Dr George Oikonomou
BSc, MSc, FHEA
Expertise
Energy-efficient networking for severely constrained wireless embedded devices and the IoT.
Current positions
Senior Lecturer in IoT Networking
Department of Electrical & Electronic Engineering
Contact
Media contact
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Biography
Senior Lecturer in IoT Networking, with 7 years of post-doctoral research experience in the UK (University of Bristol and Loughborough University). Originally a statistician, with an MSc in Information Systems and a PhD in Computer Networking, both from the Department of Informatics at the Athens University of Economics and Business.
Co-founder, steering group member and maintainer of Contiki-NG, the next generation, open source operating system for the IoT. Former maintainer of the original Contiki OS. Inventor of the Sensniff open source software project.
IoT Enthusiast, Software Developer, Open Source & Creative Commons proponent.
Research interests
My research focuses on energy-efficient networking for severely constrained wireless embedded devices and the IoT, with an emphasis on digital healthcare and smart city applications. My objective is to invent and prototype networking algorithms that are optimised for constrained/low-capability, battery-powered devices without sacrificing performance and reliability. Over the last few years I have been focussing on IEEE 802.15.4 / .15.4g networks, doing work that covers the entire 6LoWPAN/RPL stack. More specifically, I have made contributions in the areas of multicast forwarding; MAC layers with time-synchronisation (such as TSCH); congestion control; routing; neighbour discovery; service discovery. Within the same IoT context, I am also interested in secure software writing techniques; digital forensics; and software defined networking.
My research is very applied and often leads to high-TRL, deployment-ready outputs. A lot of my work has been released as open source software and is distributed as part of the Contiki-NG operating system for the Internet of Things, an open-source project of which I am a co-founder and steering group member. Most of the work is also part of the original Contiki OS, for which I used to serve as maintainer.
Key Contributions to Research ProjectsI am University of Bristol PI for SYNERGIA, an Innovate UK-funded 2-year project on the development of the secure IoT platform.
I am Co-I in SPHERE Next Steps, an EPSRC IRC on the development of sensors for the home to diagnose and help manage health and wellbeing conditions. The technology aims to aid early diagnosis, lifestyle change and the ability of patients to live at home. I am leading two work packages, including the one entitled "Design, Integration and Monitoring"; my team and I have delivered the overall architecture of the SPHERE system that is currently being deployed and tested in 100 participant properties in and around the Bristol area. I have also made a key contribution to the hardware and software/firmware design of SPHERE's in-house-developed wearable device, environmental sensor and low-power gateway.
Previously, I was Co-I for RERUM (FP7/2007-2013 grant n° 609094) on the design and implementation of a security framework for the IoT, driven by the requirements of Smart City applications. In addition to research papers and other outputs, I made a key contribution to the hardware and software/firmware design of a novel IoT hardware platform, which is now commercially available.
I was also affiliated with the (now concluded) ForToo project, an ISEC 2010 action grant on the development of advanced forensic tools against Internet abuse, with focus on forensic analysis of android devices and wireless sensors.
I am a member of the CSN and DHE research groups and I am affiliated with Crypto. I am also a member of the Smart Internet Lab.
Open Source SoftwareI am a co-founder, steering group member and maintainer of Contiki-NG, the next generation, open source operating system for the IoT. I have contributed the code which adds support for IPv6 / 6LoWPAN multicast and I am maintaining the hardware ports for the Texas Instruments CC2538 and CC13xx/CC26xx Cortex M3-based SoCs.
I am also the inventor of Sensniff, an open source "Live Traffic Capture and Sniffer for IEEE 802.15.4 networks", and one of the collaborators with cc2538-bsl, an open source serial boot loader project.
PhD OpportunitiesI am currently looking for exceptional students to undertake PhD research under my supervision. If you are interested in working on one of these topics and you meet the requirements on skills and qualifications shown below, please get in touch with me:
- Energy-Efficient Networking for Severely Constrained Wireless Embedded Devices and the IoT
- Micro-* Countermeasures for Severely Constrained Wireless Embedded Devices and the IoT
- Secure Software for Severely Constrained Wireless Embedded Devices and the IoT
- Digital Forensics for Severely Constrained Wireless Embedded Devices and the IoT
More details about all those topics in this page. I am currently not accepting MSc by Research (MScR – MRes) applications.
