R & D Department

CFP6 (April June 2016)

Research Areas

The NTRA supports research in the telecommunications field in addition to

other relevant fields. If you are not sure whether the NTRA fund covers the

topic of your proposal, contact the R&D department (rd.projects@tra.gov.eg)

and attach the title and the abstract of the project, even before writing the

proposal.

The proposed areas of research below can be tackled from technical and/or

economical perspectives (the last Area below explicitly describes some

economic issues).

The NTRA has already funded many projects (check the NTRA website).

Please check the active projects before submitting your idea in order to either

extend existing projects (by complementing or addressing other aspects) or

provide new ones.

The areas listed here will receive higher priorities; however, applicants are

free to propose other areas of their own interest. The examples listed below

each area are just illustrative and are not inclusive.

Thrust 1 (T1): NTRA Interests

The NTRA encourages applicants to submit proposals in the following areas:

Cyber-security and E-crime:

The number and sophistication of cyber-attacks are increasing, in the meantime

our dependence on the Internet and other networks for critical services and

information keeps rising. According to the ITU, there are at least 70 million

different pieces of malware worldwide, and smartphones have become a vehicle

for their dissemination. Analysts report that at least 70% of emails are spam. As

a result, research efforts have been developed to mitigate the effects of these

cyber-attacks. Research topics in this area include:

- Malware classification and detection algorithms

- Intrusion detection techniques

- Biometric interaction with cyber-domains

- Autonomous security

- Authorization infrastructure

1B4 Smart Village, K28 Alex Desert Road, Giza Ph: 3534-4000, Fax: 3534-4155

Spectrum management:

- Efficient spectrum sharing, utilization and auctioning

- How much spectrum is needed based on users' demand and activities?

Techniques to measure and increase customers’ experience of QoS

Thrust 2 (T2): Community and National Needs

The Telecommunications sector can enhance the quality and the productivity of

other sectors. The ideas should be inspired from the community or other sectors

needs and a major part of the proposed solution should make use of ICT

solutions to achieve this goal.

Thrust 3 (T3) Technology Trends

A1: 5G networks:

The current thinking is that 5G should be more a revolution than an evolution. It

should target high performance exemplified by orders of magnitude

improvement in data rates and more stringent delay constraints as well as

connecting billions of devices. Areas of research include:

- New Physical Layer Interfaces

- Massive MIMO

- Full Duplex

- Self-organizing Networks

- Network Heterogeneity

A2: Internet of things (IoT)

Things (all non-humans) will be connected via the Internet and exchanging

massive amount of data for information, control, optimization,…etc. This area

includes many items to be investigated:

- How can the widely used technologies (WiFi,3G,LTE, LTE-A )

accommodate the new wave of IoT devices?

- RFIDs design and applications

- Data analytics

2B4 Smart Village, K28 Alex Desert Road, Giza Ph: 3534-4000, Fax: 3534-4155

A3: Software Defined Networks (SDN)

- Network devices supporting the SDN concept

- Network Virtualization

- Contributions to the new OpenFlow specifications

- Scalability, security and slicing of OpenFlow networks

A4. Smart Grids

Smart grids mean efficient utilization of the power grid. This takes place at both

distribution network and the customer side. Investigations in this area include

both technical (security, demand side management,…) and economic (pricing,

two-way transactions,…) aspects.

A5: Other topics:

- Cloud computing

- Social networking

- Multimedia communications (video over wireless networks)

- Enhancement to cellular networks

- Machine to Machine communications

Thrust 4: Economic Aspects of telecommunications

This area mainly targets researchers with background in Economics. Economists

are encouraged to collaborate, where needed, with engineers to integrate

different aspects in the study. A non-inclusive list of the proposed topics includes

(can still propose other practical problems facing the telecommunications

market):

- Broadband studies: price/performance improvements in wired and

wireless networks to make high-speed broadband more affordable,

broadband adoption and usage, and enabling new services and

applications (OTTs models).

- Frequency spectrum valuation, auctioning and bidding schemes

- Business models for video broadcasting over different platforms

3B4 Smart Village, K28 Alex Desert Road, Giza Ph: 3534-4000, Fax: 3534-4155

- Telecommunications industry: analyzing the value chain and

investigating the potential/feasibility of local manufacturing

(equipment, devices,...).

- Electronic payments, focusing primarily on non-banking payment

systems and services as well as enabling communications

technologies.

- Pricing: pricing in smart grids, pricing in next generation networks,

pricing for mobile cloud computing networks

- Economic impact of over-the-top (OTT) services

- Cost models for telecommunication services

4B4 Smart Village, K28 Alex Desert Road, Giza Ph: 3534-4000, Fax: 3534-4155