Domain Themes
Layer 1: Data Acquisition and Processing
Sensors, Bio-Sensors & MEMS, Multimodal Data (Text, Video, Audio), Multilingual Data, Novel Interfaces
Layer 2: Communication
Data Communication and Networks, Spectrally Efficient Communication, Secured Communication, THz Technology, Wireless Frontends.
Layer 3: Computation
Data Analytics, Text Analytics, Cognitive Computing, Digital Humanities, Speech and Language Processing
Layer 4: Computation Infrastructure
Embedded Systems and VLSI, Verifiable and Reliable Systems, Encryption and Security, Power Aware Design
Domain Team
IIT KHARAGPUR
T.K.Bhattacharya, P.K.Guha, G.Saha, S.Sen, K.Biswas, S.Das, T.K.Maity, S.Chakraborty, S.Sarkar, P.Mitra, P.Goyal, P.Bhowmick, A.Basu, D.Samanta, K.S.Rao, S.K.Das Mandal, J.Mukhopadhyay, D.Sen, S.Mukhopadhyay, P.K.Biswas, D.Sheet, D.Roychowdhury, I.Sengupta, D.Mukhopadhyay, N.Ganguly, S.Bhattacharya, A.Routray, M Manjunatha, S.Bandyopadhyay, R. Guha, T.Bhattacharya, S.Dey, A.Patra, S.Chattopadhyay, A.Deb, A.S.Dhar, M.Sharad, P. Dasgupta, D. Sarkar, A.Pal, S.Nag, R.S.Chakraborty
IISC BANGALORE
N.Bhatt, Rudra Pratap, K.R.Ramakrishnan
IIT BOMBAY
Ramgopal Rao, S.Mukhopadhyay, P.Bhattacharya, S.Chowdhury, S.Chakrabarti, Supratik Chakraborty
IIT KANPUR
B.Bhattacharya, Y.C.Singh, T.V.Prabhakar, A.Bhattacharya, A.Mukherjee
IIT MADRAS
A.Dasgupta, E.Bhattacharya, H.Murthy
IIT HYDERABAD
A.Pandey, K.S.R. Murthy, Sumohana C., Zafar Ali Khan, Kiran Kuchi, Bheemarjuna Reddy Tamma, S. Jana
IIT PATNA
Ashok S Sairam, Asif Ekbal, P.Bhattacharya, Arijit Mondal, Somanath Tripathy
IIT BHUBANESWAR
M.S. Manikandan, P.Sahu, D.Ghosh, P.Bera
IIT MADRAS
A.Dasgupta, E.Bhattacharya
IIT INDORE
Nirmala Menon, Neminath Hubballi, Gourinath Banda
ISI KOLKATA
Mandar Mitra
IIT BHU
Anil Kumar Singh, Ravindranath Chowdary C
IIT DELHI
S.Chaudhury, S.Banerji, M.Balakrishnan, P.R.Panda, K.Paul
IIT GUWAHATI
S.Dandapat, S.Bhattacharya
IIT MANDI
S. Agnihotri
IIT GANDHINAGAR
U. Lahiri
IIT ROPAR
K.Chowdhury
Domain: Information & Communication Technology
Broad Coverage
ICT & CS pervades almost all walks of life, including education, health-care, environment management, water-resource management, to mention a few. The first task of information technology is to gather information omnipresent in different forms and languages, through sensing of data such as biological data, data pertaining to environment, education, heritage, land usage and cognitive information about users. Such information gathered from diverse field situations, has to be communicated to distant servers through secured, reliable and fast communication channels, followed by different types of processing and analytics. To carry out large scale and fast computations and in-place embedded-real-time computations, novel indigenous computational infrastructures are necessary. The IMPRINT program aims to identify the gaps and the "things to be done" in India to make India self reliant in these aspects.
Data Acquisition and Processing
A major challenge to any information processing task is acquiring the information, which presents itself in different forms, including physical signals, biological signals, voice, text, image, video and even emotions. Accordingly different means of collecting and often inferring such data in the face of noisy and uncertain environment is required. Accordingly, the following sub-themes have been considered for Data Acquisition and Processing.
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Sensors, Bio-Sensors & MEMS: Having access to indigenous sensors and actuators is of utmost importance to the process of data acquisition. Hence new ventures to develop different types of sensors and MEMS are called for. These include biomedical sensors for health care applications, chemical sensors for detection of hazardous contaminations, moisture sensor, image and video sensor etc. The sensors need to be rugged for use in extreme environment and of easy to use type.
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Multimodal and Multilingual Data: (Text, Video, Audio) Data and information is replete in the textual messages and social network exchanges, voice communication as well as video communication. In the Indian context, such information is also multilingual making it imperative to develop technology to properly acquire the information from such varied spectrum of data.
