The University of Aberdeen is among the UKís top research universities in the latest Research Assessment Exercise (RAE 2008) - a year long independent evaluation of the quality of research undertaken across Britain's universities. The University provides a set of web pages that describe the University or Aberdeen and why students should consider studying in Aberdeen's world-leading research environment.
The Electronics Research Group (ERG) of the School of Engineering part of the College of Physical Sciences at the University of Aberdeen has a range of experience relating to the design, simulation, optimisation, and benchmarking of systems. It operates within the School Communications and Optical Engineering research group.
The group investigates performance of packet radio links (e.g. mobile and satellite links used for Internet access). There are also on-going research projects into the use of digital video, optimisation of TCP, multicast communication, and the development of new protocols. The group has an excellent record in both developing leading-edge solutions and publishing technical articles. It is in located in a suite of 6 rooms on the upper West Wing of the Fraser Noble building.
The prime focus of the group is to investigate communications systems and identify potential performance problems, suggest appropriate techniques which may improve performance, and to analyse the impact of implementing specific techniques. The group is able to draw upon previous experience of a wide-range of protocols and systems which it has either studied or implemented. There is a particular research interest in the development of link layer protocols, router technology to support IP (including IPv6 and multimedia over IP), and transport protocols. It has also performed a range of benchmarking and acceptance testing of network equipment and actively participates in the development of open standards in these fields.
These pages describe and document the ERG network testbed. The group has a well-equipped set of laboratories based on SUN workstations, PCs and Macintosh computers. All computers are networked using 10/100/1000/10000 Ethernet. A range of tools (constructed either in-house, purchased, or on loan) are available and may be used to assist in the monitoring, analysis and implementation of communications protocols. These have been developed and used in both a satellite and terrestrial context.
ERG has studied the performance of the TCP transport protocol, leading to publications in the areas of congestion control and error recovery. It has also published research on TCP-aware link protocols for wireless communications. The group was started by Prof. Tim Spracklen and is currently co-ordinated by Prof. Gorry Fairhurst.
The group has experience built-up over more than a decade through research programmes funded by various organisations including: Thales, EADS Astrium, Defence Research Agency (Malvern), Satellite Communications Centre (DRA Defford), Intelsat, European Space Agency (ESA), British National Space Centre (BNSC), The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the EC via its IST Programmes, and consultancy to private companies. A number of research projects and consultancy contracts have also been completed in other areas of electronics. Work is supported by the experimental network testbed.
The ERG network and servers comprise a mixture of CISCO/HP switches, CISCO routers, and platforms using a diverse range of networking software.
The role of the ERG network is to support practical research in Internet Engineering, currently with two themes - one linked to the Internet Society's Transport and Services Working Group within the IETF, the other linked to the Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) series of transmission standards.
The ERG network testbed provides an experimental service. This may be modified or updated to support development of network, transport and application protocols and to assess their performance. Although ERG will seek high availability of the service, failure of this service shall not impact other university business. In consultation with DIT, ERG will provide appropriate firewall and other security measures to protect the University network and the ERG network testbed.
All ERG staff will use the production University mail system for email relating to the business activities of the University. The University-hosted web server will also be the primary point of contact for information about the research group, and summaries of the research portfolio.
All traffic to/from ERG may be monitored within ERG and used to collect traffic flow and protocol analysis data. To afford useful data, ERG needs to deploy experimental services with other Internet sites participating in Internet Engineering - these services need to be open, visible and carry representative data to evaluate deployment of new protocols and procedures. ERG will support a range of experimental services, including Email, Web, and other IP-based services set in a research context. This activity will be coordinated with DIT/ABMAN who provide the local point of connection to the JANET network.
G Fairhurst
B Robertson
6th Nov 2008
Further information about the ERG may be obtained from:
Prof G Fairhurst School of Engineering University of Aberdeen Aberdeen, AB24 3UE, UKPage Updated Jan 2010.