UCN

The development of the Internet is dominated by complex interplays between the current Internet technologies and the human user behavior. On the one hand, the ubiquitious Internet influences the daily life, society, as well as industry and business. On the other hand, the continuously growing and changing network requirements call for the development of new Internet technologies to keep pace with the digitizing society. For that, networks have to be flexibly tailored to the needs of the users, and they need to be operated in an effective and sustainable way. At the same time, these technologies have to ensure a high subjective Quality of Experience and satisfaction for the users of the new Internet services and applications.

This is the reason why this research group puts the user to the center of networking technologies. First, technical, individual, and social factors are identified and quantified, which influence the behavior, the perception, and the expectations of users of Internet services. Here, the focus is both on private usage, such as web browsing, video streaming, or augmented/virtual reality, as well as on business applications. Suitable models are derived, which can describe the flexibility of network requirements on different time scales. These analytical, statistical, or machine-learning-based models are the basis to develop intelligent and smart networking technologies, which satisfy the flexible requirements of the users. For this, in particular, the potentials and limitations of machine-learning-supported network management for user-centric communication networks are researched. The performance of the developed technologies is evaluated with the help of formal analysis, simulations, or prototypes, which also ensures their practicability. Here, the business aspects of network operators are quantified as well as the technical, individual, and social gain for users.

Research Topics:

• User-centric Aspects of Networking
• Network and Service Management