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Novel Interfaces: Keyboard, mouse and monitors being no longer the only means computer interaction, it is needed to natural interfaces for communication through touch, gestures, icons and signs. Interface design in these respects is of utmost importance, specially keeping in view the physically challenged users and the aged population.
Communication
The data and information acquired from distant, critical and difficult to access areas need to be transmitted to the computing sites in a reliable and secure manner. Bandwidth being at a premium, efficient use of bandwidth as well as speed of communication is of vital importance, in addition to reliability and security. Consequently, research thrust should be increased in:
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Data Communication and Networks: Over the years, data communication has gained a lot of importance due to its application in the areas of sensors and mobile nodes in addition to its usual role in computerto-computer communication. Efficient communication between sensor to sensor and between mobile nodes is vital for energy and security related issues. Routing and aggregation of data also needs to be improved for optimal use of power, which in most cases is a non-renewable resource or is very difficult to replace.
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Spectrally Efficient Communication: Generation and transmission of huge data demands spectrally efficient communication techniques to deal with growing demand of bandwidth. As has been established through research by various leading groups, Optical Angular Momentum (OAM) beam is capable of providing huge bandwidth as it creates orthogonal channels for multiplexing of multiple beams.
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Secured Communication: Security and reliability in data and information transmission is one of the key requirements. High security in data and information communication can be realized by infusion of principles of quantum mechanics and information theory.
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THz Technology: Identification of hidden objects is a major challenge in homeland security applications. THz technology facilitates creation of high resolution images of hidden objects and detection of remote threats.
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Wireless Frontends: The whole domain of wireless technology works on the basis of smart as well as efficient frontends, antennas, and sensors. Several new challenges need to be addressed in view of making the devices more compact, more efficient, and compatible to wideband or ultrawideband systems, especially for secured/military applications.
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Advanced Education: There are few specific areas in communication engineering which need high quality human resources in the country; but unfortunately, resource of knowledge is very very limited. Therefore, for the sake of alleviating such lacunae, a special effort is needed in the areas of 'Applied and Computational Electromagnetics" in the form of special training by international experts and thus by creating a knowledge bank.
Computation
Data received at the computation end needs to be processed to crystal out the semantics of the data and calls for data and text analytics. Moreover, unlike the earlier days, the forthcoming systems will have to be user centric and hence users have to be understood and their features and preferences should be integrated within the computation framework. Accordingly, the following sub themes have been identified.
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Data and Text Analytics: This component is a vital component in extracting the real information, trends and hidden facts from the plethora of data and text available in different form and languages.
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Cognitive Computing: In order to provide effective education support or health advisories for example, it is necessary to understand the user, her personal preferences, cognitive abilities and emotional patterns among other things. The area of cognitive computing will employ intelligent and adaptive models of the user in an integration with the decision making process.
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Speech and Language Processing: Automatic speech recognition, text to speech synthesis, language translation, question-answering systems, answer evaluation systems etc. all depend heavily on speech and language technology research, and is critically called for in multilingual digital India.
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Image and Video Processing: Vast information available in the form of images and videos are powerful resources that may be exploited through automated processing for knowledge creation, storage and dissemination. Advanced research in this area will enable digital preservation of historical monuments, creation of digital knowledge bank in the form of e-books (research on Optical Character Recognition will take a vital role), Homeland Security through research on video surveillance, bio metric authentication, advanced image/video coding techniques for efficient use of limited resources and many others.
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Digital Humanities: Preservation of the heritage in the country, its languages, dialects, art forms, architectural wonders, social and ethnic practices can be preserved and saved from the onslaught of 'modernization' through the intervention of ICT in the form of undertaking activities in the digital humanities area.
Computation Infrastructure
The actual computation will be carried out on servers and systems enabled to carry out fast and distributed computation, done in real time, with reliability and predictability and the results should be available in a secured manner in the face of digital intrusions. To this end, research in the following sub components need to be further vamped up.
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Power Aware Design Of Embedded Systems and VLSI: To result in area effective, portable, low power consuming, omnipresent computing devices research in embedded systems and indigenous development of VLSI chips are necessary.
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Verifiable and Reliable Systems: Since the systems will be omnipresent, it is necessary to ensure reliability and safety and consequently 'correct' and 'safe' systems should be designed, that should be verifiable at the design time.
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Encryption and Security: The computation infrastructure and the transfer of data and information must be protected from intrusions and data privacy is becoming all the more important in the present era. Hence, both theoretical and practical research in encryption and security (through hardware and software means) need to be geared up.