Community research activities in secure and trustworthy ICT infrastructures

Secure and trusted Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructures are key enablers for the development of a trustworthy Information Society. The European Union, recognising this, has launched over the last few years a number of research initiatives aiming at designing and building secure and dependable ICT systems and networks, which respect citizens’ rights and protect their privacy and personal data. The European Commission is already funding more than 37 R&D projects in this area under the IST programme, which is part of the 6th Framework Programme (2002 to 2006). The paper first presents the main research challenges in the development of secure, dependable and trusted ICT infrastructures. It then describes a representative set of these IST projects dealing with advanced research in network and service security. The paper also presents upcoming opportunities for research funding in this area under the newly launched ICT programme, part of the 7th Framework Programme that extends from 2007 to 2013.     

Advanced Spectrum Functionalities for Future Radio Networks

The IST WINNER (WINNER is part of the European Union research programme within the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) of the European Information Society Technology (IST) programme. Accepted for the Wireless World Research Forum (WWRF) 2006 Industrial Forum (Kermoal, J.-P. et al. (2006). Spectrum deployment scenarios and advanced functionalities development in WINNER.) project is a major European research activity to develop a flexible and scalable radio access system for 4G, which is addressing the challenging requirements for future systems such as those of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in terms of overall performance, flexibility, scalability and optimized spectrum usage. In this article, the Radio Resource Management (RRM) spectrum functionalities are defined and subsequently analyzed. The proposed RRM spectrum architecture developed will result in reducing the time required to tailor new services to network operators. Furthermore, the flexible spectrum access and usage leads to more capable and faster services with high Quality-of-Service (QoS) giving more user satisfaction than conventional networks. The inherent centralization and decentralization degree for the functionalities is outlined and discussed since flexible spectrum techniques on both fast and slow basis will lead to a better utilization of spectrum.

ATM-based switching for the integrated broadband network

Telecommunications networks based on synchronous 64 kbit/s channels are too restrictive for the future realisation of integrated broadband networks. New switching and transmission techniques, particularly those based on asynchronous transfer modes (ATM), are required. Roke Manor Research Ltd. and Plessey Research Caswell Ltd. are actively developing these new techniques at a system and technology level under the auspices of the European Commission's RACE programme. The authors introduce the issues pertinent to ATM, highlighting the system and technology aspects of the work being carried out within a RACE project entitled `Broadband Local Network Technology' (BLNT) and also describes previous ATM work relevant to the current research activities     

Intelligent tagging for transport and logistics: the ParcelCallapproach

Many solutions already exist within the transport and logistics industry to enable goods to be tracked as they move through the supply chain. Most of these solutions are based on proprietary technology, with information only updated at key points along the chain. However, with transportation processes becoming ever more complex, routinely involving multi-mode and multi-carrier scenarios, there is an increasing need for accurate and up-to-date information exchange between carriers and customers. One possible solution that seeks to provide this information has been developed within the European IST (Information Systems Technology) project 'ParcelCall'. This paper covers the background to ParcelCall, describing some of the key functional elements that comprise this real-time tracking and tracing system. In particular it concentrates on the short-range, radio-based intelligent tags that were developed as a core part of the project     

电子信息技术与工程管理

电子信息时代的发展改变了传统工业的发展方向,拓展了工程管理的发展视野,增加了工程信息技术发展水平。将电子信息与工程管理相互结合,实现信息化管理系统,按照科学的工程计算标准,对工程管理水平进行控制,提高信息化产业的发展水平在,这是有利于电子信息工程管理产业的发展的。本文将针对电子信息技术、工程管理二者各自特点进行分析,研究工程管理与电子信息技术的融合点,提出适合现代社会应用的方案。     

Reconfigurable terminals: an overview of architectural solutions

Key technical aspects concerning the realization of a reconfigurable user terminal based on software-defined radio technology are discussed. These include functionalities such as mode monitoring, mode switching, adaptive baseband processing, and software download. The implications of these functionalities and the need for related entities within the network are also discussed. The concepts presented here form part of the 5th Framework IST European Research project Transparent Reconfigurable Ubiquitous Terminal (TRUST). It is the intention of this article to present the technical achievements of the TRUST project together with an overview of the potential complexity in the realization of a reconfigurable user terminal     

