Research and Innovations

My interest has moved from QoS in wire networks to optical networks and now to wireless networks. My interest spans from the transport layer to network layer. QoS in P2P applications, ad hoc networks and sensor networks are some of the topics. I am not sure whether TCP type of congestion control will be the way to go in the next generation networks. I have been trying to envision what the network should do in the next century. Maybe that is too ambitious and it will be interesting to envision what it would be in the next two decades.

I remember that in 1986, I tried to visualise what the future user terminal would look like. It should be a small hand-held device with all the functions that a user wanted. I think I did not think about the mobile phone but a wireless device that had sufficient computing power to run the presentation layer – I learned that in the old days. It should provide switching between applications – I saw what IBM provided in “CICS” if I remember the name correctly. In “CICS”, one can switch between applications at a non-windoww based terminal. The mobile terminal should be fairly mobile and run many applications because of the power at the back-end. It should be voice activated and the user will be able to activate applications from a calculator to a supercomputer by voice commands. I did not envisage the digital camera but a “mobile assistant”. He would send emails and does his office work at any place and any time.

Today, most of what I envisioned in 1986 was realised and more. The digital camera and phone are examples. But, the voice activation feature is still lagging in what I would like to see. The man-machine interface needs to be improved as the natural human activation consists of the five senses – see, hear, smell, touch, taste. Machines should be made to provide such interfaces. Therefore voice activation and hearing via text reading are important interfaces. Most of today’s devices are still keyboard and mouse based. Maybe, it is time to change our mindset!

To be continued….

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 1st, 2009 at 8:08 pm and is filed under Research. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.