1. Programme Description

1.1. Person in charge of the Programme (Coordinator)

First Surname	García
Second Surname	Sánchez
Name	Manuel
Professional Category	Professor (Full Professor)

1.2. Applicant University

University name	University of Vigo
VAT number	Q8650002B

1.3. PhD Programme's basic data

Name of the PhD Programme	PhD Programme in Information and Communications Technology from the University of Vigo (DocTIC)
ISCED code	Engineering and Engineering trades (code 52)
Joint degree (Yes/No)	No
Participating universities (indicate coordinating university)
University 1	University of Vigo
Centre where it is taught at University 1	School of Telecommunications Engineering

1.4. Data of the centre

Number of new entry places offered	30
Languages used in the training process	Spanish - Galician - English
Standards for continuance	Normativa de permanencia (aprobada polo Consello de Goberno na súa reunión do 20 de xuño de 2017)

1.5. Context

DocTIC arises in 2013 from the proposal of ten research groups in the School of Telecommunications Engineering, all of them belonging to atlanTTic Research Centre. DocTIC involves the merging and expansion of the current PhD Programmes in Signal Theory and Communications (TSC) and Telematics Engineering, both with mention to the excellence. In addition to initial accreditation in 2013, the program underwent follow-up evaluation processes in 2016 and evaluation for accreditation renewal in 2020. The processes were successful. In order to comply with the improvement actions derived from these evaluation processes, a modification of the program's report was approved in June 2022.

The research groups of the PhD Programme, whose merits are summarized on Section 6 of this report, are:

Research Group

Multimedia Technology Group (GTM)

Radio Systems Group (SR)

Signal Processing in Communications Group (GPSC)

High Frequency Devices Group (GDAF)

Antennas, Radar and Optical Communications Group (COM)

Bioengineering and Chronobiology Laboratory (LBC)

Networks Laboratory (NetLab)

Services for Information Society Group (GSSI)

Telematic Systems Engineering Group (GIST)

Information Technologies Group (GTI)

Information & Computing Lab (I&CLab)

DocTIC's mission is to train the best professionals and researchers in the field of the Information Technology and Communications (ICT), to generate quality research and international impact and to provide the industry with advanced and professional technology and knowledge, to improve its competitiveness at global level.

Information and Communications Technology has transformed all production processes in a transversal way, and it is rightly considered powerful catalysts for innovation and progress in advanced societies. The interest and importance that the different public administrations grant to the research in this field are clearly reflected in the current strategic plans and research support programmes at regional, national and European level.

In the European context, since in March 2000, the "Lisbon Agenda" established as key factors in the productivity levels of the European Union, the underinvestment in R&D and in ICT training, the strategic commitment for these technologies has clearly been settled. One significant example is that within the 7th Framework Programme these technologies had the most important budget allocation (18% of the total budget), but also in the H2020 programme they had a crucial role, with a budget increment of 25%.

Besides of the public investment, the impact of the Information and Communications Technology in the European socio-economic environment is backed up by several studies that attribute to the ICT the 25% of the companies investiments, 50% of the productivity growth, 4% of the GDP growth and 2.6% of the labour employment, in the European Union.

In the closest, national, socioeconomic environment, it is worth noting that the inclusion of Information and Communication Technologies as enabling technologies has been a constant in the latest State Plans for Scientific and Technical Research and Innovation from the Spanish government (2008-2011, 2013-2016, 2017-2020). The call for R&D&I projects aimed at ICTs within the framework of strategic actions such as the "Strategic Action in Telecommunications and the Information Society (National R&D&I Plan 2008-2011) or the "Strategic Action in the Digital Economy and Society " (National R&D&I Plan 2013-2016, National R&D&I Plan 2017-2020) are proof of their interest and relevance.

