Reliable Distributed Systems

The high connectivity of networks in Luxembourg has undoubtedly an important impact on the quality of service delivered (rapid exchange) but other factors must be considered in a proposed enhanced value proposition associated with services. Some examples are: service reliability (breakdown, recovery time, etc.), data security (privacy, cybercrime, etc.), user service interface (ease of use, context adaptation, etc.), or the compliance of the services to national and international regulations and standards. All these qualities of services rely both on the properties of the IT infrastructure used but also on aspects related to the quality of applications deployed on these infrastructures, plus organisational dimensions and human skills necessary for the delivery of services. Furthermore, in a world that is increasingly interconnected, where services provided by an entity will themselves depend on services provided by other entities, the concept of quality of service should be considered a systemic approach applied to a global eco-system services, and no longer at the level of a single isolated service provider.

Research Challenges

The research unit takes up the challenge of how to ensure the robustness and resilience of interconnected digital systems.

Its research question is: "How to combine the latest strategic fields on Computational, Networking and Operational Research to develop Trustworthy Data and Network enabled next generation of Inter-connected Digital Systems?"

Its objective is to:

• Develop real-world solutions based on the latest results of two strategic fields of today’s Computer and Data Science: Numerical Optimisation together with Machine Learning.
• Design and implement architectures, algorithms and software for distributed systems benefiting from Edge and Mobile Computing with a focus on advanced communication systems (5G/6G,V2X) and IoT.
• Master the methods and tools to access, exchange and share critical data with fully security and privacy.
• Develop architectures, models and algorithms allowing safe data exploitation for standardised distributed environment (like in GAIA-X).

Research groups

The unit is composed of around 35 scientists, engineers, post-docs and PhD candidates with complementary scientific and technological expertise, structured in 3 groups.

• Optimisation and Decision Systems : focuses on multi-objective and multi-disciplinary optimisation to optimise the usage of resources and develop machine learning and artificial intelligence where it can help improve current processes.

• Edge Computing and Networks : proposes data-driven approaches for efficient , proactive and automated operation of future-generation networked systems and supports the deployment of new digital services benefiting from ultra-low latency networks technologies.

• Trustworthy Data Systems: tackles the issues related to trusted data in the context of distributed environments  in order to make these systems secure and reliable as well as to ensure secure data exchange between stakeholders.

Key partners

Research and innovation activities focus on four markets:

• Mobility (transportation authorities, public and private transportation companies, e.g.)
• Security and critical infrastructure (owners/operators of critical infrastructures in sectors such as energy, telecommunication, finance)
• IT services
• eHealth and well-being (health providers, health user groups, seniors, e.g.).