Interaction Engineering

Technology plays a vital role in every area of today’s industry, commerce and lifestyle. From the applications available on our mobile phones, to our online shopping and financial services, to the systems and networks behind our healthcare, it impacts on every aspect of our daily lives.

There has been an extraordinary growth in mobile personal computing and sensing systems (e.g. iPhone, iPad, Android, Kinect, Wii, Wireless Systems, Smart Home Metering etc.). How we seamlessly integrate the digital world with our social world through a myriad of pervasive and personal devices will lie at the heart of our research over the next ten years. New technologies that draw advantageously from the concepts and findings of Interaction and Communication Engineering research will enable us to move through our world seamlessly interacting with pervasive devices that will support us in our homes, at work, during our leisure time, as well as looking after our health. We work closely with our industry partners to translate this research into improvements to their business and as a result improve our economy and help industry succeed.

Our research in Interaction and Communication Engineering is dedicated to investigating new technological challenges and opportunities as they arise.  Our expertise is diverse and we work across every field of technology from graphics and games, to sensors and communication networks.

Our main research areas are:

Communication Systems and Networks

This research area involves the design and analysis of new communication and network technologies, ensuring that they are efficient and trustworthy:

• software tools to aid the design of optical antennae for wireless infra-red communications;
• algorithms for: image and video compression and the elimination of broadband wireless channel fading in the physical layer of Wi-Fi and Wi-Max systems.
• The development of new methods to reduce the Peak to Average Power Ratio (PAPR) of broadband orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) transmissions in xDSL and OFDM wireless systems.
• The development of enhanced network traffic routing protocols.
• Computer and Sensor Grid engineering: particularly the fields of large complex systems, distributed enterprise applications, collaborative computing, the semantic web and cloud computing.
• Digital Security: identification and authentication, information security, digital forensics and network security.

Interaction Engineering

This research area involves the design and analysis of interactive computer systems with a focus on the relationship between technology and people:

• Multimodal Interaction: the investigation and design of tangible, mobile and pervasive systems
• Playful Interaction & Virtual Reality Engineering: the impact of play, music and cognition at both a personal and a social level.
• Design Management & Design Thinking: the research focuses on creativity applied to business and economic development and supports companies to realise their growth potential through the exploitation of new technology and the adaption of best practice.