Past Projects

COAT focuses on understanding multi-organ diseases by addressing the critical role of organ interactions in disease progression through an integrated, interdisciplinary approach. The project aims to link, share, and process clinical and research data across centers to overcome current limitations in data science for clinical research.

LEGATO aims to address the increasing complexity of network protocols and their performance by developing a methodology for cross-layer optimization that leverages machine learning techniques to capture intricate parameter interdependencies and provide insights into protocol performance.

SAFE provides a rigorous and automated methodology for systematically detecting errors in concurrent software, addressing the challenges posed by multi-core processors and concurrency bugs. Building on technology from the SYMBIOSYS project, SAFE’s approach has already demonstrated success in identifying bugs in real-world software.

VeN2uS develops an adaptive and networked grid protection system to ensure safe operation amidst power grid topology changes caused by renewable energy integration. It focuses on resilient communication mechanisms and hardware-based security for critical network protection functionality.

Digital Campus was an interdisciplinary project aimed at improving access to teaching and support services for international students at German universities through digital means, enhancing their integration into university curricula. Building on its predecessor IMPactDigital, the project refined a blockchain-based infrastructure for sharing educational resources to foster collaboration among university educators and reduce redundancy in creating teaching materials.

REDeFiNE proposes a distributed frequency control system for power networks, addressing the challenges of transitioning from large, inert power plants to numerous small, dynamic generators. By integrating communication and control, the project leverages in-network processing and frequency predictions to enhance scalability, stability, and efficiency in future smart grids.

IMPactDigital is an interdisciplinary project aimed at improving access to teaching and support services for international students at German universities through digital means, fostering their integration into university curricula. The project developed a blockchain-based platform to incentivize collaboration among university educators, enabling secure sharing and improvement of teaching materials while ensuring transparency and recognition for contributors.

COMTEX investigates social and linguistic patterns in anonymous short text exchanges to develop computational methods for addressing anti-social behavior. It combines expertise from linguistics, sociology, and computational fields to understand context in online communities and improve platform design.

CONSENT develops a methodology for automated integration, configuration, and operation of IoT devices to ensure secure and compliant behavior in home and industrial networks. The project focuses on creating a robust, zone-based IT security architecture that minimizes human error and complements existing security mechanisms.

IoTRUST focuses on demonstrating IT security measures for connected consumer electronic products by applying a classification of security requirements across different product categories. The project is a collaboration with the iNETS institute to enhance security standards in consumer electronics.

CONNECT develops innovative power conversion technologies and smart energy management systems to enable efficient, secure, and sustainable smart grids with enhanced communication and security capabilities. The project involves a consortium of European partners and focuses on integrating renewable energy, local storage, and electric vehicles while minimizing energy and power consumption.

HODRIAN aims to develop robust wireless communication systems for industrial real-time applications, ensuring reliable data delivery with millisecond-level guarantees. The project focuses on optimizing token-passing ring systems, managing interference, and constructing a demonstrator for industrial monorail use cases.

MemoSim explores automated memoization to avoid redundant computations in simulation parameter studies, significantly reducing execution time without increasing computational power. The project aims to develop methods for identifying and caching repetitive computations, enabling more efficient and detailed simulations of complex models.

The myneData project, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and led by Dialego AG from 2016 to 2019, aims to empower users to control the transfer and use of their sensitive data through a personal data cockpit. This cockpit allows users to manage their privacy preferences, offers secure data storage with advanced anonymization like differential privacy, and provides micropayments as compensation for sharing their data, enhancing awareness of privacy risks.

REFLEXES develops a co-designed architecture for in-network control to enhance the performance of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) by reducing communication delays and increasing reliability. The project introduces in-network processing of control commands, bypassing traditional layered architectures, to achieve real-time constraints and improve the quality of control in applications like industrial automation, energy, and healthcare.

TRINICS improves transparency in cloud service usage by analyzing network traffic to provide users with detailed insights into how their data is utilized and where it is sent, including countries with weaker privacy laws. The project enables users to compare their cloud usage profiles anonymously with others, helping them assess risks and make informed decisions about their cloud service usage.

KoI (Koordinierte Industriekommunikation) is a research project focused on developing reliable wireless communication systems for industrial automation, ensuring low latency and high reliability comparable to wired solutions. The project, funded by BMBF, involves collaboration between academia and industry partners from 2015 to 2017.

SSICLOPS focuses on developing scalable and secure infrastructures for federated private cloud operations, enabling enterprises to dynamically scale resources while maintaining service levels and security requirements. The project leverages software-defined data centers, inter-cloud communication, and workload optimization tools to maximize performance and resource efficiency across diverse use cases.

