Topics of interest

The Wireless Networks Group (WNG) develops its research and consulting activities in several areas including mobile communications, heterogeneous networks, mesh and ad-hoc networks, sensor networks, etc. The group has participated in a number of national and international projects (see Projects).

The current research interests of the WNG are the following ones:

• To develop new communication paradigms in the sensor networks context, which could be extended and generalized, to contribute to the new global networks.
• To offer solutions to extend traditional networks (either fixed or mobile ones) to any place, in any time. The goal is to provide technical solutions to enable the ubiquitous Internet.

From these topics, our current work focuses on the following goals:

• Proposing a new modular network architecture and without layers, that allow to select the needed functionalities for every particular communication.
• Studying and developing auto-identification mechanisms and mobility support in sensor networks.
• Studying autoconfigurable and scalable routing protocols for nodes with IEEE 802.15.4, UWB and IEEE 802.11 radio interfaces.
• Studying and developing adequate mechanisms to share the radio channel for mesh networks. In addition, another interest is the development of distributed channel selection for this kind of networks.
• Studying and developing scalable service discovery mechanisms for its usage on several kinds of mesh networks.
• Studying and analyzing enhancement alternatives of TCP for sensor networks.
• Studying and analyzing the low powers alternatives in sensor networks hardware platforms. Evaluating the use of natural or artificial power sources to feed sensor nodes, and analyzing the hardware, software, protocols and aplications implications.
• Studying, analyzing and designing network sevices for new mobile networks and sensor networks (geographic localization, mobility, QoS, service directory, data translation and adaptation, end device and network nodes capabilities discovery).
• Studying and designing state notification services (presence, etc.) in sensor networks.

It must be noted that the group’s research work is mainly based on the development of real testbeds and specific platforms which allow dissemination and technology transfer to the companies.