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Networks and Performance Engineering

Performance is one of the most important aspects that must be taken into consideration during the capacity planning, tuning and upgrading of existing networks as well as the evolutionary design and development of new networking architectures and associated protocols. This research centre specialises in the following areas:

  • Information and theoretic schemes for mobility management;
  • End-to-end network quality-of-service (QoS);
  • Network routing algorithms and graph theoretic concepts;
  • Interconnection networks.

Performance Modelling and Evaluation Applications

  • Sensor and Ad Hoc wireless networks;
  • 3G and 4G wireless cell architectures;
  • Heterogeneous networks with differentiated services;
  • WiMAX Networks;
  • Optical multiservice networks;
  • Routing in Overlay networks;
  • Graph theoretic concepts for broadcasting and multicasting schemes;
  • Software performance engineering;
  • Parallel & distributed systems.
room full of large computer servers

Aims of the group

This research group conducts advanced research towards the creation of novel analytic techniques and related algorithms for the performance modelling, evaluation and engineering of convergent multi-service networks of diverse technology, such as IP, ATM, MPLS, WLAN, Optical Networks, GSM, GPRS, UMTS & 4G Mobile Systems and the Next and Future Generation Internets (NGI & FGI). The work of the group is based on

  • Batch-renewal processes for the modelling, characterising and engineering bursty, self-similar and correlated network traffic flows;
  • Information theoretic principles of maximum entropy, minimum relative entropy and generalisations, queueing theory and graph theoretic concepts, discrete-event simulation and advanced numerical methods for the exact/approximate solution and optimisation of general queues and arbitrary Queueing Network Models (QNMs) of heterogeneous networks with finite capacity and, thus, blocking.

Networks and Performance Engineering is a research partner of

  • EC IST Consortium “IASON” focusing on the capacity design and maintenance of a novel generic evaluation platform for services interoperability and networks;
  • EC IST Consortium “VITAL” concerning with the design and development of the next generation networks technology enabling convergence of IP Multimedia Services (IMS).

Networks and Performance Engineering is also a Research Group Member of

  • The Networks of Excellence (NoE) “Euro-NGI” and “Euro-FGI”, European Commission (EC), focusing, respectively, on the design and engineering of the next (NGI) and future (FGI) generation Internets.

Theoretical investigations

  • Traffic modelling, characterisation and engineering of Internet traffic;
  • Mechanisms for controlled network bandwidth sharing;
  • Queueing theoretic and maximum entropy analysis and flow/congestion control mechanisms for arbitrary multiple class QNMs with priorities and blocking; 
diagram of computer networks