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.
