The aim of this project was to develop an integrated access control system for the authentication of accredited persons during the athletic and cultural events. The system will minimize security risks and offer the possibility to intelligently monitor the movement of accredited persons within the premises of an event. The development of the system is based on state of the art technologies and infrastructures including RFID smart card technologies, biometrics, data security techniques and mobile communications networks. The strength of the system is centered on the indubitable biometric identification method (fingerprint scanning), complemented by the ease of use offered by the RFID technology and the portability resulting from the use of already available mobile communications infrastructures (GSM, GPRS).

The system is characterized by enhanced security levels, through the use of biometric techniques, and the ability to monitor the movement of accredited persons.
The system is fast and reliable, cost effective and interoperable with existing infrastructure.

Funded by *GSRT

This project resulted at the creation of a system which enables electronic transactions via mobile devices over GRPS and 3G Networks. The services offered, through which the users of this system are able to carry out transactions, concern the sector of Tourism. The software achieves secure services through Mobile Internet for:

• Payments of deposits or debts for tickets or rooms
• Payments for car renting
• Information on local services, hotels and restaurants.

The payment features covered by the system are

• Money transfer from one bank account to another
• Debit and credit through mobile telephone accounts
• Credit card payments

Financial transactions are made in cooperation with chosen banking institutions and mobile networks companies. The above modules are applied to several areas of Tourism such as car rental, room letting and ticketing.

The content includes general and detailed information, photographs and video clips. The data can be updated via the Internet and via an advanced I.V.R. (Interactive Voice Response) application.

This project focused on the societies of the ageing population and the ways that can provide higher quality of living to the elderly people.

During this project was developed a mobile and remote monitoring device based on the use of kinematics sensors (accelerometers and gyroscopes), to evaluate users mobility and to detect users falls. The system is detecting a fall and automatically alerting to a hospital, carer or family member about it in order to assist the fallen person immediately and in this way improves the security of elderly people at home. The system alerts automatically even if the user is not able to move because of injuries suffered during fall. The system also incorporate GPS technology in order to determine users continuing localization if needed and to send exact information of user localization when detecting a fall. Adding to this, the system is able to distinguish efficiently between static and dynamic movements in order to send periodically average data of user’s activity via conventional communication system (SMS or e-mail). This information is analyzed by carers to evaluate users moving ability. Mobility is a subjective quality that indicates users’ vitality, strength and physiological well being. In case of system failure and for safety reason, the user is able to activate the alarm if a fall has occurred and no alarm has been sent. On the other hand the user is able to deny an automatic alarm if the system has send a false alarm or even if a fall has occurred but it hasn’t produced any consequence to the user.

Funded by CRAFT – E.U.

The purpose of the project is the research and development of an integrated system for the safe transmission of information to mobile terminals and PDAs, in the form of text, image and video. The development of the system is based on cutting-edge technologies for the transmission and presentation of information. The transmission of the information is through the use of wireless networks, in order to enable the use of the proposed services by the rapidly evolving wireless and broadband networks and the 3G mobile telecommunication networks. A major field of application for the proposed system is the athletic and cultural events. Recent year’s investment in athletic infrastructure demand the development of business plans for their use. The organization of international athletic and cultural events is necessary for the maintenance of the above mentioned infrastructure. The suggested integrated system will offer high quality services to the spectators, resulting in the introduction of an important income for the organizers, whether they are private enterprises or public organizations.

Funded by PAVET-NE - GSRT

The high-level objective of the SHADOWS project is to increase significantly the competitiveness of the European IT industry through the introduction of an integrated model-based paradigm for developing self healing software systems. The project’s paradigm, building on an integrated set of new self-healing technologies, will mitigate the challenge of growing software complexity and its detrimental impact on software reliability.

In this project, we aim to systematically address the software complexity crisis, which carries painful costs for the IT industry in terms of quality and management costs. As computing systems become more powerful, more pervasive and more interconnected, the resources involved in developing and managing them are growing at an alarming rate and their reliability is deteriorating. SHADOWS will enable the development of complex software systems of high and durable quality, with lower development and maintenance costs.