SYMBIOSYS develops a novel methodology for analyzing the temporal and functional behavior of networked systems by combining symbolic execution with distributed and temporal execution techniques. The project enables efficient exploration of distributed execution paths, uncovering critical bugs in real-world software and advancing the reliability of networked systems.

NEPTUN focuses on developing user-centered privacy-preserving technologies (PET) by integrating technical aspects with user needs and trade-offs in privacy-sensitive scenarios. The project aims to create interdisciplinary methodologies and validated design patterns for embedding privacy into the development of PETs, addressing applications like social environments and medical support for independent living.

IPACS develops intelligent, privacy-aware cloud-based services to integrate sensor- and cloud-based solutions in daily life while prioritizing user privacy and control. The project focuses on socio-technical development, addressing privacy challenges in diverse application areas like home, car, and portable devices.

MAKI is a Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) focused on enabling automated transitions between functionally equivalent mechanisms in communication systems to address increasing dynamics, variability, and quality requirements. COMSYS contributes to this effort through two sub-projects, focusing on state migration support and architectural concepts for adaptive communication systems.

PREserv aims to design a flexible, privacy-preserving system for collecting, processing, and visualizing sensor data in public spaces by separating data collection from applications. The project ensures privacy through data abstraction, decentralization, and transparency, enabling secure deployment of diverse applications in smart cities, buildings, and workplaces.

SensorCloud combined the capabilities of smart objects with the strengths of cloud computing to enable elastic computation, storage, and cross-application reuse of sensor data. The project ensured data security and user control through trust points, addressing privacy concerns while facilitating scalable and efficient sensor data management in smart environments.s

Mobile ACcess aimed to develop a secure, city-wide Wi-Fi network by uniting individual access networks through a novel Wi-Fi sharing concept. The project addressed challenges in networking, security, and application design to provide reliable internet services for citizens, travelers, and municipal operations.

CRAWLER is a flexible cross-layer coordination architecture designed to improve performance and adaptability in wireless and mobile environments by supporting multiple optimizations, scenarios, and runtime adaptability. It features a rule-based configuration language and components for abstract design, flexible realization, and protocol access to enable efficient cross-layer signaling and application support.

FootPath is an infrastructure-less indoor navigation system that uses step detection, heading estimation, and sequence alignment algorithms to provide accurate turn-by-turn directions without relying on GPS or additional RF infrastructure. Integrated with OpenStreetMap, it enables easy deployment and mapping for protected environments like historical buildings, archaeological sites, and hospitals.

Horizon is a parallel network simulator designed to address the challenges of simulating complex wireless network models by leveraging multi-core processors for efficient parallelization. The project focuses on extracting maximum parallelism, balancing workloads, and improving scalability to enable accurate and cost-effective simulations of advanced wireless communication technologies.

KleeNet uses symbolic execution to detect low-probability bugs before deployment. It integrates with the COOJA simulator to enable high-coverage testing and early detection of complex interaction bugs.

Refector focuses on improving VoIP communication quality over wireless networks by developing heuristic packet repair mechanisms that correct errors in packet headers and enable the use of partially corrupted data. The project leverages cross-layer signaling and soft information to enhance error correction, boosting both voice quality and communication efficiency.

Securing Smart Objects focuses on adapting and extending IP-based security protocols to protect resource-constrained Smart Objects in Internet-connected networks. The project addresses the challenges of integrating secure communication in constrained environments like industrial and home automation while leveraging existing IP infrastructure.

SliceTime enables scalable and accurate network emulation by synchronizing virtual machines and network simulations through a novel Synchronized Network Emulation concept. This approach allows detailed analysis of communication software in fully simulated, isolated environments without requiring real-time network simulations.

SoulMigration is an architecture enabling seamless application state migration across heterogeneous devices, allowing users to switch devices without losing their working context. It automates state capture, transfer, and reestablishment, providing a unified and uninterrupted user experience across platforms.

TinyWifi extends TinyOS to support Linux-powered network nodes, enabling developers to build and execute TinyOS applications and protocols directly on Linux. This platform bridges the gap between resource-constrained sensornets and resource-rich Wi-Fi-based networks, facilitating broader wireless research and evaluation of protocols across both domains.

The Exploiting Wireless Link Diversity project investigates the use of intermediate and bursty links in low-power wireless sensor networks (WSNs) to improve routing progress and throughput without compromising reliability. By leveraging the stable periods of these links, the project enhances the performance of existing routing protocols, which traditionally ignore such links.

VODSim is a modular BitTorrent simulation framework for the ns-3 network simulator, featuring a simple HTTP-based tracker and a sophisticated BitTorrent client application. It supports both simulation and emulation studies, but the project is currently on hold with limited technical support available.