Introduction

Vision: Our vision is to have an internationally recognized centre of excellence in quantifiable QoS which also can provide Norwegian industry, network and service providers with well educated experts and technology for the benefit of the society at large.

The Centre will deal with Quality of Service (QoS) issues in heterogeneous, multilayered networks where packet switching technology is employed. By services is meant traditional teleservices along with multimedia, messaging, web and information services, as well as location and content aware services. The Centre will work within the following areas: multimedia signal processing, dependability, traffic and security as applied to multiparty communication.

The Centre will study principles, derive mechanisms, methods and technical solutions and assess their properties and performances by means of experiments and models. Performances relate to perceived quality of streamed speech/music and video, delays and throughput of elastic traffic, reliability and availability of services, and information security with encryption and user authentication.

The main research goal is to do basic research in the areas specified for the centre, with a coordinated cross-disciplinary emphasis on QoS. This research shall be done with a deep and broad understanding of the applications, the technological and commercial challenges, and with an eye for what is important for Norway.

The acquired knowledge will guide technical solutions, qualified engineering of services, management methods and totally ensure proper investment, operation and management of networks and systems.

About 35 persons will be associated with the Centre. This includes dr. students, postdocs, scientists and visiting professors/scholars. The Centre is appointed by The Research Council of Norway under their initiative Centres of Excellence (CoEs). NTNU is hosting the Centre and is active partner together with UNINETT. The Centre is supported by Telenor Research&Development.

The Centre was opened on January 1st 2003 and will be operational for a five year period, which may be extended for another five years.