Benchmarking and viability assessment of optical packet switching for metro networks

Optical packet switching (OPS) has been proposed as a strong candidate for future metro networks. This paper assesses the viability of an OPS-based ring architecture as proposed within the research project DAVID (Data And Voice Integration on DWDM), funded by the European Commission through the Information Society Technologies (IST) framework. Its feasibility is discussed from a physical-layer point of view, and its limitations in size are explored. Through dimensioning studies, we show that the proposed OPS architecture is competitive with respect to alternative metropolitan area network (MAN) approaches, including synchronous digital hierarchy, resilient packet rings (RPR), and star-based Ethernet. Finally, the proposed OPS architectures are discussed from a logical performance point of view, and a high-quality scheduling algorithm to control the packet-switching operations in the rings is explained.     

BlackSea TeleDiab: Diabetes computer system with communicationtechnology for black sea region

BlackSea TeleDiab (BSTD) is a multidisciplinary research project whose aim is to promote the exchange of healthcare information between clinicians and scientists in countries of the Black Sea area to provide a means by which the care of patients with diabetes may be enhanced. The project is built on an existing organizational framework provided by the WHO Diabcare Quality Network (Q-Net) and the Black Sea Diab Action Project. The aim is to develop a standardized software package (in the national languages of the CCE/NIS Black Sea partners) for the storage and transfer of medical information and healthcare data between participating institutions. It will utilize a standard format for medical records based on the Good European Health Record (GEHR), a project within the Advanced Informatics in Medicine (AIM) program, which aims to develop and propagate a common architecture for computerized health records across Europe that can be used across clinical domains, countries, and computer systems     

区域卫生信息化建设标准体系初探

卫生信息化建设是一项系统性的工程,涉及医疗卫生行业众多领域的应用需求.区域卫生信息化发展的不均衡以及国家医疗改革的要求,迫切需要卫生信息标准化来支撑.本文就区域卫生信息化的现状,建设过程中涉及到的标准体系进行了系统的梳理,并简要提出了标准体系的基本框架和标准内容.区域卫生信息标准化的具体内容包括数据标准、功能规范和技术规范.     

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The Global Positioning System is getting ready for an update, and other nations are developing new satellite navigation systems, including the European Commission's Galileo project. At the same time, the market for personal navigation devices is poised for explosive growth.     

贯彻专业认证的气象行业高精度测温探究性实验教学设计

工程教育专业认证以培养目标和毕业出口要求为导向,毕业生受到行业认可是核心。南京信息工程大学为气象行业高校,电子信息工程专业为国家一流本科专业,通过了专业认证。针对培养目标,设计气象行业测温实验,引导学生熟悉我国气象测温规范,从测量方法、器件运用、滤波、软件拟合等方面探究提高精度的措施,最终满足行业标准。实验教学设计注重行业背景性、方法多样性、工程技巧性、学科融合性。     

Learning a Parallelepiped: Cryptanalysis of GGH and NTRU Signatures

Lattice-based signature schemes following the Goldreich–Goldwasser–Halevi (GGH) design have the unusual property that each signature leaks information on the signer’s secret key, but this does not necessarily imply that such schemes are insecure. At Eurocrypt ’03, Szydlo proposed a potential attack by showing that the leakage reduces the key-recovery problem to that of distinguishing integral quadratic forms. He proposed a heuristic method to solve the latter problem, but it was unclear whether his method could attack real-life parameters of GGH and NTRUSign. Here, we propose an alternative method to attack signature schemes à la GGH by studying the following learning problem: given many random points uniformly distributed over an unknown n-dimensional parallelepiped, recover the parallelepiped or an approximation thereof. We transform this problem into a multivariate optimization problem that can provably be solved by a gradient descent. Our approach is very effective in practice: we present the first successful key-recovery experiments on NTRUSign-251 without perturbation, as proposed in half of the parameter choices in NTRU standards under consideration by IEEE P1363.1. Experimentally, 400 signatures are sufficient to recover the NTRUSign-251 secret key, thanks to symmetries in NTRU lattices. We are also able to recover the secret key in the signature analogue of all the GGH encryption challenges. P.Q. Nguyen part of this work is supported by the Commission of the European Communities through the IST program under contract IST-2002-507932 ECRYPT and by the French government through the X-Crypt RNRT project. O. Regev supported by the Binational Science Foundation, by the Israel Science Foundation, by the European Commission under the Integrated Project QAP funded by the IST directorate as Contract Number 015848, and by a European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant.     