In the Galician Region, the Galician Research, Development and Technological Innovation Plan 2006-2010 (INCITE) identifies 14 priority areas for sectorial programmes and critical technologies, being two of them Information and Communications Technology and Information Society. It is also significant the Galician Strategic Research Plan 2010 of the "Xunta de Galicia" (Galician Regional Government), which analyses the backwardness of the Galician companies in R&D and identifies the priority areas for improvement, by pointing Information and Communications Technology as the second key aspect in order of importance in which Galician companies need more innovation. The smart specialization strategy of Galicia 2014-2020 (RIS3 Galicia), which defines the framework for research and innovation policies in the community for the period 2014-2020, also includes among its priorities the development of various sectors through the intensive use of ICTs (Tourism, Aquaculture, Active Aging), as well as the promotion of ICTs themselves as a driving sector of the knowledge economy in Galicia.

In short, there is broad consensus on the importance of the ICT, both within a global socio-economic environment and within the closest one, and, consequently, on the deficit of properly trained researches to carry out R&D tasks in this sector. Doc_TIC aims to meet this demand in the same way the PhD programmes which it replaces had been doing.

Regarding the scientific soundness of the research groups it can be said they all belong to the ICT field. Eight of them are beneficiaries of funding from the Programme "Programa de Consolidación e Estruturación de Unidades de Investigación convocadas por la DXPCT y la DX I+D+i" from the "Xunta de Galicia" (Galician Regional Government). On the whole they cover almost all of the research areas that can be included in the ICT field: Telematics, Signal Processing in Communications and Multimedia, and Radio Systems, including a large number of research topics within each area. Over the years, this set of groups has proven competence to achieve quality scientific production, a high level of transfer to the industrial sector, and high level of public funding for their research projects, achieved as well in competitive calls at regional, national and European level. Additionally, most of the groups, from their inception, are part of the research centre of the University of Vigo "Atlantic Research Centre for Informationand Communication Technologies - AtlantTIC", whose strategic plan has defined as priority action line the establishment of an internationally renowned PhD Programme.

At the organisational level, the doctoral programme is attached to the International Doctoral School (EIDO) of the University of Vigo.

According to the Doctoral Studies Regulations, the EIDO is responsible for the organisation, planning, management, supervision and monitoring of the overall offer of doctoral activities available from the University of Vigo, with the aim of developing a flexible, interdisciplinary and quality doctoral training model. Article 3 of the Internal Regulations of the EIDO, meanwhile, states that all doctoral programmes adapted to RD 99/2011 and having a favourable verification report from the Council of Universities and authorisation from the Xunta de Galicia will be integrated into the school. For administrative management purposes, the University of Vigo has postgraduate management units within the academic area in all faculties and schools, which work in coordination with the EIDO and the Postgraduate Service to make it easier for students and the administrative management units to come together. For this purpose, the programme is linked to the School of Telecommunications Engineering, which is considered the students' contact centre for the purposes of enrolment and student representation.

DocTIC Academic Committee, consisting of 8 full members and 8 substitutes, represents all of the research groups, distributed as follows:

Group	Member	Substitute
GTM +LBC	1	1
SR	1	1
GPSC	1	1
GDAF +COM	1	1
NetLab + IC Lab	1	1
GSSI	1	1
GIST	1	1
GTI	1	1

One of the full members will act as Coordinator of the PhD Programme and Chair of the Academic Committee, and another one as Secretary. They will be chosen according to the operating regulations of the Academic Committee of the PhD Programme.

1.6. Collaboration

The research groups underpinning the DocTIC Programme have a long collaboration path with other national and foreign research groups, embodied in the execution of joint projects, research stays and publications.

Below are listed, firstly, the partnerships by agreement, and then the detailed partnerships with research groups, departments and universities, mentioning the actions carried out and the most important outputs of these partnerships. Finally, the participation of professors in different projects and multilateral research networks are mentioned.

