Telecommunications and Information Technology Research

The Telecommunications and Information Technology Research Institute (TITR) at the University of Wollongong is the largest university-based information and communications technology research centre in the Southern Hemisphere. The work of researchers in TITR has been a key driver in the University developing an international reputation in ICT research, and the New South Wales Government declaring Wollongong a Centre of Excellence in this field.

The Institute's two primary objectives are to carry out leading edge research and development into technologies and applications of future multimedia information communication and services, and to use its expertise and reputation to help establish the Illawarra Region as the ICT hub of New South Wales .

The Institute is a leading research partner in two major Cooperative Research Centres - the CRC for Smart Internet Technology which develops and commercialises key technologies for next generation Internet, and the CRC for Desert Knowledge which aims to develop advanced networks and information communication services to support thriving economies in Australia 's desert regions.

TITR has strong research collaborations with major national and international universities, research institutes and companies in the area of information and communication technologies, and incorporates the Nortel Networks Centre of Excellence in IP Telephony, located on the UOW Campus.

TITR fosters interdisciplinary research and spans the two Faculties of Informatics and Education. It also has close collaboration with UOW's Digital Media Centre. The Institute includes over 50 academic staff and more than 60 postgraduate students (mostly at PhD level). TITR is made up of the following research centres:

• Audio, Signal Processing and Multimedia Delivery Management
• Emerging Networks & Applications
• Information Security
• Interactive Learning Environments
• Photonics and Electronic Signal Processing
• Visual Information Processing and Content Management
• Wireless Research Group
• Wireless Technologies Lab

21ST CENTURY APPLICATIONS FOR AGE-OLD CRYPTOGRAPHY

Cryptography may date back 2000 years to the Roman Empire , but it has never been more widely applicable than in the electronic world of the 21st Century.

Since Roman Emperor Julius Caesar used secret codes to hide important military information in his dispatches between Rome and his generals in the field, cryptography has been used for 20 centuries by successive generations of government and military leaders as a means of protecting their communications from unfriendly eyes.

The situation changed dramatically in the 1970s with the advent of computers and later the Internet. Advances in E-commerce and widespread use of services such as electronic mail and, in more recent years, the world-wide web, has made the protection of information and the privacy of individuals of central concern.

Researchers at the University of Wollongong's Centre for Information Security, one of the research Centres in TITR, are conducting research into a range of security technologies for providing security and privacy for the future electronic world. Institute Director, Professor Rei Safavi-Naini, an international expert in information security, says the management of rights in future internet applications will be extremely important.

"At the Institute we are conducting world-class research into areas such as digital rights management and privacy rights management systems," Professor Safavi-Naini says "Our researchers are producing cutting-edge results and our work has been supported by companies such as Motorola and Telstra. It is also supported by the Smart Internet CRC.

"Digital content such as images or video clips, are easy to copy and illegally distribute, and so it is crucial to provide protection against pirate copies and illegal distribution. In the last nine years we have been working on a range of technologies such as digital watermarking and traitor tracing, and more recently on Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems. These technologies will enable owners of the content to control unauthorised use of electronically transmitted material."

"Digital watermaking embeds an invisible mark inside an object which can be later recovered and used as a proof of ownership, or as evidence for the integrity of the content. Traitor-tracing systems refer to techniques that allow the tracing of people who have mis-used their rights and have constructed a pirate copy of content."

"An important issue is balancing the rights of the creator (of digital material) against the rights of the users, and ensuring that 'fair use' of the content is honoured," Professor Safavi-Naini says.

"Another huge concern of users is breach of their privacy rights. We are developing technologies that allow people and enterprises to describe their privacy needs and be assured that the systems give them a guarantee of privacy."

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Last reviewed: 16 February, 2007