CardioSmart: Cardiological Monitoring Intelligent system using GPRS

This paper presents a Medicine/Engineering multidisciplinary research project, in which a European Telecardiology system has been developed for the continuing monitoring of patients using GPRS/GSM. The system consists in a portable terminal and a call center that provide 24h-duty medical supervision and assistance. The system includes advanced signal processing for the recognition of cardiac pathologies using neural networks, compression with wavelets, encryption and GPS to locate the patient in case of fading. The main requirements for this project have been its technical and economical viability and the user's acceptance of the system. The results obtained validate the system, showing its transnational supervision and remote attendance capability. The main achievements generate ambient intelligence and can be easily applied to other telemedical fields. This research project has been partially funded by the European Union under the VFP Information Society Technologies programme (IST-2001-35073)     

Implementing Electronic Commerce in SMEs — Three Case Studies

In recent times electronic commerce has been accepted as a bona fide business practice in the commercial world. However, most research and news coverage has focused upon the usage and practices of large firms. In 1996 the Electronic Commerce Innovation Centre, at Cardiff University, secured funding from the European Regional Development Fund and BT to manage a two-year project aimed at researching electronic commerce implementations in small-to-medium-sized enterprises. In late 1998 funding was received from BT to extend the project for a further two years.The aim of the project is twofold — firstly, to undertake the implementation process of making electronic commerce solutions widely available, and, secondly, to monitor and research the usage patterns and the effect of these technologies not only on the smaller companies independently, but also on their customers, suppliers and collaborators (i.e. the respective supply chains). Resulting from this research, the paper provides three case studies of the electronic trading activities of smaller firms based in South Wales.     

Flexible convergence of wireless standards and services — the IST FLOWS-project

At the start of 2002 the eight partners of the IST project FLOWS began an ambitious three-year programme of work to study the convergence of wireless systems and especially as a multi-standards approach for the provision of mobile services. The FLOWS-project is working on the appropriate techniques to enable such convergence at the user’s terminal. This paper will provide an overview of the project, its vision, the activities and expected results.      

The European perspective for telecommunication standards

The European Telecommunications Standards Institute is guiding the continent-wide progress toward a unified telecommunications market. The objective of the Institute is to produce the technical standards which are necessary to achieve a large unified European telecommunications market. Further, the principal role of the Institute is technical prestandardization and standardization at the European level in the following fields: areas common to telecommunications and information technology subject to decisions by the Information Technology Steering Committee (ITSTC); and areas common to telecommunications and sound and TV broadcasting in cooperation with other organizations such as the European Broadcasting Union. The activities of the Institute build upon worldwide standards, existing or in preparation, and contribute to the production of harmonized new worldwide standards in the same fields     

Virtual-reality heritage presentation at Ename

Virtual reality (VR) and multimedia are central components of the heritage presentation programme at Ename, Belgium. These techniques are designed to help the visitor understand and experience the past as revealed through archaeological and historical research. The programme uses different VR approaches to bring to life archaeological remains, standing monuments and elements of the historical landscape for visitors. We named the overall project “Ename 974” to commemorate the foundation date of the first mediaeval settlement. Its major aim is to communicate new insights about archaeology, history and conservation to the general public, paying great attention to scholarly accuracy and by means of multimedia technologies. Among the most important of these technologies are on-site virtual reconstructions, museum multimedia and educational projects. Since 1998, the Ename Centre for Public Archaeology and Heritage Presentation has served as an international extension of the Ename 974 project. Its goal is to develop new technologies and new standards for heritage presentation. It also coordinates heritage presentation projects and educational programmes for partner sites around the world     

North American agreements on ISDN

The work of the North American Integrated Services Digital Network Users Forum (NIUF) is presented, and its relationship to the Accredited Standards Committee T1 and other standards bodies is discussed. The role of the NIUF within the ISDN arena is evident when considering the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) for ISDN and the Transcontinental ISDN Project (TRIP), both of which are described. The relationship of the ISDN FIPS to the Government Open System Interconnection Profile (GOSIP) and the military standard on ISDN are also discussed. A comparison of NIUF agreements/ISDN standards and the Bellcore NI-1 specifications is presented     