Partnerships by agreement:

The collaboration agreements promoted by lecturers from the DocTIC programme (GreenIT, GreenTech, EuroInKANEt, E-Gov-TN) have facilitated the incorporation of foreign students. In addition to these agreements, three more have been signed with the Vrije Universiteit Brussel University (Belgium), the Dutch company Microflown Technologies, and the Gradiant research centre, for the completion of three co-directed theses. At present, the second edition of an agreement is underway with the Egyptian universities Beni-Suef University and the Arab Academy for Science, Technology & Maritime Transport to promote collaboration and mobility of academic staff and students between those universities (KA107-Egypt. Another agreement with the same aim exists with the Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (HCMUT) and Hanoi University of Science and Technology (HUST) of Vietnam (KA07-Vietnam. Finally, there is another (KA-107 Jordan) with the Applied Science Private University (ASU), Jordan. Two further agreements are also in force to carry out industrial doctoral theses in collaboration with companies: European Doctorate in Indium Phosphide PIC Fabrication Technology (EDIFY, http://doctic.uvigo.es/edify-itn), in collaboration with Smart photonics (Eindhoven), Bright photonics (Eindhoven), Synopsys, Photon design (UK), and DRIVE-IN in collaboration with VPI photonics (Berlin), HHI (Berlin), Bright photonics (Berlin), and the CTAG.

Students and faculty of the DocTIC programme participate in the SatNex network, the ESA-supported European network on satellite communication (https://satnex4.org/).

A total of 30 theses are co-directed with research staff from outside the programme: from foreign and national universities and research centres, with the following co-directors:

Hans Elias de Bree from Microflown Technologies (Nerderlands)
Tom Lenaerts from Brussels Vrije University (Belgium)
Javier Vales Alonso from Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena
Eduardo Omar Sosa from Universidad Nacional de Misiones - Posadas (Argentina)
Esteban Vázquez Fernández from centro tecnológico Gradiant
Luis Côrte-Real from Universidade de Porto (Portugal)
Paul Tasker from Cardiff University (UK)
Antonio López Medina from Consellería de Sanidade- Xunta de Galicia
Daniel González Jiménez from centro tecnológico Gradiant
Rafael Ferreira da Silva Caldeirinha from Polytechnic Institute of Leiria (Portugal)
Stephen L. Macknik from Suny Downstate Medical Center (USA)
Mª Benedita Campos Neves Malheiro from Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto (Portugal)
Otman Aghzout from Universidad Abdelmalek Essaâdi University (UAE)
Jack Fernando Bravo Torres from Universidad Politécnica Salesiana (Ecuador)
Regina Motz Carrano from Universidad de la República (Uruguay)
Patricia Arias Carbados from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
Carmela Troncoso de École Polytechnique Féderale de Lausanne (Switzerland)
Guilherme del Fiol from University of Utah (USA)
Antonio Constantino Lopes Martins from Politécnico do Porto (Portugal)
Antonio Alberto dos Santos Pinto from Politécnico do Porto (Portugal)
Ayday Erman from the Case Western Reserve University (EEUU)
Daniel Erro Eslava from Universidad del País Vasco
Marta Sestelo Pérez from centro tecnológico Gradiant
Constantino Martins Lopes (FEUP – Porto)
David Jiménez Cabello from Universidad de Alcalá.
Guilherme del Fiol from Utah University, (USA).
Antonio Vieira de Castro from Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto (Portugal)
Juan Ramón Troncoso-Pastoriza from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland)
Ilias Politis from Universidade de Patras (Greece)
António Pinto from Escola Superior de Tecnologia e Gestão (ESTG) do Politécnico do Porto (Portugal)

COLLABORATIONS WITH GROUPS AND DEPARTMENTS FROM OTHER UNIVERSITIES

These collaborations will be formalized in the medium term by signing the relevant agreements with the ultimate goal of all the collaborations being institutional.

The programme benefits from the informal collaborations between the research groups that are part of DocTIC, because, thanks to the participation in international networks and projects, DocTIC students carry out research stays. All these formal and informal collaborations contributed to improve the mobility and internationalisation of the DocTIC programme.

