Science Areas

The ICT Centre's research capabilities cover a wide range of disciplines.

Antennas & Propagation

This area is concerned with theoretical and experimental advances in antennas and the propagation of electromagnetic waves, targeted towards application areas in radio communications and sensing. In the field of antennas, the areas of research include methods for the analysis, design, manufacture, and testing of antennas, covering traditional antenna systems such as reflectors, antenna arrays and steerable antennas as well as newer reconfigurable and integrated antenna systems. In the field of electromagnetic wave propagation, topics of research include scattering, diffraction, interaction with continuous media, and inverse methods, covering areas such as indoor and outdoor terrestrial radio propagation, satellite and space communication, and remote sensing of properties of complex media such as biological tissue. Increasing emphasis is given to the role of antennas and propagation in the overall design and optimisation of systems.

Communications and Signal Processing

This area focuses on the manipulation and processing of signals as applied to communication systems such as algorithms, protocols, coding and system architectures for the efficient transmission and recovery of information. The area also covers the broader area of techniques for analysing signals and systems in general such as filtering, identification, classification, and detection. Analog and digital signal processing techniques are key to the development of new radio systems able to adapt to different environments, increased requirements for throughput and demands on available spectrum.

Human Systems Integration

Encompasses several areas of "human factors" research that include human performance, technology design, human-information interaction and human-computer interaction. Our work in human-information brings experience and understanding in the use of organisational psychology, human technology interaction, and the integration of information and communications technologies in complex organisational settings into the design and evaluation of systems that work over a distance. These systems operate in a variety of domains including health, education and media.

The users of a computational system assume a central role in human-information interaction. It advances human-centred design, and the operation of, and interactions with, complex systems through analysis, modelling and experimentation on human activity, needs, experience, preferences and performance. We study, in particular, humans interacting with information and humans interacting with each other remotely. We give specific consideration to the (understood) context of interaction and its impact on the interaction.

Imaging

The aim of this area is primarily to develop new tools in medical imaging based on anatomical and functional images, such as X-Ray Computer Tomography (CT), Magnetic Resonance Imaging (anatomical, functional, spectroscopy), isotopic imaging (PET and SPECT), ultrasound imaging, molecular imaging, and histology imaging. Among the main research challenges are image registration (temporal, inter and intra modality, inter-subject), extraction of quantitative information (shape, volume, texture), morphometry (statistic of shape and intensities), soft-tissue modelling (3D meshing, visual and haptic interaction). The main application domains are image-guided therapy, image-guided surgery, surgery simulation, computer aided diagnosis, therapy monitoring, and medical robotics.

Network Science

Understanding the operation of networks is fundamental to the delivery of information and services. Network Science involves the study of the flow, control and management of information in networks, be they fixed, wireless or increasingly some combination of heterogeneous networks. The major emphasis is on virtualisation of networks, traffic modelling, congestion, information flow, admission control, quality of service, network management and services, network simulation and planning, and network interconnection.

Robotics

Our research is focused on the development of algorithms and systems for outdoor (field) robotic applications. The outcomes of our research are intended for use on robots operating on land, underwater, in the air and off Earth. We have particular interests in vision-based navigation, sensor processing, sensor fusion, control and autonomous operation.

Sensor Science and Technology

This research covers the full breath of possible activity involving the application of sensor to acquire data for major national challenges from water quality to security. It includes specific sensors for measurement of physical quantities such as temperature or salinity, technology at the sensor such a microcontroller or power source, networking of sensors, data conditioning and integrity.

Simulation and Visualisation Science

Computers and systems are now sufficiently powerful for simulation of very complex situations. Often these computations have to be done in real-time. Our emphasis is on performing simulations in real time. This involves the study of advanced computer architectures, algorithms and software. At the same time it is necessary to understand the results obtained from simulations, place the simulations in the context of the immediate surroundings and provide collaboration tools for researchers, High quality simulations are powerful tools in a variety of fields including national security, emergency services and work-place collaboration.

Streaming Data

This area focuses on the continuous detection, calculation and analysis of data as it arrives - irregularly and unpredictably. Applications include environmental monitoring, energy grids, sensor networks, event and alarm detection, network engineering and monitoring, high speed health care monitoring, and security-incident detection where knowledge must be extracted from continuous, often rapid data records that can be read only once or a small number of times using limited computing and storage capabilities. This research addresses a very different challenge from the stored data approach which involves assimilating operational data into data warehouses for subsequent processing.

Privacy, Security and Trust

This area examines techniques for ensuring that information shared across a communication network is secure and satisfies the privacy objectives of the participants. Privacy and security research looks at techniques that enable individuals and organisations to determine for themselves when, how, and to what extent information about them is communicated to others, and to do so securely. We investigate the use of techniques for describing privacy constraints through policies that are understandable to the individual, and the techniques for enforcing those policies.

Web Services

The science of effectively composing information services out of distributed resources and services. This research area covers services composition, service description, ranging from ad hoc methods to semantically prescripted, query planning, query execution, and result delivery.