An environment for a Virtual Hypermedia Factory

The Advanced Information System group of the National Research Council (CNR) Computer Science Department at the Cybernetics Institute has become involved in research concerning hypermedia systems in the field of cultural heritage. This activity takes place within the three-year project “An Environment for a Virtual Hypermedia Factory” (VHF). The European Commission funded the project within the 4th RTD Framework, Information Technologies (Multimedia Systems domain). The project aims mainly to develop an integrated environment equipped with services and applications for producing, archiving, and spreading information about cultural heritage, tourism, and publishing through the Internet. This environment encourages content integration by stimulating cooperation among information providers in different but correlated knowledge domains. The paper discusses the Virtual Hypermedia Factory consortium and platform requirements     

Sequence Number Aided Source Routing for Ad-Hoc Networks

Wireless multihop mobile networks, also known as ad hoc networks, are characterized by stochastic topology variations. Random movements of mobile hosts in and out of each other's range encumber smooth system operation and impose limitations on the network performance. Various routing protocols suitable for such networks have been proposed however implementation and performance issues are still considered top research priorities. This paper proposes a new reactive protocol that introduces the use of sequence numbers for evaluating validity of cached routing information when source routing and route caching are used. The new protocol reduces the possibility of using and spreading across the network stale routing information therefore reduces the overhead involved in finding a route. To demonstrate the performance of the proposed protocol we compare it, through a detailed simulation model, with Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) protocol which also uses source routing and route caching. Results prove that the proposed protocol effectively reduces use of stale routing information, improving performance compared to DSR in terms of both delivery ratio and routing overhead. Evangelos Papapetrou holds a Diploma and a Ph.D. in Electrical & Computer Engineering from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. He is currently a visiting lecturer in the Computer Science Department at the University of Ioannina, Greece, where he is engaged in teaching and research on Mobile and Satellite Communications and Telecommunications Networks. His research interests include traffic analysis and design of Satellite networks, Internet over Satellites, IP networking, routing in networks with periodic or stochastic varying topologies, MANETs and QoS in wireless mobile systems. He has served as a reviewer in several journals and Conferences relevant to mobile communications. In the past he has participated in Greek and European projects regarding satellite communications. He was also involved in COST Actions 253 and 272 and in many European projects undertaken by the Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH). He is a Member of IEEE and the Joint VTS & AES Greece Chapter and a member of Technical Chamber of Greece. Fotin-Niovi Pavlidou holds a Diploma and a Ph.D. in Telecommunications networks from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki where she is currently engaged in teaching and research on Mobile Communications and Telecommunications Networks. Her research interests include traffic analysis and design of networks, performance evaluation and QoS studies of mobile satellite communications and multimedia applications over Internet. She is a permanent reviewer in IEEE journals, she has served as Guest-Editor of Special issues on “Ad-Hoc Networks”, “HAPs and applications”, “PLC Systems and Applications” for International Journals like IJWIN, WPC etc. She is the author of a Chapter on Fixed Access Techniques (TDMA/FDMA) in the Wiley Encyclopedia on Telecommunications (Editor:Prof. John Proakis), and of many editions of COST Actions on “Satellite Systems”, “Spread Spectrum Techniques” etc. She is the Delegate of Greece in the European COST Program on Telecommunications (1998–2004) and served as Chairperson for the COST262 Action “Spread Spectrum systems and techniques for wired and wireless Systems”. She is permanently included in the Program Committee of many IEEE conferences (PIMRC, GLOBECOM, VTC'2001, ISSSTA'2000) and she was the Chairperson of the IST Mobile Summit 2002, the annual conference of EU-Unit E4 in the field of Wireless Communications in Thessaloniki, June 16–20, 2002. She is involved in many European Projects (research or Education): Telematics Applications (INTERVUSE, ATTACH, etc.), IST (ISMAEL, B-Bone, SatNEx, OPERA, etc.), Tempus programs on Wireless Systems for Albania, Bulgaria, Poland. She is a Senior Member of IEEE (Communications and Vehicular Technology Society), currently chairing the Joint VTS & AES Greece Chapter.