The research of the group is concerned with a broad spectrum consiting of the following themes of digital communication: synchronisation, cryptography, magnetic and optic recording, multiple access systems and information transmission on low voltage nets. Several Ph.D. thesis defenses will take place in 1997.
The cooperation with industry plays an important role in the research group. In particular the cooperation with Philips research at Eindhoven should be mentioned. Our students had the opportunity to conduct important experiments at research laboratories. By this the theoretical results have improved considerably in significance. In joint work with Philips research the recording density and the reliability of magnetic and optic recording systems were considered. Volker Braun was invited to work at the Hitachi research laboratory in Tokio.
The international research projects with the Korean Institute KAIST (VW project) and the university Chofu (JSPS-DFG) were continued for two years and two more projects were approved by the EU. INTAS, an EU-project,in cooperation with Eindhoven (van Tilborg), Eriwan (Khachatarian) and Naples (Gargano) had as theme "Information theory and combinatorics". Both mathematicians and information engineers took part in this project. The second theme of the EU project is named "African telecommunications". We researched the properties of information transmission under tropical conditions. It consists of the cooperation between European and African universities and telecommunication companies.