Communicating Systems
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Communicating Systems |
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Head : Jean-Pierre COURTIAT (courtiat@laas.fr)
The OLC group carries out research activities on the design of communication software, as a support to the development of broadband multimedia cooperative distributed applications and to the design of time-critical systems. The design of such systems implies the definition and implementation of a set of software components with strong temporal and cooperative constraints, using a very rigorous methodology.
The design process uses formal bases and covers the different steps from specification to implementation, including architecture and behavior description, together with their validation. These studies are divided into three main scientific topics, described hereafter.
Research Topics
Topic 1. Concepts, Formalization and Analysis (CFA)
Head: François VERNADAT (francois@laas.fr)
CFA is concerned with the modeling and verification of distributed, cooperative and time-critical systems. The criticality of such systems makes it mandatory to verify them, on both the qualitative level (behavioral) and the quantitative level (response time, throughput, loss rate, …). The development of formal description techniques and their integration in a design process require a better scalability of the verification techniques, and also a semantic coupling between formal approaches and semi-formal methods used in practice in the industry.
Topic 2. Communication Architectures and Protocols (CAP)
Head: Michel DIAZ (diaz@laas.fr)
CAP deals with the design of advanced protocols, on one hand to handle multimedia information, multipoint services and cooperative aspects, and on the other hand to define new communication architectures that will provide guaranteed quality of service in general multi-domain, multi-network and multi-technologies environments. CAP also includes studies for characterizing the data traffic, anticipating its evolution and using measurement results to design architectures and protocols adapted to the constraints of the network and its actual traffic, in addition to the users’ requirements.
Topic 3. Component and Services of Co-operation (CSC)
Head: Khalil DRIRA (khalil@laas.fr)
CSC addresses methods and techniques for designing and developing distributed software architectures, both dynamic and adaptative, as well as defining their associated coordination protocols. The application field is the support of distributed cooperative activities. Projects mainly concern the development of coordination software tools and of group coordination services. Different technologies are used to validate and implement the services and to integrate the different components, among which Web services, CORBA standards, CCM components technologies, EJB and peer-to-peer architectures.
In order to complement and evaluate these scientific topics on more specific aims, three internal projects, of a limited duration, have been defined:
Internal Research Projects
1. Distributed Cooperative Engineering
Head: Véronique BAUDIN (vero@laas.fr)
PLATINE is a cooperative environment which integrates multimedia cooperative components for audio and video dialogues. This environment supports collaborative work and also allows to share documents and dedicated software, first developed for single-user. PLATINE is used in the context of different French and European projects and is currently being transferred to industry via the CNRS.
2. Cooperative Multimedia Experiment Platform
Head: Philippe OWEZARSKI (owe@laas.fr)
This project aims at implementing an experimental cooperative multimedia platform within LAAS-CNRS, meant to support research projects. It uses RENATER 3, which also gives access to the GEANT European research network. The platform integrates Unix and PC workstations, active and passive measuring probes, machines for analyzing related traffic traces, and a wireless experimentation platform (WIFI).
3. Real-time distributed systems and control/command
Head: Guy JUANOLE (juanole@laas.fr)
This new project falls in the general context of implementing applications for the control/command of physical processes on computers connected to a network. The project addresses QoS issues , in particular how QoS may influence (at the executive and network levels) the performances of control/command applications.
Contractual projects
The group has carried out and still conducts an important activity for transferring and valorizing its results, together with public laboratories and companies working in this area, such as Alcatel Space, Airbus, EADS, France Telecom R&D, Thales, 6Wind, Realix and Silogic.
The group has contributed and still contributes to the EC IST program, as participant or coordinator: of several contracts in the network and multimedia field (new transport layer for the Internet, transparent satellite access to the IP protocol, new QoS architectures); of the design of cooperative architectures and support environments for cooperative distributed engineering; and of the implementation of advanced pedagogic theories and support systems in the context of augmented reality and virtual reality with mobile users.
Finally, the group has taken part part and still takes part in several projects in the context of national research networks, RNRT and RNTL, in the field of convergence of fixed and mobile networks, group communications, metrology for the Internet and development environment for modeling and validating real-time applications.
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