English Intern
Lehrstuhl für Informatik III

Forschung

User-Centric Aspects of Networking

QoE Quality of Experience (QoE) deals with the subjective perception of Internet services. The concept embraces both application and network aspects of Internet services, with the eventual goal of improving the end user experience. The research focuses on QoE modeling, QoE monitoring and QoE management.

Application-layer QoS The term "application-layer QoS" describes technical parameters of networked systems, which can be perceived by the end users on application layer. The research in this field focuses on how to monitor those parameters in the application and in the network, and how to map these technical parameters to subjective QoE.

Crowdsourcing Crowdsourcing literarly means "outsourcing to a crowd". At the chair, we not only successfully apply crowdsourcing for user-level performance evaluation (e.g., QoE), but also research fundamental concepts of the whole crowdsourcing workflow - from study design over worker motivation and reliability to the validation of crowdsourcing results.

Group-based Communication Group-based communication is a new communication paradigm, which is especially prominent in mobile messaging applications, but also exists in other Internet applications. Group-level activities show fundamentally different communication patterns, which have to be studied and modeled. The goal is to leverage characteristics of communication groups to improve the network utilization of such groups.

Internet Applications: User-centric aspects of networking are investigated with respect to current and future Internet applications, namely, multimedia apps, smart city apps, and interactive applications like video conferencing, augmented reality, or virtual reality.

5G and 6G Network Technologies

SDN & NFV A rethinking of classical networking approaches is happening with software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV), which leads to more softwarized components and a logically centralized control instance. In this context, we are also investigating questions of placement and P4 as a programmable network hardware language.

5G and Mobile Communication 5G mobile networks are currently being rolled out and bring significant architectural changes along with them. Our endeavor lies in understanding the effects that the core network architecture and the control plane signaling procedures have on system load and scaling.

6G Networks of the Future Next generation mobile networks (6G) will integrate important aspecst of the future: sustainability and energy efficient networking, human-centric networking, integration of complementary technologies like WiFi 7 or LoRaWAN .

Time Sensitive Networking Both contemporary industrial as well as automotive networks set high demands in terms of scaling and bandwidth coupled with strict real-time requirements. These networks have moved from approaches like Profibus or CAN bus in the past to Ethernet. Our research revolves around simulative and analytical examinations of such standards, among others IEEE 802.1Qcr.

Internet of Things (IoT) Modeling of IoT systems, architectures and IoT traffic is one of the key research activities of the Chair. In particular, the focus is on traffic modeling of a large number of devices, sensors and actuators. Furthermore, research is being done in the area of simulation, dimensioning, and scaling of IoT architectures within several projects.

Network and Service Management

Edge Cloud and Cloud Computing In the field of cloud networks, the chair is working on novel edge cloud-supported infrastructures and data center architectures. We focus on personal cloud services and monitoring, orchestration and consolidation algorithms for optimized configuration of the network/cloud infrastructure and the allocation of virtualized cloud services in terms of energy consumption and Quality of Experience.

(Autonomous) Intelligent Network Management Due to the complexity and heterogeneity, management approaches to communication networks have become indispensable in order to adapt the networks to a wide range of applications. The Chair is engaged in research with autonomous, intelligent network management, which offers possibilities to cope with today's emerging situations such as encrypted data traffic and high data volume in the networks.

Economic Traffic Management In the area of dynamic, decentralized, or centralized software-defined networks, traffic management can optimize and take measures to improve the efficiency, quality and economic factors of a network. Thus, economic traffic management is an integral research direction of the Chair.

Blockchain for Networking We conduct research in the field of blockchain as a protocol for distributing and concatenating as well as reaching consensus on transactions within a network for different purposes. The research digs into both the application-based implementation of blockchain technology as well as the modeling and performance analysis of various blockchain and distributed ledger variants.

Green Communication Networks

Energy consumption modeling describes a methodology to determine the power consumption characteristics of a device under test (DUT) or an entire system with different influencing factors applied. The resulting data is used to define a mathematical model, which matches the characteristics of the DUT. The research in this field is focused on identifying models for common network components, like access switches, and extending beyond single devices.

Continuous monitoring is an important aspect to verify the developed models by providing a representative, real world comparison to the models. There, it is key to influence the monitored devices as little as possible to derive quality data as accurately as possible with little overhead. 

Metric assessment and definition is key to compare systems, quantify the performance of devices, and assess improvement potential of network components, parts of networks, or complete networks. Consequently, it is key to understand metrics in the domain of, among others, energy efficiency, network performance, sustainability, network quality, and Quality of Information in detail and only apply specific metrics if they match with the research question and the target result. 

Methodology

The research methodology at the chair is centered around the performance of communication systems and networks. Different methods are used to study, evaluate, and optimize the performance. Please note that all described methodologies have to be regarded as building blocks, which are selected and customized, such that the applied research methodology is specifically tailored for each individual project.

Performance Studies The methodology for performance studies comprises system-driven studies, i.e., studies, which directly use the investigated system. Moreover, the chair also uses model-driven studies, in which the investigated system is first described by a model. Then, performance studies are conducted with the help of the model.

Performance Evaluations The chair evaluates performance data (e.g., obtained from performance studies) to get a deep understanding of the performance of the system. For example, the data can be used to derive fundamental relationships for the system performance, identify the root cause of problems, or find configurations, which lead to subobtimal performance.

Performance Optimization The chair always strives to improve and optimize the performance of the researched systems. A detailed description of the relevant research topics can be found at the links above.