Telecommunications

Telecommunications research in Trinity is multi-disciplined and varied. It focuses on the infrastructure that will underpin the wireless and optical networks of the future, the applications and services that will be delivered over those networks, the mechanisms for managing and securing the networks as well as the political, business and economic issues that underpin the communications sector. Telecommunications is more than the software and the hardware but is the wider ecosystem that surrounds and is part of the networked world.  There is a strong academic element to your work as well as a large industry engagement.

Benefits to Society

We live in a highly interconnected society. Our ability to do business, gain knowledge and education and interact socially is increasingly predicated on the availability of advanced networks that can support the ever-increasing and ever-changing demands we make on it
The research in Trinity is fundamentally about ensuring the networks of the future continue to deliver what we need. To do this we need to design networks that are sustainable and that are flexible enough to change with our changing demands. We need to ensure that networks are affordable so that the digital divide does not continue to grow wider. We need to make it easy for countries, including our own, to easily deploy sophisticated and complex networks so that we can continue to reap the economic and social benefits that come from being highly connected. We need to provide the kinds of secure communication environment that reassures the wider public as all our lives are increasingly lived online. We need to support innovative applications and services as they emerge.

Our work also provides a critical voice that can feed into communication policy and future communication directions for Ireland and Europe. 

Research at Trinity

Trinity is host to the headquarters of the national telecommunications centre, CTVR.  CTVR focuses on the design of future wireless and optical networks. It comprises 7 national institutions and collaborates with over 60 industry partners. The CTVR research focuses on designing networks that are flexible, sustainable and not restricted to any one model of ownership and control. This is about designing networks that can deal with change.  We work at both the architectural level as well as designing the reconfigurable components that will be part of future networks. The work in Trinity itself spans the wireless and optical domain. We have expertise in wireless networks, optical networking, dynamic spectrum access networks, machine-learning and game theory for networks, cognitive radio, software radio, photonics systems and thermal management for telecoms. We have an international reputation in test and experimentation. Our experimental work goes beyond the laboratory through our engagement in trials with industry that is very much part of making Ireland a testbed for the future.

Telecommunications research in Trinity spans different disciplines including Engineering, Computer Science and Statistic, Science and Maths as well as Arts Humanities.  We have expert groups in Distributed Systems and well as Knowledge and Data Engineering that tackle many different aspects of communications.
The research in Trinity goes beyond just technical. We seek to understand and engage with the increasing influence of the fast growing emerging economies in the telecommunications sector particularly in terms of the emergence of significant new players from such economies. We focus on the impact of privatisation as well as seeking and expose new modes of resource ownership, economic production and collaborative consumption.
The telecommunications research in Trinity also engages with much of the creative sectors within the university.

Research Champion

The research champion for this theme is Professor Linda Doyle.