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Center for Information Networking and Telecommunication (CINT)

Professor Tarek Saadawi, Director • Institute Office: Steinman 529 • Tel: 212-650-7263

General Information

The CINT Center represents the culmination of approximately fifteen years of research cooperation of faculty members from the Departments of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering in the fields of high speed, multimedia, multiservice, integrated wired and mobile wireless networks. Necessary experimentation is performed in a well–equipped Networking Systems Laboratory.

The Center’s present research work on telecommunications and information distribution is largely supported by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) by way of the "ARL Collaborative Technology Alliance on Communications and Networks." A part of this CINT research aims to overcome the severe bandwidth and energy constraints of the mobile wireless environment of battlefield command and control, while providing secure, jam–resistant communications in noisy, hostile surroundings.

Previous sponsors included various U.S. Army organizations (ARL, Communications-Electronics Command, Army Research Office), the National Science Foundation, and the New York State and the New York City Departments of Transportation. Industry is represented by Telcordia, Panasonic, AT&T, and Lockheed-Sanders.

The group’s faculty members play a major part in teaching the undergraduate and graduate networking courses offered by the Electrical engineering and Computer Science departments at The City College.

Current Research Areas

CINT areas of research cover many aspects of mobile communications and information distribution. CINT faculty have recently made a number of contributions in the area of AD-HOC mobile Networking. These networks provide the capability to establish communications between various heterogeneous mobile users without the need to involve the wire/wireless infrastructure network. Routing algorithms as well as new transport protocols and MAC layer protocols are being developed for AD-HOC mobile networks.

This research has a great impact on military networking as well as on commercial applications. Further research concerns:

  • Qos Support for Real-Time Services such as video, voice, and data

  • Probabilistic Reasoning Mobile Agent System for Network Testing

  • Mobile IPSystems

  • MPEG-4 and MPEG-2 Video over ATM synchronization

  • Adaptive Multimedia Synchronization for Teleconferencing

  • Empirical Qos Study of Hybrid Terrestrial-Satellite ATM Network

  • Core-Manager Based Multi-Cast Routing (CMMR)

  • Mobility Support for CMMR

  • Multimedia Conferencing System with Multi-Casting

  • Optimal Buffer Allocation in ATM Switches

  • Use of Genetic Algorithms in Mobile Agent Generation for Network Security

  • Conformance Testing and Verification of Communication Protocols

  • Artificial Intelligence in Telecommunications

  • Neural Network Applications in ATM Resource Allocations

  • Optical Communications

  • Wireless Communications

  • Policy-Driven Networks

  • Network Infrastructures for Bio-Medical Applications

  • User-Centered Mechanisms for Distributed Collaborations

Facilities of the Networking Systems Laboratory

The networking Systems Laboratory has the following facilities:

  • Heterogeneous Network Testbed: ATM Switches, Wireless LAN, Router, PCNet

  • Simulation Software: OPNET, NS-2, COMNET, MODSIM

  • ATM Test Equipment: ATM Generator and Analyzer

  • IP Telephony Gateway

  • 20 + Ultra Workstations (with Enterprise Server), PC Network

Plans for the Future of CINT

The Center plans to pursue three additional major areas of activity in the near future:

  1. A program of cross-disciplinary research which stresses the theoretical, analytical and experimental aspects of telecommunications and information networking, consisting of high-speed multimedia networking, next generation internet protocols, mobile communications, photonics engineering, optical communications and information distribution. Key areas of research include quality of service requirements, mobility and wireless networking, optical Communications and optical switching, video and image communications, and internet protocols. In addition, considerable attention is to be paid to the economics pricing/business aspects of telecommunications and information services. Research with respect to network security will play a considerable part.

  2. An expanded program of education for City College Master’s and doctoral students will involve the development of new advanced courses in networking and information distribution.

  3. A program of industry/university/ government cooperation which will stress the importance of knowledge and technology transfer between these entities. This implies the exploration of similarities between military command and control systems and such civilian applications as traffic control, emergency management, and the security of financial institutions.