The project targets large and heterogeneous software systems with multiple dimensions of complexity, such as distribution and intricate interdependencies, dynamicity (reconfiguration and evolution), legacy system constraints, complex hardware, and possibly incomplete or missing specifications and source code. Such systems can be found in many important application domains including, but not limited to, industrial control systems, e-commerce enterprise applications, service-based architectures, telecommunication systems, and other application domains.
SHADOWS target three generic requirements that underlie software quality and reliability in all complex systems: (1) adherence to functional requirements, (2) robust performance and (3) safe utilization of concurrency. At a technical level, SHADOWS provides a cost-effective self-healing solution for functional deviations, performance bottlenecks, and concurrency problems. We generically describe self-healing as a repetitive four-stage process: detection, localization of faults, healing and assurance. The detection stage reveals or predicts the presence of a problem. The localization stage identifies the fault that caused the problem. The healing stage provides for automatic or semi-automatic problem remediation. Lastly, the assurance stage examines the healing to ensure that it solves the problem and that it does not introduce new problems.

Funded by FP6/IST - E.U.

Prior to new solution or optimization proposals, the existing solution (particularly those applicable to the Metro Ethernet market) should be analysed with respect to the competing solutions. The analysis should contain a panorama of current solutions (Virtual Private LAN Service as developed by the IETF L2 VPN Working Group, 802.1ad Provider Bridges, 802.1ah Provider Backbone Bridges, etc.) with respective service support such as Transparent LAN Service (TLS), virtual private line services,…, technology features (data and control) as well as Standardization status. In addition, emerging solutions (such as Rbridges, Layer 2 Label Switched Paths, proprietary VLAN switching and control,…) will be identified in parallel to the elaboration of the new set of requirements and associated study case (operational modes) representative of the reconsidered central role of Ethernet.

Three main axis may serve a priori as guidelines for the new solution(s): enhancement of the adaptation capabilities between IP and Ethernet (e.g. definition of sub-network layer), extend usage of GMPLS control capabilities to Ethernet data plane (i.e. flow-oriented approach) and determine the behaviour of the IP layer on top of these new solution(s). Complete description of the new functions and related protocol architecture will be provided and illustrated as application reference study cases.

The solutions proposed will be demonstrated and evaluated through detailed benchmarking studies including criteria such as cost (at least through dimensioning evaluation), performances, scalability and more generally capabilities with respect to the requirements targeted initially. Finally, migration and required actions at appropriate standardization body will be undertaken to enable wide endorsement and interoperability of the proposed solution

Funded by self-funding / CELTIC

In this project, simple-to-implement station association/handover and AP power control methods that increase the efficiency of wireless LANs are going to be studied and designed. The association/ handover method will be based in maximization of the network throughput forcing the stations to associate with the AP that can provide the maximum (estimated) bi-directional link rate. Thus, association decision will take into consideration conditions in both the uplink and downlink channels. Meanwhile, the AP power control method will adjust the maximum allowable transmission power, in order to control the future user associations. The AP power control will be used to minimize the interference and balance the load among the cells.

In this project we are going to measure the efficiency of the mechanisms we describe, by analytical methods and simulations. We are going to simulate the mechanisms in OPNET and we will measure their efficiency. Additionally, we are going to study how the proposed mechanisms react in environments with mobility, which is very common in wireless networks.

Funded by GSRT - Joint research Greece-USA

The objective of this project is to develop a compact and integrated system that will ensure the safe transmission and receipt of medical images in a hospital environment that is run under wireless links. This will be done by combining the current wireless networking security (WEP) with an additional level of security provided by digital watermarking. As far as the relevant parties are aware, the concept of using digital watermarking as a complementary security solution is still in its infancy and its implementation in an integrated WEP-based security system has not yet been realized.

The existing WEP-based security will be enhanced by the data integrity control that fragile watermarking provides, thus leading to a compact security solution. A transparent software-implemented embedder and decoder will insert / extract respectively the watermark from the image.

Funded by GSRT – Joint research Greece-Britain