• AGH

AGH University of Science and Technology, founded in 1919, is ranked as one of top Polish universities involved in research and education in information technologies. The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is a part of the Faculty of Electrical, Automatic Control, Computer and Electronic Engineering, and is an important centre for education and research in communications technology focusing on high-speed networking and services to e-world. The department faculty and staff consist of about 40 people, including 5 full professors.

Since 1996 the Department of Telecommunications has been involved in various European projects within ACTS (BBL, BTI, BIDS), IST (LION, MOBY DICK), Copernicus (MOCOMTEL, KNIXMAS), and Esprit programmes. Currently our active participation is marked in two 6FP Integrated Projects (Nobel and Daidalos) and 3 Networks of Excellence (E-NEXT, EuroNGI and e-Photon ONE). Department of Telecommunications was also active in developing strategies and network planning for major Polish telecommunications operators. Professors and researchers of the Department served as consultants for network operators, equipment vendors, and regulatory bodies in Poland and abroad. Faculty members have been active in professional societies, organising conferences (including IEEE and IFIP events) and workshops as well as holding important editorial positions in leading journals and magazines, such as IEEE Communications Magazine, IEEE Transactions on Communications, or Annales des Télécommunications.

Major research areas of the Department of Telecommunications include: network architecture and design (optical core and access networks, resilience and reliability of optical networks, control plane for transport networks, including the ASON and GMPLS concepts, high-speed switching, traffic models and performance evaluation, network planning and design, techno-economic evaluation of networking solutions); protocols for next-generation networking (quality of service in the IP environment, signalling and protocols for multimedia systems, IPv6, mobility and security); wireless technology (access protocols for wireless LANs: 802.11 and bluetooth technology, simulation tools for wireless access), cellular networks; e-Services (digital video libraries, medical video servers, streaming services, MPEG traffic models and traffic prediction, intelligent database systems, agent technology in databases).

The contribution of AGH in NOBEL phase 2 is concentrated in WP2.

• BUTE

BUTE, founded in 1635, has more than 110 departments and institutes operating within the structure of seven faculties, having about 1700 lecturers and 700 researchers. BUTE issues about 70% of engineering diplomas in Hungary. BUTE has participated in more than 40 IST 5th framework projects. The High Speed Networks Laboratory (HSNLab) has been founded at the BUTE in the early 90s. It is hosted by the Department of Telecommunications and Telematics (DTT) with research groups from 2 other communications departments, a mathematics and a computer science department. Today 11 research groups, involving 54 Ph.D. students and 89 undergraduate students, work within the Laboratory. Beyond its sound scientific results -- 72 journal and 271 conference papers since 1994 -- HSNLab plays an important role in the transfer of novel technologies and skilled people to the industry.

DTT was involved in numerous EU projects in the 4th and 5th Framework Programme including NICE, EXPERT, INFOBRIDGE, EMERGE, INTERMON, MIND, SPECO, and in COST projects: 242, 237, 247, 257, 266. DTT/BUTE takes part in the activity of IFIP WG 6.3 and 6.10, ESPIRIT, BABEL. International co-operations include: NTT, Ericsson, Telia and numerous universities worldwide.

Main interests of HSNLab in NOBEL are optimisation and algorithms for Traffic Engineering, Resilience (Protection, Restoration) and Routing (static, dynamic) in Multilayer / Multidomain / Multiservice Architectures. HSNLab will contribute to 'Techno-economic Evaluation and Social Impact (WP2)'. HSNLab has interests in 'Network Management and Control/Protocols (WPG2/WP4)' as well.

The contribution of BUTE in NOBEL phase 2 is concentrated in WP2.

• ICCS 

The Institute of Communication and Computer Systems (ICCS) is a private law body associated with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (DECE) of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA). ICCS was established to carry research and development activity on all diverse aspects of telecommunications systems and techniques, computer systems, and their applications in variety of applications such as software and hardware engineering, control systems and biomedical engineering. ICCS has established an extensive computer network and several research - educational laboratories.

The major role granted to ICCS in the R&D field is largely due to the evolution of the Telecommunications Laboratory. This lab has been extensively involved in the RACE I & II, ESPRIT, BRITE EURAM, CTS, ACTS and IST programs. The relevant to NOBEL phase 2 experience and research activities include: physical layer modelling of WDM rings covering metropolitan and wide area networks; coding systems; design, evaluation and implementation of access control mechanisms in different topologies and data rates.

The contributions of ICCS will be in two work packages. It will participate in WP3 ('Burst/Packet

networks for extended long term scenarios') with main focus on the 'Architectures for future

advanced burst/packet networks' activity. Moreover, it will participate in WP5 ('Technology

Assessment and Experiments'), concentrating in the 'Advanced burst nodes' and 'Transparent Network Planning and Configuration based on Physical Constraints' activities.

