The Next Challenge for the Communication Society: Co-operating Embedded Systems

In the major reorganisation that took place at Halmstad University during 1999-2000, the new School of Information Science, Computer and Electrical Engineering (IDE) was formed. The School of IDE is divided into five laboratories; Computing and Communication (CC), Electronics and Physics (EF), Intelligent Systems (IS), Mathematics (MA), and Man and Information technology (MI). The division into laboratories was made in order to focus the research and education into the main areas that are represented at the School of IDE. In this paper we only consider the research directions of CC-lab, which is the laboratory where people with research interests in computer engineering, computer science, telecommunication and data communication and digital hardware design are gathered. After the (as always) turbulent period of re-organisation, a new mission and theme to gather around, was searched for by the newly formed group of researchers and teachers. The result was the formation of the Centre for Research on Embedded Systems (CERES) [1]. CERES has its core of researchers at CC-lab but is also open to co-operation with other parts of the school and the University. “The focus” of CERES “is on enabling technologies for co-operating embedded systems and high performance applications” [1]. The people involved in CERES have a rather broad background spanning complex computer architecture, computer science, data communication, telecommunication, mechatronics, signal processing, and digital hardware design. If a closer look is taken on what the theme “cooperating embedded systems” means, it becomes obvious that this broad competence spectrum is a good match to the kind of competence that is needed for successfully dealing with research in the area of co-operating embedded systems.