Partnerships

IBBT has carried out research projects with over 750 partner organizations already, either large companies, SME's or non-profit and governmental organizations (Ca. 25%).

In order to strengthen our research excellence and optimize the valorization of research results, we will continue to invest in strategic partnerships and international collaboration, both with leading national and international research institutes and with international companies of particular strategic importance.

 

So far, we have formalized a strategic research partnership with the following institutions:

 

IMEC

A program was defined between IBBT and IMEC in which the following research groups are involved: IMEC/Nes, IMEC/WATS and IBCN, PATS and SMIT at the IBBT side. This collaboration started out in 2009.

Focus domains of this collaboration are:

  • Cognitive Control functionalities envisioning the cognitive/opportunistic usage of network capacity and resources
  • “Spectrum sensing” functionality for a better detection of present networks or network facilities
  • A holistic approach of the problem of electrical power consumption by a network or terminal, envisioning optimizations of electricity consumption
  • Flexible and adaptable wireless node (software) architectures envisioning economical and reliable communication in dynamic, heterogenous and large scale wireless network environments
  • Setting up a roadmap on market approach, standard determination and policy aspects in the domain of “Cognitive and Oppurtunistic Radio”

 

VITO

Addressing and solving the sustainability challenges is not a short term project, and requires critical mass of different skills. To give shape to it is a matter of a long term vision, commitment and drive.

Looking at the skills of VITO, IBBT, the associated universities and the companies in our network, we can bring together a golden team by joining forces.

A joint long-term program of IBBT and VITO is aimed at integrating the wide range of sensors and devices in a truly connected system, with the most important drive to make information harvesting efficient, reliable and fast. This program will address different parts. A non-limitative list contains:

  • the technical aspects of joining the sensor networks and joining the application domains: how to use state of the art cognitive control to improve the overall wireless connectivity of overlapping sensor networks, and how to join sensor data.
  • signal processing and how to automatically connect mutual information together, based on statistical techniques and modeling techniques. Machine learning, surrogate modeling and high-perfomance computing are important drivers to deliver fast, near-real-time models to higher application layers.
  • context aware service platform design, allowing efficient processing and reasoning to deduce extra knowledge to enhance the applications and the information provisioning for the end-users.
  • human machine interfaces and decision makers value: how to display the information in a concise and quick way
  • how to make use of the information in order to create value, with decision makers in (local) government, entrepreneurs, start-ups and existing companies. It will be beneficial to extend our reach outside Flanders in order to get more impact and return-on-investment. A service platform should enable fast set-up of new high-value services.

 

Alcatel-Lucent

IBBT and Alcatel-Lucent founded a "Joint Research Laboratory"; aimed at creating a grouping of research teams and activities between the parties. The primary objective of the Joint-lab structure is to consolidate ongoing collaborations with strategic partners in an overarching structure in order to collaborate in a more program-based approach on longer-term research.

This ‘Cognitive Video Networking Lab’ will develop innovative video applications that will change the way we handle multimedia.

The lab will also crate new generations of internet access to enable such video applications. The Joint Lab initiative was launched officially during the Future Internet Conference Week in December 2010.