Collaboration with the University of Texas at Austin (USA)

Professor Roberto López Valcarce has published works with research staff from this university in the area of millimetre-band communications:

R. López-Valcarce and González-Prelcic, N., “Analog beamforming for full-duplex millimeter wave communication”, in 16th Int. Symp. Wireless Commun. Syst. (ISWCS), Oulu, Finland, 2019.
R. López-Valcarce and González-Prelcic, N., “Beamformer design for full-duplex amplify-and-forward millimeter wave relays”, in 16th Int. Symp. Wireless Commun. Syst. (ISWCS), Oulu, Finland, 2019.
J. Rodríguez-Fernández, López-Valcarce, R., and González-Prelcic, N., “Frequency-selective hybrid precoding and combining for mmWave MIMO systems with per-antenna power constraints”, in IEEE Int. Conf. Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), Brighton, UK, 2019, pp. 4794-4798.
R. Lopez-Valcarce; N. González-Prelcic; C. Rusu; R. W. Heath, "Hybrid Precoders and Combiners for mmWave MIMO Systems with Per-Antenna Power Constraints," in IEEE Global Comunn. Conf. (GLOBECOM), Washington DC, 2016.
A. Rico-Alvariño, R. López-Valcarce, C. Mosquera, and R. W. Heath, “FER Estimation in a Memoryless BSC with Variable Frame Length and Unreliable ACK/NAK Feedback”, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, vol. 16, no. 6, pp. 3661 - 3673, 2017.

Collaboration with the Aalto University, (Finland)

Professor Roberto López Valcarce has published works with research staff from this university in the area of Full-Duplex Communications

E. Antonio-Rodríguez, Werner, S., López-Valcarce, R., and Wichman, R., “MMSE filter design for Full-Duplex filter-and-forward MIMO relays under limited dynamic range”, Signal Processing, vol. 156, pp. 208-219, 2019.
E. Antonio-Rodríguez, Werner, S., López-Valcarce, R., Riihonen, T., and Wichman, R., “Wideband full-duplex MIMO relays with blind adaptive self-interference cancellation”, Signal Processing, vol. 130, pp. 74-85, 2017.

Se ha codirigido la tesis doctoral de Emilio Antonio-Rodríguez, defendida en 2018.

Collaboration with the University of Luxemburg.

Professor Carlos Mosquera collaborates with this University through joint participation in projects, publications and staff exchange. PhD student Anxo Tato Arias completed a four-month research stay in 2018 and recently published:

A. Tato, Andrenacci, S., Lagunas, E., Chatzinotas, S., and Mosquera, C., “Link Adaptation and SINR errors in Practical Multicast Multibeam Satellite Systems with Linear Precoding”, International Journal of Satellite Communications and Networking, 2020.

Collaboration with the Genth University, (Belgium).

The Sistemas Radio group continues to collaborate with Professor Jo Verhaevert from the University of Ghent. In 2017 Professor Jo Verhaevert visited the University of Vigo and gave a talk to DocTIC students. In addition, the following joint publications have been produced:

Laurens Vercauteren, Iñigo Cuiñas, Jo Verhaevert, "Learning through play: an educational computer game to introduce radar fundamentals", IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine, vol.57, no.2, pp.66-74, April 2015
Tim Gaspard, Alejandro Cuevas, Iñigo Cuiñas, Isabel Expósito, Jo Verhaevert, "Electromagnetic characterization of cola drinks", Measurement, vol. 107, pp.111-119, 2017
Kjell Dhoore, Isabel Expósito, Iñigo Cuiñas, Jo Verhaevert, "A dual-band antenna for extending cellular coverage by using energy harvesting strategy", Microwave and Optical Technology Letters, vol.60, no.12, pp.2968-2972, December 2018
Miguel Riobó, Rob Hofman, Iñigo Cuiñas, Manuel García Sánchez, Jo Verhaevert, "Wideband performance comparison between the 40 GHz and 60 GHz frequency bands for indoor radio channels", MDPI Electronics, vol.8, no.1234, 2019
Wout Debaenst, Arne Feys, Iñigo Cuiñas, Manuel García Sánchez, Jo Verhaevert, "RMS Delay Spread vs. Coherence Bandwidth from 5G Indoor Radio Channel Measurements at 3.5 GHz Band", MDPI Sensors, vol.20, no.750, 2020