• IBBT

IBBT (formerly IMEC), the Interdisciplinary institute for BroadBand Technology, is a research institute, focusing on information & communication technology (ICT) in general, and applications of broadband technology in particular. IBBT performs multidisciplinary research into the development and exploitation of ICT and broadband services. In this research IBBT investigates the technological, legal, business and sociological aspects of the domain. IBBT is headquartered in Ghent, Belgium, and employs about 400 researchers in different locations. The Intec Broadband Communication Networks research group (IBCN) is part of the Department of Information Technology (INTEC) of Ghent University (UGent) and is involved in research on broadband communication networks, distributed software and advanced applications. The IBCN group is also part of IBBT (the Interdisciplinary institute for BroadBand Technology). The group was established in 1992 and currently counts 70 members (including 8 professors and 4 post-docs). The group has participated in numerous ACTS and IST projects (ACTS: Horizon, Open, Photon, Mephisto, Panel, Tobasco, Ithaci, Prisma; IST: Optimist, Tequila, Harmonics, David, Lion, Stolas, Scampi, Nexway). Currently the group is involved in 9 European IST FP6 projects (Muse, Nobel, Medianet, Magnet, Lasagne, Bread, ePhoton/ONE, Euro-NGI and Newcom). The IBCN group is also strongly involved in research with local industry (Alcatel, Siemens, Barco, Belgacom, Telenet, Televic, Ubiwave, etc.). The IBCN group takes part in national and Flemish research programs (e.g. information technology, optical networking, mobile multimedia...). The research has resulted in about 350 publications in international journals or conference proceedings. The IBCN group is also largely responsible for the education in networking and software engineering in the Faculty of Engineering of Ghent University. The IBCN research group maintains its own test laboratory, referred to as the ATLANTIS laboratory (test lab for advanced network technologies and integrated services). It consists of over 200 nodes (PC Linux based), Cisco and Alcatel routers, switches (up to 1 Gbit/s), wireless LAN's, various test-equipment, etc. This test laboratory is used for experimental research related to most topics mentioned above

IBBT will contribute to the architectural aspects for end-to-end services (WP1). Furthermore it will contribute to the work on survivability, traffic engineering, techno- and socio-economic studies and evaluations (WP2). IBBT will contribute to the work on advanced packet/burst switching (WP3), looking at techno-economic evaluation of Optical Burst and Packet Switching (OBS/OPS). IBBT will contribute to WP5 on OEO-transparency cost evaluation.

• Politecnico di Torino

The Optical Networks Group of Politecnico di Torino has recently focused on different aspects of optical networking, such as definition of efficient algorithms for the solution of the Logical Topology Design (LTD) problem in Wavelength Routed (WR) networks, new methodologies for the design of fault-tolerant logical topologies, joint use of WDM and Optical Time Division Multiplexing (OTDM) technologies in wavelength routed networks. The group has been involved for several years in the definition of Access Protocols for Metropolitan networks based on different topologies. Those activities were performed in the context of both Italian funded (RingO and WONDER) and European funded (ACTS SONATA and IST DAVID) projects . The group also investigated the scheduling problem for unicast and multicast traffic in broadcast and select networks.

The OPTCOM group of Politecnico di Torino is mainly concerned with the transmission system and physical layer part of optical networks. OPTCOM has 7 staff members and 9 PhD students and postdocs. Recently, OPTCOM acquired a new state-of-the-art experimental facility called PhotonLab (www.photonlab.org), that is 250 square meters encompassing a clean room and a large system-experiment dedicated room. About 3 MEuro of test-and-measurement equipment are deployed there, including a 50 Gbit/s BERT, a 50 GHz Digital Oscilloscope, many OSAs and tunable sources, 1000 km of spooled fibre with EDFAs and about 2 MEuro worth of various optical components obtained through donations from CISCO Photonics, Marconi, Agilent and Avanex. Recently, a major Italian telecom operator (Fastweb) has directly connected PhotonLab to a dark fibre test-bed consisting of 8 rings of different lengths, for a total of 240 km of G.652 installed fibres. All rings run in buried cables that contain lit operational fibres. They go through operator POPs and miniPOPs and traverse residential areas, industrial areas, bridges, railroad tracks and busy avenues with heavy traffic. Experiments carried on this test-bed are highly representative of the behaviour of actual operational buried fibre plants in the most challenging metropolitan environments. The OPTCOM group has a proven track record and expertise in: computer modelling and simulation of optical TX systems (creators of OptSim, now owned by RSoft inc.),electronic dispersion compensation, new and alternative modulation formats including duobinary, DPSK and DQPSK, dispersion maps, non-linearity management,PMD monitoring in WDM systems and long-term measurement,advanced Turbo and LDPC FECs for optical systems,physical layer study/design/implementation of wavelength routed and optically packet-switched WDM MAN networks (the RINGO/WONDER project),EDFA transient stabilization and Raman amplification,Low-cost EAM and SC MZI based systems, for MANs.

