WINE
- Main investigator:
- Vilajosana Guillén, Xavier
- Area:
- Information and communication technologies
- Area of specialization:
- Internet technologies and artificial intelligence, Digital health
- Affiliation center:
- Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3)
- UNESCO codes:
- 332505, 120317, 120703, 120601, 120304
- Collaborates with:
- e-Health Center
- ODS:
- Wireless networks
- Communication networks
- Edge computing
- Edge computing
- Edge computing
- Cyber-physical systems
- IoT - Internet Of Things
- IoE Internet of Everything
The Wireless Networks (WiNE) Research group pioneers the research and development of technologies that improve the way devices sense and communicate. These technologies are present in our lives, through smart phones, home networks, vehicles, and connected appliances. They are also present in our ecosystems and habitat, in cities, roads and large infrastructures where they provide seamless connectivity and sensing capabilities to gather information, actuate, monitor and control their operation. They are also present in industry, equipped with new generations of wireless technologies and low power sensors and actuators, where their operative information is used to improve processes and reduce operating costs while increasing sustainability and efficiency. Our primary interest is in helping industries, cities, infrastructure operators and people to benefit from Internet enabled cyber-physical objects and contribute to a more sustainable Internet of Things by optimizing aspects of their operation and underlying technology.
Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) networks and machine to machine (M2M) networks
In this research line, we study industrial networks in depth and contribute to standardizing them. Industrial networks have been developed independently of the traditional Internet and have continued to be offered traditionally as wired networks.
The cost and operational limitations of wired networks favour a new generation of communication technologies and wireless standards that change industries' connectivity paradigm, as the operating costs are drastically reduced. WiNE focuses, from a practical viewpoint, on the convergence of these technologies in the current Internet infrastructure (enabled IP), such as routing, planning, energy efficiency, resource sharing and optimization techniques, with the aim of developing the communication base for the Internet of Things (IoT).
Contextual intelligence in the Internet of Everything (IoE)
Ubiquitous computing, together with the wireless networks, facilitates the appearance of the Internet of Everything, in which information systems, people and a broad diversity of objects interconnect perfectly. However, access to the Internet of Things (IoT) poses challenges as regards data yields, the number of devices, energy consumption or the reading range. Most of these challenges are related with the context in which the communication devices operate and, therefore, "understanding" this context is fundamental for improving the performance of the Internet of Everything (IoE).
Around this concept, this research line seeks to garner context-sensitive information to improve the IoE's network technologies, such as RFID, 802.15.4 or other low-power networks. Using the information provided by sensors or radio frequency parameters, machines or other learning-related techniques are used to address the challenges currently associated with the IoE. The goal is to exploit contextual (individual or collaborative) intelligence to improve these networks' quality and usability, within the context of smart cities or in industrial scenarios.
Edge computing and software-defined networks
The WiNE group focuses on the design of algorithms, architectures and technical solutions for improving efficiency in the use of networked resources in multi-user scenarios, in which the joint optimization of communication and processing resources has become a necessity. This research line examines the joint design of virtual network processing elements (VNE and VNR), caching solutions, data transit fragmentation, mobile edge computing, etc. We will also focus on the periphery of the 5G network, including the network's capillary elements defined by virtualization and software in order to improve operation of the latest jump servers.
Mobility and radio frequency resource management in 5G mobile networks
The main challenge facing the future mobile networks (also known as 5G) is to satisfy the growing demand for massive connectivity and capacity. Although it has been shown that these two goals must be addressed from a multiple approach, network densification and the use of new frequency bands are two possible facilitating factors.
Among other aspects, the group focuses on the design, development and evaluation of the layers of medium access control (MAC) to provide efficient mechanisms for the mm-wave bands, for example, cell discovery, cell associations and self-backhauling, etc.