Research of the System Design Department

The activities of the department System Design are focused on the research program "Wireless Systems and Applications".

This program investigates and develops complex systems for wireless communication as prototypes and applications with the objective of finding solutions for hardware/software systems on highly integrated single chips. The vertical research approach is also reflected in the architecture of the addressed systems. Basically, inter-layer interaction is optimized and a vertical migration of semantic elements is performed.

The three major directions of research are high performance WLAN, ultra-low power sensor networks and design for testability.

The target of high performance WLAN research is to achieve a data rate up to 10 Gbps at carrier frequencies of up to 60 GHz. Continuing activities towards data rates up to 100 Gbps and carrier frequencies up to 300 GHz will be carried out in the basic research area of this research program. Quality of Service in the high load region is an additional important research field, because the increasing use of wireless technologies will inevitably result in growing conflicts of access.

The research on systems with low energy consumption is directed towards sensor networks on single chips. Typical applications are body-area networks for health care or wellness. In this context new network architectures, distributed low resource middleware concepts, new energy efficient protocols for medium access as well as energy efficient transceivers are investigated and realized. UWB technologies are examples for short-range communication as well as applications requiring high spatial resolution. Other radio-based solutions for sensor networks are PSSS (Parallel Sequence Spread Spectrum) – based approaches, distinguished by exceptionally high bandwidth efficiency.

Research in context-sensitive middleware systems especially addresses privacy and security matters in using mobile devices. Moreover, the symmetrical and asymmetrical resource distribution between client and server parts of the overall system is investigated.

Selected Projects of this Research Program

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