Professor Carlos Mosquera also collaborates with this University through joint participation in scientific projects and publications, which have resulted in several papers at scientific conferences with Professor Nele Noels. Moreover, the publication:

Carlos Mosquera, Nele Noels, Tomás Ramírez, Marius Caus, Adriano Pastore, "Space-Time Rate Splitting for the MISO BC with Magnitude CSIT", en revisión, IEEE Transactions on Communications, 2021.

Collaboration with thel Instituto Politécnico de Leiría, (Portugal)

There is close collaboration between the Radio Systems group of the University of Vigo and the Antennas and Propagation group of the Polytechnic of Leiria. Two students from Leiria have completed their PhD studies at the University of Vigo, reading their theses in 2018. More than twenty joint publications have been made, the latest being:

David Ferreira, Rafael F. S. Caldeirinha, Telmo R. Fernandes, Iñigo Cuiñas, "Hollow clay brick wall propagation analysis and modified brick design for enhanced WiFi coverage", IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, vol.66, no.1, pp.331-339, January 2018
Paula Gómez-Pérez, Rafael F.S. Caldeirinha, Telmo R. Fernandes, Iñigo Cuiñas, "Using Artificial Neural Networks to Scale and Infer Vegetation Media Phase Functions", Neural Computing and Applications, vol.29, no.12, pp.01563-1574, 2018
David Ferreira, Iñigo Cuiñas, Rafael F.S. Caldeirinha, Telmo R. Fernandes, "Assessing Transparency Control of Southern European Building Wall Structures Using Frequency-Selective Surfaces", IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine, vol.60, no.5, pp.137-153, October 2018
David Ferreira, Rafael F.S. Caldeirinha, Iñigo Cuiñas, Telmo R. Fernandes, "A Review of Manufacturing Materials and Production Methods for Frequency-Selective Structures, IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine, vol.60, no.10, pp.110-119, December 2018
David Ferreira, Iñigo Cuiñas, Telmo R. Fernandes, Rafael F.S. Caldeirinha, "Multi-Semicircle based Single- and Dual-Band Narrowband Frequency Selective Surfaces", IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine, vol.61, no.2, pp.32-39, April 2019.
Nuno R. Leonor, Rafael F. S. Caldeirinha, Manuel García Sánchez, and Telmo R. Fernandes, “A 2D ray-tracing based model for wave propagation through forests at micro and millimeter wave,” IEEE Access, vol.6, pp.32097-32108, May 2018.
Rodolfo Gomes, Luís Sismeiro, Carlos Ribeiro, Rafael F. S. Caldeirinha,Telmo R. Fernandes, Manuel G. Sánchez and Akram Hammoudeh, “Will COTS RF front-ends really cope with 5G requirements at mmWave?,” IEEE Access, vol. 6, pp. 38745 - 38769, June 2018.
Nuno R. Leonor, Telmo R. Fernandes, Manuel García Sánchez and Rafael F. S. Caldeirinha, “A 3D Model for Millimeter-Wave Propagation Through Vegetation Media Using Ray-Tracing,” IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, vol.67, no.6, pp.4313-4318, June 2019.

Collaboration with the Tecnical Univerity of Kaunas, (Lithuania)

Professors Algimantas Valinevicius and Darius Andriukaitis visited the University of Vigo in 2018 and 2019, respectively, each giving a lecture to DocTIC students.