Fees and Funding: You will enrol on the “Electrical and Electronic Engineering PhD” programme. We charge an annual tuition fee; you can find detailed information about fees in this page. Funding is not currently available for these PhD topics, but you may be eligible to apply for a scholarship. For more information see the section entitled “Faculty scholarships” in this page.
Required Skills and Qualifications:
- You will have or be on track of obtaining a 1st or upper 2nd class (or overseas equivalent) undergraduate degree (BSc, BEng, MEng) or an MSc with Distinction (or overseas equivalent). Your degree will be in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Computer Science or similar discipline from a reputable higher education institution.
- As part of this PhD research, you will be required to write extensive code using the C programming language. You will have prior experience with C, either professional or as part of your final-year / postgraduate project.
- You will be familiar with the basics of TCP/IP networking.
- You will be familiar with the basics of the Unix command line interface and shell scripting.
- Some knowledge of Python is desirable.
How To Apply: Please submit a PhD application using the University’s online application system. In the application form mention the project title/topic above and list me under “Proposed supervisor(1)”.
PhD Completions- Dr Panagiotis (Panos) Andriotis
- Dr Michael Baddeley
- Dr Pietro Carnelli
- Dr Konstantinos Maraslis
- Dr Adaranijo Peters
- Dr Antonis Vafeas
Positions
University of Bristol positions
Senior Lecturer in IoT Networking
Department of Electrical & Electronic Engineering
Projects and supervisions
Research projects
8031 SYNERGIA
Principal Investigator
Description
Contemporary IoT platforms typically adopt a cloud-based approach, with some offering optional backend installation at customer premises. This approach implies a requirement to transmit, process and store all data points…Managing organisational unit
Department of Electrical & Electronic EngineeringDates
01/11/2020 to 31/10/2022
RERUM
Principal Investigator
Role
Researcher
Description
RERUM will develop, evaluate, and trial an architectural framework for dependable, reliable, and secure networks of heterogeneous smart objects supporting innovative Smart City applications. The framework will be based on…Managing organisational unit
Department of Civil EngineeringDates
01/09/2013 to 31/08/2016
Forensic Tools Against Illegal Use of Internet (ForToo)
Principal Investigator
Role
Researcher
Description
The project aims to develop digital forensics tools that will: (i) identify, (ii) analyze and (iii) visualize illegal activities on the Internet. The project places emphasis on emerging networks and…Managing organisational unit
Department of Civil EngineeringDates
17/06/2011 to 16/10/2014
Thesis supervisions
Modelling and Simulation Applications on Cyber-Physical Systems’ Security and Resilience
Supervisors
Flexible Optical Systems and Reconfigurable Disaggregated Data Centre Networks
Supervisors
On Urban Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks and Parking Systems
Supervisors
Software Defined Networking for the Industrial Internet of Things
Supervisors
End to End System Optimisation of Wireless Interconnected Sensors for Healthcare Monitoring at Homes
Supervisors
Publications
Selected publications
09/04/2020TSCH Networks for Health IoT
ACM Transactions on Internet of Things
Atomic-SDN
IEEE Access
Enabling Healthcare in Smart Homes
IEEE Communications Magazine
Temperature-resilient time synchronization for the internet of things
IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics
IPv6 Multicast Forwarding in RPL-Based Wireless Sensor Networks
Wireless Personal Communications
Recent publications
12/12/20206TiSCH++ With Bluetooth 5 and Concurrent Transmissions
International Conference on Embedded Wireless Systems and Networks (EWSN 2021)
Identification of the key parameters for computational offloading in Multi-access Edge computing
Heuristic Approaches for Computational Offloading in Multi-Access Edge Computing Networks
2020 IEEE 31st Annual International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications
An SDN Agent-enabled Radio Resource Management Framework for Wireless LAN
Radio Resource Allocation Between Massive MIMO and LTE Using SDN
IEEE PIMRC
Teaching
Involved in Higher Education teaching of various computer networking-related topics to undergraduate as well as postgraduate taught students since 2003.
Currently teaching the following units to Electrical and Electronic Engineering students at the University of Bristol:
* Networking Protocol Principles
* Networked Systems and Applications