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Digital Television for All (DTV4All), led by Brunel Wireless Network Group, has raised awareness of the need for standardised access services for TV viewers who require or use subtitles or any other audio-visual aids while watching digital TV programmes. They showed the European Parliament how a TV programme (without a sign language translator) could be delivered via internet with an option to use a sign language translator for those who require the service. They also presented at the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and European Broadcasting Union (EBU) Joint Workshop on Accessibility, which led ITU, a specialised agency of the United Nations for digital technologies, to set up a Focus Group on Audiovisual Media Accessibility and to commission the report `Making Television Accessible' (2011).
Since January 2011, the regional public broadcaster (radio/television) of Berlin and Brandenburg in Germany, Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB), has broadcast the digital TV subtitle setting recommended by DTV4All on Channel 1. Through additional investment, RBB has further enhanced the subtitling service and users can now optimise the sizes of the subtitle font or the sign language translator.
Lancaster University's pioneering research on Quality-of-Service (QoS) architecture has led to significant impact on the development of TETRA (Terrestrial Trunked Radio) — the digital radio standard used by emergency and public safety services globally. The route to impact was via UK projects on Mobile and Emergency Multimedia. It involved the transfer of QoS technology and know-how to HW Communications Ltd (HWC), a Lancaster-based SME. HWC became instrumental in developing the outcomes of our collaboration in TETRA's Multimedia Exchange Layer (MEX) standard and its specification for TETRA II (or TETRA Enhanced Data Services, TEDS) — a new version of TETRA that enables multimedia data services. MEX was adopted as a new clause in the TETRA II release in 2010. The impact is that vendors of TETRA equipment manufactured after 2010 can implement MEX in their products, thereby leveraging Lancaster's pioneering QoS research to enable applications to obtain the best possible level of service in a standardised way — which is absolutely crucial for the public-safety and related applications for which TETRA is being used.
While basic communications protocols for the Internet were developed decades ago, new requirements such as bandwidth-hungry multimedia and the need for the Internet to reach the "final third" of the population create constant demand for improvements. Research at the University of Aberdeen has greatly contributed to meeting this demand by influencing the standardization and implementation of the Internet Protocol (IP) stack in commercial networks. New standards for Internet Transport Protocols and Satellite IP Transmission resulting from the research have been implemented in industrial products in Europe and the US, benefitting industry and millions of end users.
Mobile technologies and in particular mobile applications have become key drivers of the economy in many countries especially those that lack established communications infrastructures. Since 2003, the research team led by Professor Al-Begain has created both significant infrastructure and know-how that became the base for the creation of the £6.4million Centre of Excellence in Mobile Applications and Services (CEMAS) that is providing research and development to SMEs in Wales to increase their competitiveness. In the first three years since its inception 28 projects have been completed and 66 companies have received services.
A new broadcast system involving satellite plus cellular to allow TV and multimedia to be viewed on a handheld or in a car was first proposed by researchers at Surrey. The feasibility was demonstrated within an EU project run by Surrey and then taken to prototype stage via two other EU projects run by industry. A new standard was produced in DVB / ETSI and the EU let licenses for operation. A new company was formed (Solaris-Mobile) by two of Europe's major satellite operators (Eutelsat and SES) who launched a satellite and now operate the system. Investments of circa €200m were made by industry to create this new business.
Research on software and service engineering conducted at the University of East London has been successfully applied to the international telecom sector, within which it has contributed to the creation by Telecom Italia of a context-aware service platform and of mobile Value-Added Services based on that platform. The application of our work has had a positive impact on Telecom Italia's software development process, enabling an easier and faster integration of heterogeneous services necessary to provide mobile Value Added Services. The principal benefits have been to Telecom Italia's customers through the provision to them of improved telecom services, and to the company itself, which has been able to increase its customer base and profitability.
As a key participant in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), Dr Perkins has been instrumental in developing key protocol standards that underpin modern telecommunications. The Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) acts as a transport layer distributing audio-visual data across the network, whilst the Session Description Protocol (SDP) describes the format and destination of streaming media. These standards are essential components of 3G and 4G mobile phone standards and form the infrastructure for many fixed telephone networks. They are implemented in Apple's Mac OS X and iOS, Google's Android, and Microsoft Windows, and feature in billions of devices around the world.
The impact described in this case study is the more efficient use of transport infrastructure through the application of our research into the use of wireless components and wireless communication devices. This gives passengers reduced travel times, better business performance for operators, and, for everyone, reduced pollution (including CO2) and a more pleasant urban environment as a result of reduced congestion. The impact has benefitted transport systems throughout Europe, including Nottingham and Coventry in the UK, Gouda in the Netherlands, Leuven in Belgium and Sofia in Bulgaria.
Researchers at Queen Mary have applied mathematical modelling techniques to understand how and when problems may arise in complex man-made infrastructure networks including electricity, gas, global shipping and haulage networks. Many of these networks have points of vulnerability where a local issue such as an earthquake, a terrorist attack or even a simple engineering problem can bring down widespread areas of the network. Our research and the associated modelling techniques have impacted on organisations including the UK Treasury Office and the European Commission's Joint Research Centres at both Petten and Ispra, where it has been used to inform UK and European policy guidelines and legislation for infrastructure projects.
Our research on cross-layer optimised video distribution over wireless networks has led to wide- reaching economic and societal impact, via the following pathways:
- Standardisation: our research results were directly adopted in WirelessMAN and LTE, the two global standards for the next generation of wireless broadband networks.
- Collaborative research: the work resulted in a product that has been commercialised by our collaborators Rinicom Ltd, an SME specialising in mobile video, and recognised with a Queen's Award for Enterprise (2013), for achievements to which our research contributed significantly.
- User engagement: the work resulted in the deployment of a WiMAX network in Slavutych/Chernobyl, Ukraine; contributing to community regeneration in a UK Government programme to address social and economic consequences of nuclear power plant closure.