Collaboration with the Instituto Politécnico de Viana do Castelo, (Portugal)

The researcher Sara Paiva completed her doctoral studies and defended her doctoral thesis at the University of Vigo under the supervision of professors Manuel Ramos Cabrer and Alberto Gil Solla in 2011. As a result, a series of joint publications were produced, among which the following book chapters are of note:

Sara Paiva; Manuel Ramos Cabrer; Alberto Gil Solla. Precision: A Semantic Search Guided-Based System. Systems Theory: Perspectives, Applications and Developments. Nova Publishers, 2014.
Sara Paiva; Manuel Ramos Cabrer; Alberto Gil Solla. GSSP–A Generic Semantic Search Platform: Evolve from a Traditional to a Semantic Search System. Improving Organizational Effectiveness with Enterprise Information Systems. IGI Global, 2015.

Professor Pedro Pinto collaborates with professors Ana Fernández Vilas and Rebeca Díaz Redondo in the co-direction of several students in the cybersecurity area.

Collaboration with the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Norway)

That resulted in:

A. Rodriguez-Molares, L. Lovstakken, H. Torp, J. Martín Herrero, T.G. Bjastad “Detection of the Intima-Lumen interface by coherent combination of RF scanlines” IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium (IUS2015) IUS Proceedings ISBN:978-1-4799-8182-3 DOI: 10.1109/ULTSYM.2015.0043 Taipei (Taiwan), 21-24 October 2015

Collaboration with the Korean Polar Research Institute and the Portuugueese polar Project:

Participation in the 2013-2014 Antarctic Expedition of the KOPRI (Korean Polar Research Institute) in collaboration with the Portuguese Polar Programme (PROPOLAR), including 1 month stay at the Antarctic Base "King Sejong" (KOPRI), Barton Peninsula (Antarctica).

M. Calviño-Cancela, J. Martín-Herrero Spectral Discrimination of Vegetation Classes in Ice-Free Areas of Antarctica Remote Sensing (2016) 8(10):856 DOI: 10.3390/rs8100856

Collaboration with the State University of New York at Binghamton (USA)

Collaboration in which Professor Pedro Comesaña Alfaro undertook a research stay in 2015. This collaboration resulted in two joint publications:

"Improving selection-channel-aware steganalysis features", Tomáš Denemark, Jessica Fridrich, Pedro Comesaña-Alfaro. Electronic Imaging, Media Watermarking, Security, and Forensics 2016.-
"Effect of compression on sensor-fingerprint based camera identification", Miroslav Goljan, Mo Chen, Pedro Comesaña, Jessica Fridrich. Electronic Imaging, Media Watermarking, Security, and Forensics 2016.

Collaboration with the University of Oulu (Finland)

Research collaboration with the Department of Computer Science & Engineering of the University of Oulu (Finland) initiated with participation in the 2011 UBIChallenge by professors Felipe Gil Castiñeira, Enrique Costa Montenegro, Pedro Rodríguez Hernández, Francisco Javier González Castaño and Cristina López Bravo (http://www.ubioulu.fi/en/UBI-challenge).

F. Gil Castiñeira (UVIGO), E. Costa Montenegro (UVIGO), F.J: González Castaño (UVIGO), T. Ojala (UOULU), R. Bose (NOKIA), Experiences inside the Ubiquitous Oulu Smart City, Computer, vol. 44, no. 6, pp. 48-55, June 2011.
Peltonen, Ella, et al. "6G white paper on edge intelligence." arXiv preprint arXiv:2004.14850 (2020).

Collaboration with the Instituto de Telecomunicaçoes de Aveiro (Portugal)

Research collaboration of the GTI group with the related group "Mobile Systems - Av" of the Instituto de Telecomunicaçoes (Portugal), with professors Jonathan Rodriguez, Firooz Bashashi Saghezchi, Claudia Barbosa.

Capítulo de libro (pendiente de publicación): Drive towards 6G. Firooz B. Saghezchi, Jonathan Rodriguez, Zoran Vujicic, Alberto Nascimento, Kazi Mohammed, Saidul Huq, Felipe Gil-Castiñeira

Colaboración del grupo GDAF con esta misma universidad, qua ha dado lugar a la publicación:

Maryam Sajedin; I.T.E. Elfergani; Jonathan Rodriguez; Raed Abd-Alhameed; Monica Fernandez Barciela “A Survey on RF and Microwave Doherty Power Amplifier for Mobile Handset Applications” Electronics, 8 (6) 2019.

