The Broadband Communications Research (BBCR) Group is a part of Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of Waterloo, and it is closely affiliated with the Centre for Wireless Communications (CWC). We in BBCR strive for research excellence in the following emerging communication areas:
Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANET) have been envisioned to play an important role in the future wireless communication service market for safety communications as well as for information and entertainment applications. Examples of safety-oriented applications for VANET are the notifications of emergency situations, such as car accidents or bad weather conditions. Applications in VANET can be deployed by using vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications (e.g., the downloading of music and video files), or vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications, such as in distributed games played among passengers in neighboring vehicles. Our current research topics in VANET include: MAC protocols and cross-layer design, resource management, clustering and routing overhead in VANET, IP mobility and IPv6 deployment in VANET, capacity and mobility connectivity, mobility models for vehicular networks, data dissemination.
Current Researchers: Khadige Abboud, Nizar H. Alsharif, Mahdi Asefi, Sailesh Bharati, Sandra Cespedes U., David Choi, Hao Liang, Ning Lu, Rongxing Lu, Tom H. Luan, Hassan Omar, Jian Qiao, Miao Wang
Bibliography on Secure Vehicular Communications
Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) and Delay Tolerant Networks (DTNs)
Mobile wireless technology is experiencing rapid growth. However, one of the major challenges for deployment of this technology with its special characteristics is the security and privacy issues related to users. Typical issues could be how to achieve data confidentiality, integrity, authenticity, non-repudiation, anonymity. The current solutions are the use of cryptographic primitives (such as encryption, signature, and key agreement) or the use of anonymity techniques (such as multiple pseudonyms). However, security and privacy issues considered in a specific network cannot be well solved by directly adopting those techniques. The solutions must take into account the typical characteristics of the network. For example, vehicle users are often with highly and distinct mobility model, where any two users cannot maintain a long-term link. The behaviours of mobile social users are affected by their social relationships. For example, users prefer to help their social friends rather than strangers. Our current research interests are to design secure and privacy-preserving protocols for VANETs, DTNs, e-Healthcare systems and Mobile Social Networks.
Current Researchers: Nizar H. Alsharif, Mrinmoy Barua, Xiaohui Liang, Rongxing Lu, Sanaa Taha, Albert Wasef
Future healthcare systems are anticipated to offer high quality services to patients with low costs through a variety of applications enabled by wireless and information technologies. This is because these wireless-equipped healthcare systems can remotely and continuously monitor the patients' health status in both residential settings and outdoor settings, where patients feel more comfortable and their activities are less restricted. Early detection of patients' emergency situations via wireless communications makes it possible to provide timely first-aid and access to patients' health information in a pervasive manner, thereby improving both system reliability and efficiency. Although huge potential benefits are widely recognized, the application of wireless communication technologies in healthcare systems brings more challenging issues including energy-efficiency, Quality-of-Services (QoS), definition of healthcare policy, design of healthcare architectures, emergency detection and response, security and privacy, and legal issues.
Current Researchers: Mrinmoy Barua, Xiaohui Liang, Rongxing Lu, Qinghua Shen
Bibliography on Secure E-Healthcare System
Due to the resultant global warming and increased energy consumption in the information and communication technology (ICT) industries, energy efficiency has become a key performance metric to evaluate the performance of a communication network. To effectively increase energy efficiency and prevent our environment against global warming, it is anticipated that future wireless networks will use eco-friendly green energy, e.g., solar, wind, and hydro, etc., to sustain the ever-growing traffic demands in the network. We focus on how to optimize the objective function, such as energy efficiency, minimizing cost, maximize throughput, by energy-aware resource management schemes in sustainable power supply wireless networks. Our current research topics include: AP placement, relay node placement, sustainable power model design, and energy-aware routing algorithms design in sustainable wireless networks.
Current Researchers: David Choi, Muhammad Ismail, Hao Liang, Yongkang Liu, Zhongming Zheng
Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are collections of micro-sized sensors that are powered by low-energy batteries and equipped with micro-processors, small memory and radio transceivers. Sensors may measure distance, direction, speed, humidity, wind speed, soil makeup, temperature, chemicals, light, vibrations, motion, seismic data, acoustic data, strain, torque, load, pressure, and so on. They are usually deployed at random in unknown or hazardous environments for object monitoring and target tracking. Recently, WSNs have emerged as a promising solution to a wide range of applications from data collection to distributed control in both military and civilian fields. They are expected to establish a ubiquitous computing environment that will pervade society and thus redefine the way in which we live and work. Our current research interests are: coverage, topology control, location service, routing, localization, mobility management, QoS provisioning and security.
Current Researchers: David Choi, Sandra Cespedes U., Hao Liang, Xiaohui Liang, Dr. Anfeng Liu, Rongxing Lu, Zhongming Zheng
Cognitive radio networks (CRN) have attracted an increasing interest in recent years due to the growing user demands for wireless bandwidth. Advanced signal processing techniques that can quickly respond to the varying channel conditions in both time and frequency domains stimulate CRN applications in more rigid atmospheres, from currently TV band applications to other bands spanning over a wider spectrum in a more dynamic environment.Recent studies have shown that the main bottleneck to further improve the CRN performance lies in the intermittent topology formed by secondary links.To fully utilize the detected spectrum opportunity, the channel with a holding time window remaining idle, the study focuses on the physical layer and media access control (MAC) layer sensing issues, intelligent control and user coordination for efficient resource utilization, and routing schemes in a highly dynamic network environment.
Current Researchers: Bin Cao, Subodha Gunawardena , Hao Liang, Yongkang Liu
In the future, services should be delivered seamlessly anytime, anywhere over heterogeneous networks. As an effective solution, cooperative networking has received significant attention recently. In cooperative networking, individual network entities operate in a coordinated way to implement network goals. It spans both the wireless access segment and the backbone information transport/delivery segment. The research topics include: cooperative diversity, relay selection, cooperative MAC design, cross-layer design and optimization,QoS provisioning, network architecture, information security and so on.
Current Researchers: Md. Shamsul Alam, Essam Altubaishi, Subodha Gunawardena, Ahmed M. Hamza, Muhammad Ismail, Neda Mohammadizadeh, Ran Zhang, Ning Zhang, Xinsheng Zhou
Homepage of Cooperative Networking Research Group
Most of the world's existing electricity grids were decades-old. Although they have significantly changed human life, their monitoring and control facilities gradually become out-of-date which may cause low energy efficiency/reliability in a world with ever-growing electricity demands. On the other hand, the information and communication technology has been significantly developed over the last few decades. By marrying the existing power grids with the state-of-art information and communication technology, smart grids can achieve electricity delivery in a more efficient, reliable, economic, and secure way. The smart grid can also facilitate the integration of renewable energy sources, which is critical to secure the global economy towards gradually depleting fossil fuels, increasing energy costs, and worsening environmental conditions. The purpose of the smart grid research group is to promote and encourage smart grid research and innovations. Our current research interests include: smart microgrids, electric vehicle integration, and security and privacy preserving in smart grid.
Current Researchers: Hao Liang, Bong Jun Choi, Rongxing Lu, Hongwei Li, Zhiguo Shi, Renyong Wu, Sandra Cespedes, Xiaoxia Zhang, Zhongming Zheng, Yujie Tang, Yong Zhou, Ran Zhang, Sailesh Bharati, Qinghua Shen
Homepage of Smart Grid Research Group
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