Laboratory of Digital Telecommunications - Parallel Systems

The Laboratory for Digital Telecommunications and Parallel & Distributed Processing (TELE) started its activities from a background in computer engineering. Two distinct but related topics are covered: Digital Telecommunications and Parallel & Distributed Processing. The research activities are spread over three (sub)teams. The mission is to do practical, "real-world" application oriented research. The typical research innovation strategy of the research group is normally to exploit experience available from our previuos fundamental research into practical, real world problems, resulting in a new application track for a specific subdomain of practical telecommunications and distributed processing problems. From this application research, usually a more strategic research track emerges, with a generic and sometimes fundamental approach. The overall result is an even balance between applied research, mostly in collaboration with external partners, and academic research. The research (sub)teams are: 1. Protocol engineering (Prof. Marnix Goossens) - Study, design and implementation of digital telecommunication protocols - From just above (hardware) physical transmission layer up to just below top of application layer - Current focus - but not exclusively - on Internet protocols (since 1985.) - Current main topic is content distribution (mainly multicast) 2. Network Control (Prof. Kris Steenhaut) Study and design of heuristical and Artificial Intelligence inspired mechanisms for control exploitation of telecommunication networks. Current topics: - Optical netwerks: Multilayer traffic engineering: collaboration of routing and protection on IP and optical layer. - Sensornetworks: routing mechanisms, data-collection and compression, topology control, MAC layer design - Optimalisation methods using genetic algoritms, "ant" systems (Ant Colony Optimisation, Multi-typed ants), game theory and other heuristics. - Study using discrete event simulation models build in OMNET simulator. 3. Parallel & Distributed Processing (Prof. Erik Dirkx) The group has experience in parallel processing and reconfigurable hardware (FPGA). - In the field of parallel processing, our main focus is on performance analysis and causal performance models. - In the field of reconfigurable hardware, the focus is on multi-Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) reconfigurable computing systems.