The PoliTO groups performed substantial experimental work on optical packet networking. Researchers of the group have collaborated with groups of other Universities, such as GeorgiaTech, Stanford University and UCSB, on landmark experimental projects. Other researchers worked on the experimental implementation of an all-optical node for the OPERA project (funded in 1997 by NSF and DARPA for approximately 1 million US$), and on the design and experimental realization of MOSAICnet. In the framework of the RingO and Wonder Italian PRIN projects, the two PoliTO groups built a WDM ring packet network prototype including all the node optics, control electronics, MAC protocol implementation, and traffic sourcing/sinking/analysis circuitry. The projects produced remarkable experimental and theoretical results, published in several papers and has been awarded Invited presentations at international conferences.

The contribution of Politecnico di Torino NOBEL phase 2 is concentrated in WP1 and WP5.

• Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna

Sant'Anna School of University Studies (Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna) is a public institution located in Pisa, Italy. The traditional goal is to train highly selected, gifted young scholars for scientific research and the teaching profession. In 2001, the School started a new research and teaching activity related to Optical Communications. Since then, a new research group has been formed, which today includes one Full Professor, four Associate Professors, several researchers and many PhD as well as ordinary students, summing up to around 40 people. The research activity covers components, systems and networks, with both theoretical and experimental issues. The development of S.Anna's group has been awarded a special grant from the Italian Ministry of University and Research ('National Excellence Centre').

Since all researchers recently joined from other universities, public bodies or private companies, their previous activity was carried out under different affiliation than S.Anna's. S.Anna researchers took part in the following EU funded projects: DAWRON, LOBSTER, ATLAS, PHOTOS, OPEN as well as in many research projects funded by the Italian Research Ministry. More recently, Sant'Anna has taken part in NOBEL Phase 1. It has presently two strategic agreements with Marconi Communications and Agilent Technologies, as well as several international scientific collaborations with other universities.

For the experiments, PISA will take advantage of the equipment in the new Laboratories of CEIRC- Centro di Eccellenza di Ingegneria delle Reti e Telecomunicazioni (Center of Excellence for Network and Communications Engineering), where the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna researchers work in tight cooperation with CNIT personnel (CNIT: National Inter-university Consortium for Telecommunications). CEIRC actually uses the full first floor (around 1500 m2) in one new Sant'Anna building. In the Laboratory, Sant'Anna has an operational 16x10 Gbit/s WDM test bed, inclusive of sources, modulators, multiplexer/demultiplexer WDM, many (>12) EDFA amplifiers, several hundreds km of fibre spans, dispersion compensating fibres, different types of lasers for Raman amplification, as well as the usual system diagnostic equipment (optical spectrum analyzers, power meters, 60 GHz photodiode, sampling oscilloscope). The contribution of Scuola Superiore S. Anna in NOBEL phase 2 focuses on WP1, WP4 and WP5.

• UNIPD/DEI

The Department of Information Engineering (DEI), University of Padova (UNIPD) has a staff composed by: 90 professors (full, associate and assistant), 110Ph D students and post-doc, 30 technicians (labs and administration). The total number of undergraduate students is about 3700. There are many teaching and research laboratories operating in several research fields like: Automatic Control, Bioengineering, Electro-magnetic compatibility, computer science, antennas, optical communications, Electronics, Quantum Optics, Signal processing, wireless communication, photonics. The research activity is proved by more than 580 publications in international journals and 862 talks at international conferences (1997-2202). DEI is quality certified by 2004 ISO 9000-2000 for all activities concerning the research projects. The photonics group at DEI is composed by 6 professors (full, associate, assistant) and 3 PhD students, 3 post-doc and 1 lab technician. The main topics where members of photonics group are involved are: polarization mode dispersion (causes, effects, compensation, low-pmd fibre design, backscattering measurements), Raman amplification (lumped and distributed), arrayed waveguide gratings design.In photonics lab several equipments are available for measurements on optical fibres and systems: polarization optical time domain reflectometry (POTDR), BER test at 10 Gbit/s, OTDRs, multi-channel wavelength meters, sampling oscilloscope up to 50 GHz, polarimeter, optical spectrum analyzers, fusion-splicers, Raman amplifier, EDFAs, External cavity lasers, ...The photonics group at DEI carries out its research activity under an agreement with ISCOM (Istituto Superiore delle Comunicazioni e delle Tecnologie dell' Informazione).

The contribution of Università di Padova in NOBEL phase 2 is concentrated in WP5.