Collaboration with the Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin (Ireland) and CONNECT - the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Future Networks and Communications.

Collaboration of Professor Felipe Gil with Diarmuid Collins as a result of participation in the Fed4Fire+ and ORCA projects, resulting in a communication sent to the congress, pending acceptance.

Collaboration with the Università di Siena (Italy).

This collaboration dates back to 2010 and over the years has resulted in research stays, joint participation in the Ecrypt European Network of Excellence, in the European REWIND project, and in the production of publications. The latest publications are:

"Video integrity verification and GOP size estimation via generalized variation of prediction footprint", David Vázquez-Padín, Marco Fontani, Dasara Shullani, Fernando Pérez-González, Alessandro Piva, Mauro Barni. IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, 15, 1815-1830, 2019.
B. Tondi, P. Comesaña-Alfaro, F. Pérez-González and M. Barni. Smart Detection of Line-Search Oracle Attacks, IEEE Trans. on Information Forensics and Security, vol.
12, no. 3, pp. 588-603, March 2017.

In which researchers also participated from the Università degli Studi di Firenze (Italy)

Collaboration with the Università degli Studi di Firenze (Italy)

Collaboration with the University of Trento (Italy)

Collaboration by Professor Fernando Pérez González with Professor Giulia Boato in the direction of a doctoral thesis and publications:

C. Pasquini, G. Boato and F. Pérez-González. Statistical Detection of JPEG Traces in Digital Images in Uncompressed Formats, IEEE Trans. on Information Forensics
and Security, vol. 12, no. 12, pp. 2890-2905, December 2017.
C. Pasquini, P. Schottle, R. Bohme, G. Boato, and F. Pérez-González. Forensics of High Quality and Nearly Identical JPEG Image Recompression. 4th ACM Workshop on Information Hiding and Multimedia Security, IHMMSEC 2016, Vigo, Spain, June, 2016.

Collaboration with the Politécnico de Milano (Italy)

Collaboration with Professor Stefano Tubaro, with whom Professor Fernando Pérez González has published two joint publications in 2017 and 2019:

L. Bondi, P. Bestagini, F. Pérez-González and S. Tubaro. Improving PRNU Compression through Preprocessing, Quantization and Coding, IEEE Trans. on Information
Forensics and Security, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 608-620, March 2019.
L. Bondi, F. Pérez-González, P. Bestagini and S. Tubaro. Design of Projection Matrices for PRNU Compression. IEEE International Workshop on Information Forensics
and Security, WIFS 2017, Rennes, France, December 2017.

Collaboration with the Case Western University (USA)

Prof. Erman Aday has co-directed a thesis with Prof. Fernando Párez González and they have several joint publications.

Collaboration with the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland)

Collaboration of Prof. Fernando Pérez González with Professor Carmela Troncoso, with whom hw has co-directed a thesis and produced several joint publications, and with the researcher Juan Ramón Troncoso-Pastoriza, with whom he has produced several joint publications and co-directed the thesis of Alberto Pedrouzo:

