Ericsson & NICTA team to research mobility in converged networks

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 22 August 2006 07:51

Business IT - Technology

National ICT Australia (NICTA) and Ericsson have signed a three-year umbrella agreement for research aimed at developing technology that will enhance device and service mobility across next generation networks.
Ericsson and NICTA plan initially to research mobility in the convergence of wireless and wired networks such as 3G to WLAN/LAN and WiMAX to satellite. This  project will be led in Australia by Professor Aruna Seneviratne, research director of NICTA's Australian Technology Park Laboratory. Eight researchers from Ericsson and NICTA will collaborate on the mobility management project. Deliverables will include operations testbeds, reports describing application scenarios and proof-of-concept implementations.

A second project will research secure real-time operating systems. It will explore the use of NICTA's microkernel-based operating-system and virtualisation technology and formal-verification research to enhance the security of data and communications on mobile-phone handsets. This project will be lead by Professor Gernot Heiser, who heads the Embedded, Real-Time and Operating Systems research program at NICTA's Neville Roach Laboratory.

Ericsson will also sponsor a three-year PhD scholarship in electrical engineering and telecommunications at the University of New South Wales, a NICTA member.

Last November, NICTA announced a collaborative effort with Qualcomm  to use NICTA versions of the L4 Microkernel and the Iguana operating system and versions of Qualcomm's Mobile Station Modem chipsets to build a secure platform for embedded systems such as mobile communication devices.

Commenting on that announcement at the time, NICTA CEO Dr David Skellern said: "Although a small project initially, we hope to further develop our relationship with Qualcomm through demonstrating the innovative research being conducted in Australia. This collaboration illustrates how NICTA is facilitating access to international markets for locally developed research."