The research of the group for distributed systems and operating systems focusses on middleware-layers, operating platforms and tools for distributed, parallel and embedded systems. Cluster- and Grid-Computing is one of our traditional areas of research.
These days wireless sensor nets are an emerging key technology for multi purpose monitoring of the real world. These networks are in fact massively parallel distributed systems with severely restricted computing resources and low bandwidth wireless communication capabilities.
With our strong background in lean middleware layers for cluster architectures we consider it to be a major challenge to bring high-level communication and coordination paradigms found in parallel systems to the severely restricted world of deeply embedded systems.Consequently, our primary research focus now includes event driven operating systems and lean high-level cooperation abtractions for wireless sensor networks.
Cooperation Mesh4U wins BTU Transfer Prize 2025
At the 10th BTU Transfer Day, five nominated collaborative projects presented their results in short pitches. Two projects impressed the jury equally. One award was granted to Mesh4U team of our research group members Navya Sneha Chatharajupalli and Randolf Rotta.
The Transfer Prize recognizes successful technology transfer between industry and academia based on the achieved results of the collaborations, market readiness and application potential, as well as the breadth of expertise of the participating companies. The jury consisted of Tim Berndt (Lausitz Economic Initiative), Sebastian Saule (Brandenburg Economic Development Corporation), Andreas Pfeiffer (Friends of BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg Association), Prof. Michael Hübner (Vice President for Research and Transfer), and Grit Hagenberger (Senate Commission for Research, Young Researchers, and Technology Transfer).
Mesh4U is a collaboration between the Distributed Systems/Operating Systems department, LEAG Central Railway Operations in Schwarze Pumpe, PTB Ingenieure GmbH Leipzig branch, and Ascori GmbH & Co. KG from Cottbus. Mesh4U enables the rapid deployment of complex, spatially distributed measurement campaigns. Application areas include, for example, the inspection of critical infrastructure such as railway bridges and electrical power plants. To this end, we developed self-organizing, learning mesh network protocols specifically for the smallest, battery-powered Wi-Fi modules. This allows us to efficiently transmit large volumes of data with a level of quality not previously available on the market.
The foundations of the communication system were developed during the iCampµs Cottbus project (grant numbers: 16ES1128K, 16ME0420K), funded by the German Federal Ministry for Digital and Economic Affairs (BMTR). Within the BMV-funded project "FlexiDug" (grant number: 19FS2024D), a prototype with an integrated high-resolution accelerometer and magnetic mounting was developed and tested in several field trials together with LEAG ZEB. PTB Ingenieure GmbH facilitated trials during a bridge inspection and is an important partner for the further development of the sensor technology and data analysis. Together with Ascori GmbH & Co. KG from Cottbus, we are exploring further application areas, for example, for the inspection of grounding systems and industrial control systems.
We thank our cooperation partners for their dedicated collaboration and look forward to future joint projects. A special thank you also goes to the Knowledge and Technology Transfer Department and MinGenTec - Mining & Generation Technology for the excellent organization of the transfer day.