This topic centers around technologies, protocols, architectures and algorithms as they are required for future, high-performing communication systems and the Internet-of-Everything. This comprises a set of high-performing and at the same time energy efficient communication technologies (optical, wireless, wireline), mobile networks, flexible and virtualized networks, coding and network access schemes, protocols and architectures, as well as monitoring solutions and machine learning. A big challenge consists in devising a future-proof, scalable, resource conserving, secure and robust infrastructure. This infrastructure needs to be highly flexible and must be operated autonomously. Such infrastructure plays a key role for, e.g., future energy systems, mobility systems and production systems, but also for modern Internet-based systems themselves (e.g., Cloud Computing, Distributed Ledger, Blockchain, Web).

The research covers a wide range of challenging issues that can be divided into three core research areas
Transmission technologies       ▼

This research area covers algorithms for data processing and transmission in future communication systems, energy efficient communication systems, coding and error protecting schemes as well as receiver signal processing. Besides these very fundamental technologies, research is also carried out with respect to novel access networks, multiple-antenna and multiple-fiber communication systems, wireless and wireline-based communication technologies and network monitoring solutions based on machine learning.

Protocols and architectures for secure and robust infrastructure       ▼

In this research area, we investigate protocols and architectures for internet-based systems but also the security of network virtualization, attack surface reduction by segmentation and (micro) slicing, investigations of physical layer security, low-latency network security, as well as decentralized systems and peer-to-peer networks. Further security aspects comprise secure and privacy-aware computing in partially trustworthy environments including trusted execution environments, identity and access management (also for software and hardware) and information security management.

Scalable applications       ▼

Decentralized systems, in particular cloud computing, distributed ledgers, blockchains, decentralized finance technologies, decentralized and distributed knowledge graph-based systems on the web, and peer-to-peer networks. This research area also covers applications in energy systems, mobility systems and production systems.