• UPC

The Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) is a public university institution devoted to high level education and research excellence in engineering (http://www.upc.edu). The participation of the UPC in NOBEL phase 2 will be carried out by the Advanced Broadband Communications Center (CCABA: http://www.ccaba.upc.edu). The CCABA integrates researchers from several departments of the UPC with interests in complementary communications research areas. In NOBEL phase 2 will participate researchers belonging to both the Broadband Communications System group (of the Computer Architecture Dept.), and the Optical Communications group (of the Communications and Signal Theory Dept.). In order to serve the project, the UPC team can have access to the CCABA Networking Laboratory, the optical laboratory of the Optical Communications group, which is equipped with test, measurement and transmission devices for IP/GMPLS/WDM, and a test-bed with ROADM based nodes and GMPLS control plane that will be available at the UPC by beginning of 2006. UPC participated in the IV Framework Program as a member of the Spanish National Host through the CCABA network platform. On behalf of the UPC, the CCABA also participated in several ACTS and IST projects dealing with networking topics, such as INFOWIN: Information Window (ACTS, P-565); MICC: Mobile Integrated Communications in Construction (AC-088); IMMP: Integrated Multimedia Project (AC-023); SONATA: Switchless Optical Network for Advanced Transport Architectures (AC-351); MEPHISTO: Management of Photonic Systems and Networks (AC-209), MOON: Management of Optical Networks (AC-231), LONG: Laboratories Over Next Generation Networks (IST-1999-20393); LION: Layers Interworking in Optical Networks (IST-1999-11387); DAVID: Data and Voice Integration over DWDM (IST-1999-11742); Action COST 263 (Quality of Future Internet Services) and 266 (Advanced Infrastructures for Photonic Networks). Currently, CCABA is participating in NOBEL and EuQoS Integrated Projects, e-Photon/ONe and E-NEXT Networks of Excellence, and in the Action COST 271.

The contribution of UPC in NOBEL phase 2 focuses on WP1, WP2 and WP3.

• University College of London

The Optical Networks Group (ONG) at University College London (UCL) is headed by Prof Polina Bayvel, and currently comprises in excess of 20 members, including 3 members of staff, 13 PhD students and research fellows, scientific visitors, and associated MSc students. The ONG has an established track record for leading research in the fields of high-speed WDM transmission, dynamic wavelength-routed optical networks and optical packet switched networks, optical processing technologies, and advanced photonic components such as large-port count multiplexers /demultiplexers. The main appliance for experimental research is an advanced recirculating fibre loop test bed, currently operating with 32 wavelengths at 40 Gbit/s.

The ONG has been involved in a number of successful national and European scientific projects, including: WDM and IP network management (WINMAN, 5th FP), Network of Excellence E-Photon/ONE, Terabit Wavelength-Routed Optical Networks (TWON, EPSRC), Physical-Layer High-Speed Optoelectronics for Tomorrow's Optical Networks (PHOTON, EPSRC), Joint Infrastructure Fund for a high-speed transmission laboratory (EPSRC), and a recent Basic Technology award in Quantum Computing (EPSRC). The group maintains active links with leading research groups around the globe: Bell Labs, Nortel, Marconi, Bookham, NTT, Agilent, BTExact,
T-Systems, Cambridge Univ., Univ. de Valladolid, UPC, Univ. Erlangen, Politecnico di Torino.

Within NOBEL phase 2, we will focus on the evolution of advanced optical packet and burst switched optical networks, in particular the design of edge routers as key enablers of dynamic network architectures (WP3), traffic aggregation for burst- and packet applications (WP3), and the performance of advanced components for dynamic networks (fast tuneable lasers, 2R regeneration, dispersion compensation and signal monitoring, WP5).

• UST/IKR

Founded in 1829, the foremost aim of the University of Stuttgart in research and teaching lies in the field of engineering and the natural sciences. The close interconnection of research and teaching enables the University of Stuttgart to hold a top position in basic and applied research. The UST-IKR is one of the 19 institutes of the faculty of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering and Information Technology. Directed by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Dr. h.c. mult. P.J. Kühn about 25 scientific staff members research in the field of transport, mobile and context-aware networks.

The institute has a strong background in architecture design and performance evaluation of circuit, burst and packed switched communication networks. For more than nine years the UST-IKR has participated in several national and international research projects on photonic networks (e.g. NOBEL, E1, COST 239, COST 266, COST 291, MultiTeraNet, TransiNet etc.). In cooperation with several European industry partners, the institute works in the IST project NOBEL as well as in the German MultiTeraNet-Program (with Marconi Ondata, T-Systems and Alcatel) towards the future of high-speed metro and core networks. In the field of optical networks, the research portfolio of UST-IKR comprises single and multilayer traffic engineering (integrated routing, dimensioning, automatic bandwidth adaptation) and resilience topics as well asoptical burst and packet switching techniques.

The contribution of IKR in NOBEL phase 2 is concentrated in WP2, WP3 andWP4.