Appropriate for both fulfilling orders from industry and educational purposes.

A new Smart Communications Laboratory to manage and technologically develop tomorrow’s communication networks and services was opened at BME’s Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Informatics.

"We teach the engineering students how to use industry network devices, and how to solve communication network problems that may also occur in real life. This helps young engineers to gain state-of-the-art knowledge", said Gábor Magyar, associate professor, head of the Department of Telecommunications and Media Informatics at BME’s Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Informatics at the opening of the department’s Smart Communications (SmartCom for short) Laboratory.

The new science lab for R&D and educational purposes was established by refurbishing the department’s former telecommunication education laboratory. "Our primary professional competence is the management of communication networks and services, more precisely the monitoring of the data traffic of fixed and mobile networks, the hardware acceleration of monitoring tasks, root cause analysis, and the assessment of the quality of networks and services", explained Péter Orosz, senior lecturer at the Department of Telecommunications and Media Informatics, and head of the new science lab. "We seek to establish a closer cooperation with our industry partners, and alongside education we also do research. We are planning to find additional sources of funding for infrastructure development in order to become self-sustained", he described the goals to be reached.

The ongoing research projects and cooperations were presented by Pál Varga, senior lecturer at the Department of Telecommunications and Media Informatics. Mitch Gusat, lead researcher of IBM Research Zurich described the joint scientific work with the SmartCom Lab in a video message. A cloud intrusion detection and prevention (IDS/IPS) system, and data collection, detection and prevention procedures are currently being developed, and they also work on the hardware acceleration of the tasks. To that end the researchers of the department’s lab also collaborate with the Governmental Information-Technology Development Agency (editor’s note: formerly the National Information Infrastructure Development Institute). They collect traffic patterns of real cyber-attacks and analyse them on 40 GB/sec networks.

Another partner of the department is the National Media and Infocommunications Authority (NMIA), whose consumer protection programme includes a software based measurement system set up according to the directives of the EU to measure certain quality indicators of the networks of internet providers in Hungary. The system allows users to check, for instance, broadband speed. The data are also used by NMIA when acting in the capacity of a regulatory authority. The researchers of the department and the representatives of NMIA are putting a joint effort into improving the system: the measurement system is being intalled in the centres of the internet providers to allow for a more precise and continuous monitoring of the fulfilment of the providers’ contractual obligations towards the consumers.

A műegyetemi labor kutatói az Internet of Things (IoT, magyarul a „Dolgok Internete”) területét is kutatják. Ebben ipari partnerük az AITIA International Zrt. és az evopro Innovation Kft. A laboravatáson egy olyan rendszer demonstrációját mutatták be, amely elektromos autók számára választja ki a leginkább alkalmas töltőállomást. A döntéshez több szempontot is mérlegelni kell (például mennyi energia van még az autó akkumulátoraiban, az elérhető töltőállomások közül melyiknél lesz legkevesebb a várakozás, a várakozási idő kihasználható-e más tevékenységre, például vásárlásra, stb).

The researchers of BME’s lab also do research in the field of the Internet of Things (IoT). Their industry partners are AITIA International Co. Ltd. and evopro Innovation LLC. At the opening of the lab they demonstrated a system that selects the most suitable charging station for electric cars. The decision requires the assessment of several aspects, for example how much energy is left in the batteries of the car, which one of the nearby charging stations has the shortest waiting time, whether the waiting time can be used to do something else, for example shopping etc.

At the opening of the lab, head of department Gábor Magyar expressed his hopes to be able to present new research results in the near future.

TZS - TJ

Photo: Ildikó Takács