RESEARCH AREAS
The Electronics Research Group (ERG) in the School of Engineering at the University of Aberdeen (UoA) has a long-standing reputation of work in IPv4 and IPv6, especially over challenging links, such as those exhibited by satellite systems. The School is internationally recognised for its research, with support from the UK Research Councils, the European Commission, (FP6, FP7) and a history of fruitful research collaboration with UK industry.
Major initiatives include:
- Satellite Networking.
- The group has a proven research capability in the development of new protocols, implementation of link-specific enhancements, testing and the assessment of network performance. It also operates a satellite terminal as a part of the SatNEx Platform Network. Current research focuses on network design supports the use of broadband systems for multimedia. Work also focusses on standardisation, contributing to work on DVB-TM RCS, DVB-S2, and the ETSI Broadband Satellite Multimedia (BSM) working group.
- Internet Engineering.
- The group actively participates in research to support the activities of the IETF in the Transport and Internet areas. Active interests include:
- Transport protocol design, including design and simulation of congestion control, reliability mechanisms, feature negotiation and protocol robustness. G Faihrurst has chaired the IETF DCCP working Group, TANA BoF and currently chairs the TSVWG.
- IP Multicast, including prototyping and analysis of IGMP/MLD, PIM, multicast tranaport and experimental deployment of multicast.
- IP transmssion over DVB, including deisgn and implementation of protocol encapsulation, compression, and control. G Fairhurst has chaired the IPDVB WG.
The group is associated with three international technology platforms.
- European Satellite Communications Network of Excellence (SatNEx).
- ERG is a member of SatNEx. SatNEx was originally funded (until 2009) under the 6th Research Framework Programme of the European Commission, to achieve long-lasting integration of 24 key European research institutes in satellite communication and to develop a common base of knowledge, thus contributing to the realization of a pan-european perspective to satellite engineering. Work in Aberdeen focussed on satellite tuning of TCP/IP, link security, multicast transmission, and DVB-RCS technologies. Aberdeen lead work on standards and also an exploratory activity on the future Internet. SatNEx is currently funded by the European Space Agency under its ARTES programme.
- Digital Economy Hub.
- The Aberdeen University Hub was awarded £12.4M to explore how digital technologies can be developed to enhance the delivery of crucial services such as healthcare, the environment, and transport in rural areas across the UK. The Hub, based in the MacRobert building at Aberdeen University, is one of three centres in the UK, Around 60 research staff and students will be based in the Hub. The Hub draws together the University’s research strengths in areas including computer science, communications engineering, human geography, transport, healthcare, sociology, and environmental science. Experts from across these disciplines will work together to understand and assess digital technology requirements and develop and evaluate solutions. Research in ERG will analyse the impact of new methods and their applicability for rural pervasive and ubiquitous networking, topics include:
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- Satellite Broadband for Rural Communities, including both broadband Internet provision and support for emergent applications.
- Adaptive Internet Transport for the Pervasive Future Internet, focusing on issues that result from heterogeniety within the network and the need to ensure pervaisive access.
- Internetworking protocols for Sensor Networks, focusing on networking of commodity sensor devices for environmental monitoring and their integration with Internet systems.