Information & Communication Systems
The area of Information and Communication Systems (ICS) is central to modern society and is one of the drivers of the knowledge-based economy. MERIT has established an international reputation in ICS with outstanding researchers and world-class facilities to support our research.
The ICS theme has nearly 200 PhD qualified researchers with a 'critical mass' that enables us to pursue large-scale research and development goals. For example, to address denial of service attacks on the internet which are being used by organised crime syndicates to blackmail online businesses, researchers have led a robust approach to defence that can filter this form of malicious traffic. They have devised a commercial solution and are undertaking ongoing work to cope with new types of attacks.
One leading area of research is wireless sensor network technology, which has been identified as one of the leading technologies that will shape and change our lives in the next decade. Researchers are developing the design tools of the next generation of wireless access networks and performing leading research in the areas of self-learning systems and handling enormous volumes of information.
We have strong links with industry and partnership arrangements with local and international companies in a variety of end-user research and development projects. Successful research activities have led to the commercialisation of products. Collaborations also take place across the MERIT themes and with other universities. Our researchers are looking at how the computing environment of the future will allow users to access and interact with digital information through a variety of devices. The study on adaptive diagrams is demonstrating how diagrams in the future will be flexible visual computer interfaces with adaptive layout and user interaction.
Key research areas within the ICS theme include:
- Optical and Wireless Communications - this area focuses on high-capacity trunk telecommunications and broadband access networks. With industry funding and strong collaborations across MERIT and with National ICT Australia (NICTA), we are expanding activities in wireless sensor networks. For example, researchers are aiming to design a network with the broadband data rates of an office environment but with the mobility and freedom of a mobile phone. Another team is looking at how technology will enable gigabit speed, low cost and easy to deploy wireless networks;
- Distributed Software Systems - we are a world leader in engineering distributed software systems enabling delivery of computing as a utility with secure and seamless distributed resources access and future network services;
- Knowledge Systems - explores knowledge discovery in sequential, relational and video data and develops optimisation as a seamless hybrid technology incorporating online and stochastic features;
- Systems Engineering - focuses on network-centric systems engineering and large-scale systems (eg. water and mining), with strong interaction with systems biology and NICTA's Sensor Network group.
An alphabetical listing of Information and Communication Systems Projects is now available.
Research Group information within the Information and Communication Systems Research theme is currently being updated and includes:
- Autonomous, Intelligent and Complex Systems
- Computational Biology
- Declarative Languages
- Knowledge Discovery
- Measurement Science
- Parallel and Distributed Computing
- Signals and Systems
- Spatial Information Science and Technology
- Telecommunications