Research

Research activities within the iNSPIRE area are organised around three main axes.

Mobile Computing (Leader: I. Carreras, iacopo.carreras@create-net.org)

The tremendous technological advancement is leading to mobile devices with increasing processing, storage and communication capabilities. This has created a fertile ground for the explosive growth of mobile computing research and development. We currently experience the flourishing of pervasive computing environments and smart ambients, whereby embedded devices provide contextual information to be used for user-situated services. These powerful and constantly evolving environments lay the basis for the arising of new application scenarios, characterized by highly personalized and contextualized services, and supported by new mobile and distributed computing models.

The main focus of the mobile computing group is to investigate the many aspects involved in the design, modeling, evaluation and implementation of mobile pervasive computing systems. We take a data-centric approach and assume mobile devices as the center of our investigations.

Light Infrastructure Networks (Leader: T. Rasheed, tinku.rasheed@create-net.org)

The main focus of the Light Infrastructure Networks group is to investigate practical aspects in the design and evaluation of mobile wireless communication and data technologies, and ubiquitous services. In this context, the group has interests in cost-effective light infrastructure wireless access/backhaul solutions for greenfield markets and emerging countries, next generation cellular networks including LTE/LTE-A, energy-aware high altitude platforms for emergency communications and disaster recovery etc. Our main expertise are in the areas of network architecture design, innovative network management and monitoring techniques (Management-as-a-Service), green network protocols design, cooperative communications and seamless mobility. The group also conduct research related to  radio resources management, sustainable mobility and context awareness aspects for mobile wireless networks.

Security (Leader: G. Russello, giovanni.russello@create-net.org)

The research conducted in the Security Group focuses on crypto schemes that allow untrusted environments to perform secure functionalities on behalf of authorised entities. The main focus is towards applications deployed in Cloud Environments maintained by third parties (Google, Amazon, Microsoft) operating on sensitive data. Possible applications are encrypted databases, encrypted publish/subscribe middlewares and encrypted policy-based access control mechanisms.