Success Story: DAIDALOS

Designing Advanced network Interfaces for the Delivery and Administration of Location independent, Optimised personal Services Irish Organisations:
LAKE Communications and the Waterford Institute of Technology
FP6 EUR
14.7 million funding

The days of telecoms companies merely building mobile phone base stations are long gone. Now operators are racing to build powerful Third generation (3G) networks that transmit not just voice but also data, while also installing so-called Wi-Fi wireless internet hotspots in areas like hotels and cafes. As standalone technologies, both 3G and Wi-Fi work well, with service delivery and long-established billing mechanisms in place. But the trick, according to researchers, is to create an architecture that will allow users to connect wirelessly using the "best" standard for a given job. Taking up this challenge are LAKE Communications, the Waterford Institute of Technology and 45 other research institutions and businesses, through the FP6 funded project DAIDALOS

It's easiest to think of different wireless technologies like different modes of travel. A trip from Paris to Moscow is best made on a jetliner, while a car or train is more efficient for travelling from Dublin to Kilkenny. Technology such as 3G -- which moves voice and data at high speed over a mobile phone network -- is ideal for people on the move who need to use e-mail, the web or even teleconference. Meanwhile, a wireless technology like Wi-Fi provides even faster connectivity at lower prices, but is limited to smaller areas, such as a single building. Depending on the task, the user's location, and the cost, one service may be superior to another.

Those working in the industry, as well as the researchers involved in DAIDALOS, have long known that most users don't want to manually switch from one technology to another -- it's just too complicated. And in the future, wireless connectivity will become even more convoluted when newer technologies such as satellite become more available, bringing their unique advantages and shortcomings.

But what if just one system could be put in place that would tie all these technologies together in a seamless way, allowing users to always use the best standard for a particular task? What if that could be done automatically, with security, privacy, cost, quality of service and efficiency all factored into the process? Turning these "what if's" into reality is the goal of DAIDALOS.

"That is the aim of the project in the simplest terms," says Mícheál Ó Foghlú, Research Director at the Waterford Institute of Technology's Telecommunications Software & Systems Group (TSSG). "In fact, this work is very complicated. It involves many layers of infrastructure and some aspects of it are basic research, while the underlying goals are applied research."

Despite its complexity, for all participants in the 30-month project the work couldn't be more exhilarating. "Absolutely, this is very forward looking and exciting for us... This kind of work allows us to see into the future," explains LAKE Communications' DAIDALOS Project Manager Jim Clarke. "And we have already used the knowledge gained in the work for our existing customers."

Irish and global partners working together

One of LAKE's roles in the project will be to ensure that all of the architecture layers of the DAIDALOS architecture meet accepted security and privacy guidelines, an area in which the firm has tremendous experience already. The company will work with researchers at the TSSG, who have a similar security-focused remit as part of DAIDALOS, and a wider task group spearheaded by the European Commission.

Both LAKE and the TSSG will also carry out important integration and testing functions to ensure that DAIDALOS components delivered by the broad group of partners are interoperable and meet specifications. "We are seen as neutral, which is important," says WIT's Mícheál Ó Foghlú. "Since there are a lot of large companies involved in this project, the consortium needs partners that are seen to be completely independent when it comes down to testing. That is how we are seen."

Jim Clarke of LAKE says that DAIDALOS marks one of the biggest research initiatives in the company's history. "R&D has always been an aspect of what we have done," he says. "But it is fair to say that FP6 funding allows us to do more than would be possible otherwise." He also notes that a project of this magnitude -- an Integrated Project (IP) with a longer timeframe and a large list of collaborators -- is particularly important since it exposes the company to a wide swathe of partners, including DAIDALOS co-ordinator Deutsche Telekom AG of Germany, Telenor of Norway, Lucent Technologies in The Netherlands and BMW, amongst many other telecom operators, corporations, universities, research institutes and SMEs.

Jim adds that the firm has already forged strong partnerships in earlier FP projects such as AlbatrOSS, which was coordinated by the TSSG in Waterford. All these projects have helped LAKE keep abreast of developments on the leading edge of wired and wireless technologies, and knowledge gleaned from the information has been incorporated into work undertaken for existing customers. "We wouldn't have the same access to this knowledge, and these partnerships wouldn't necessarily have been formed if we weren't engaged in this research programme -- and they have become invaluable to us."