Technologies and Applications for Personal Communications
Research in this area focuses on new generation wireless systems (Beyond-3G and 4G) based on the integration between wireless sensor and wireless/cellular segments. IP protocol is considered as the common glue of the overall architecture. This activity is carried out in cooperation with research groups with interests in fields other than Telecommunications, to the aim of letting necessary synergies emerge. Issues are addressed, which are related to the introduction of novel paradigms to support QoS differentiation and perceptual QoS into IP networks, as well as to the transparent integration of heterogeneous wireless segments, in the view of a deployment of "Always Best Connected" (ABC) paradigm. The interest is on the introduction of efficient techniques to guarantee the final user a quality strictly correlated to his perceived satisfaction degree, even in high heterogeneous environments. To this aim mobile IP, wireless IP, and WLAN-UMTS integration related issues are addressed. A further research objective is the definition of systems in which the access to services s made flexible and dynamic by putting it into relationship with user position, application nature, user profile and context. Investigated solutions are based on the development of Middleware communication platforms based on agents implementing the paradigm of "user-centric" communications.Also an intense Industrial Research activity is conducted mainly focusing on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). In such a field, research activities carried out by multi-disciplinary groups (Control Systems, Telecommunications, Computer Science, Transportation Systems) aim at design and develop prototypes for vehicular traffic monitoring systems based on advanced technologies and solutions for data acquisition, transmission over wireless channels, and realtime processing. In the field of Integrated Telecommunication Platforms for Logistics, activities are finalized to the acquire the methodological and technological know-how to set up innovative ICT solutions for Transportation and Logistics operators. The main focus is on the development of: (i) tracking and tracing methodologies of goods movers and goods registrations, (ii) AIDC-based (RFID) systems for the automatic collection of data associated to picking and expedition, (iii) and GPS/Galileo platforms for outdoor positioning and Fleet Mgmt.
Research activities
Mobile Computing:
- Design of middleware platforms implementing dynamic QoS control and management through adaptive mapping among user level (subjective) parameters and system level (objective) parameters.
- Definition of adaptive and context-aware techniques for user profiling in 4G systems.
- Synergic exploitation of technologies typical of both the Computer Science (Middleware e User Profiling ) and the Telecommunications (QoS control, Call management) fields to guarantee the user acceptable "perceptual-Qos" levels.
- Investigation of effective solutions for IP mobility to support transparent vertical handovers in wireless 4G networks.
- AAA policies and secure transmission in wireless and vehicular networks.
- Communications and Positioning integrated systems (exploiting sensor networks, Wi-fi, RFID, GPS, etc..) finalized to goods tracking in indoor and outdoor environments.
- Design of anticollision protocols in RFID based systems.
- Accurate outdoor positioning techniques through Galileo.
- Hybrid Positioning Systems.
Main Collaborations: Technical University of Sidney, Università di Tor Vergata- Roma; Politecnico di Torino; HDE Research, Posytron srl, University of Aalborg, Università di Trento, Aircom International, Etnoteam S.p.A, DEIS - Università della Calabria, BLG Automobile Logistics Italia S.r.l., Orangee S.r.l., EXEURA, HDE Holbe Dialoque Europe S.p.A., 3i s.n.c., ICAR-CNR, HSSC.
