ARES : Architectures of networks of services (project-team)

About the project : Project-Team site Activity report Research reports Theses Theme : Com Communicating systems Grenoble - Rhône-Alpes research center

ARES has been dissolved on 03/31/2008

Project-Team Presentation

Project-team with INSA Lyon, located in Lyons.

The ARES (Architectures of Networks of Services) project-team deals with problems related to deployment of services on radio networks architectures, in ad hoc or wireless LAN mode, organized around fixed infrastructure, or using both combinations. The different issues to address concern the interoperability of different systems and protocols, as well as the optimization of radio, networks and systems resources while deploying and using any service.

Research themes

The goal of the ARES project-team is to model and to develop architectures and software support for hybrid wireless networks. Such networks rely on heterogeneous technologies including Personal Area Networks (PAN) and Wireless Area Networks (WAN) in infrastructure mode and/or in ad hoc mode (i.e. an infrastructureless mode); they connect people, but also an increasing number of devices. The main relevant issues concern the interoperability of different systems and protocols, and the optimization of radio, network and system resources for services deployment and provision. Considering the diversity and variability of the technical and environmental constraints, adaptation is a key to the success of hybrid networks.

ARES is focused on four main challenges: integrating different types of mobility, controlling cross-layer interaction, providing self-configurability, and supporting quality of service (QoS).

Cross-layer interaction involves both the radio transmission capabilities of the devices and the elementary services of the middleware environment. Radio transmission capabilities influence the performance of the network; their impact on the design of new protocols and the adaptation of existing protocols needs to be studied by modelling and/or simulation. While middleware development is outside the scope of the project, we need to examine the impact of radio transmission on the specification of the basic services used by middleware, namely services discovery, global security, software deployment and terminal supervision.

The project-team does not cover the development of end-user applications based on context awareness. However, we need to consider existing usage scenarios, in order to derive specifications for the main services provided by a hybrid network. To advance the state of the art in network support for applications, we therefore need to develop a testbed and to experiment with prototypes.

International and industrial relations

• Alcatel
• FT R&D
• Mircrosoft
• Université de Purdue
• Ecole Polytechnique de Montréal
• SupCom Tunis

Scientific leader

Stéphane UBEDA
+33 4 72 43 60 69
stephane.ubeda@insa-lyon.fr
Secretary : +33 4 72 43 64 15