A. Pedrouzo-Ulloa, J. Troncoso-Pastoriza, N. Gama, M. Georgieva, F. Pérez-González. Multiquadratic Rings and Walsh-Hadamard Transforms for Oblivious Linear Func-
tion Evaluation. IEEE International Workshop on Information Forensics and Security, WIFS 2020, New York, NY, December 2020.
S. Oya, C. Troncoso and F. Pérez-González. Rethinking Location Privacy for Unknown Mobility Behaviors. 4th IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy,
EuroS&P 2019, Stockholm, Sweden, June 2019.
A. Pedrouzo-Ulloa, J.R. Troncoso-Pastoriza, and F. Pérez-González. Revisiting Multivariate Lattices for Encrypted Signal Processing, in ACM Information Hiding and
Multimedia Security Workshop (IH&MMSec), Paris, France, 2019.
A. Pedrouzo-Ulloa, M. Masciopinto, J.R. Troncoso and F. Pérez-González. Camera Attribution Forensic Analyzer in the Encrypted Domain. IEEE International Workshop
on Information Forensics and Security, WIFS 2018, Hong-Kong, December 2018.
S. Oya, C. Troncoso and F. Pérez-González. Is Geo-Indistinguishability What you are Looking for?. Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society, WPES'17, Dallas,
TX, October 2017.
S. Oya, C. Troncoso and F. Pérez-González. Back to the drawing board: Revisiting the design of optimal location privacy-preserving mechanisms. ACM Conference on
Computer and Communications Security, CCS'17, Dallas, TX, November 2017.
A. Pedrouzo-Ulloa, J.R. Troncoso-Pastoriza and F. Pérez-González. Number Theoretic Transforms for Secure Signal Processing, IEEE Trans. on Information Forensics
and Security, vol. 12, no. 5, pp. 1125-1140, May 2017.
J.R. Troncoso, A. Pedrouzo-Ulloa and F. Pérez-González. Secure Genomic Susceptibility Testing based on Lattice Encryption. IEEE International Conference on Acoustics,
Speech and Signal Processing, ICASSP'17, New Orleans, LA, March 2017.

Collaboration with the Manchester Metropolitan University (UK).

Professors Rebeca Díaz Redondo and Ana Fernández Vilas collaborate with Professor Keeley Crockett in the co-tutorship of students in the cybersecurity area. A thesis is being co-directed and is due to be presented in November 2021. Mobility actions have been undertaken, such as a stay by Professor Ana Fernández Vilas from January to May 2017 and there have been several co-authored publications:

Evans, L., Owda, M., Keeley C. Fernández Vilas, A. “Credibility Assessment of Financial Stock Tweets” Expert Systems with Applications
Evans, L., Owda, M., Crockett, K., Fernández Vilas, A “A Methodology for the Resolution of Cashtag Collisions on Twitter - A Natural Language Processing & Data Fusion Approach”
Expert Systems With Applications
Evans, L., Owda, M., Crockett, K. Fernández Vilas, A. “Big Data Fusion Model for Heterogeneous Financial Market Data (FinDF)” International Conference on Intelligent Systems (Londres, UK)
Fernández Vilas, A., Díaz Redondo, R. P., Crockett, K., Owda, M., Evans,, L. “Twitter Permeability to financial events: an experiment towards a model for sensing irregularities” Multimedia Tools and Applications.

Professor Keeley Crockett is a member of the MAGOS project team: Detecting irregularities in distributed data sources and processes (2018-2020). (TEC2017-84197-C4-2-R).

Collaboration with the Telecom Sud Paris, Paris, (France).

Professor Sophie Chabridon collaborates in the co-tutorship of PhD students including mobility actions with Professors Ana Fernández Vilas and Rebeca Díaz Redondo, in the area of Fog Computing. They have produced several joint publications:

Fátima Castro-Jul, Rebeca P. Díaz-Redondo, Ana Fernández-Vilas, Sophie Chabridon, Denis Conan, “Fog architectures and sensor location certification in distributed event-based systems”. Sensors
Castro Jul, F., Conan, D., Chabridon, S., Díaz Redondo, R.P., Fernández Vilas, A., Taconet, C “Combining Fog Architectures and Distributed Event-Based Systems for Mobile Sensor Location Certification”. 11th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence (UCAmI 2017)

Professor Sophie Chabridon is a member of the MAGOS project team: Detecting irregularities in distributed data sources and processes (2018-2020). (TEC2017-84197-C4-2-R).

Collaboration with the University of Paris Nanterre (France)

This collaboration has resulted in research stays by a doctoral student and joint publications:

H. Klaina, B. Ratni, A. Alejos, O. Aghzout, N. Burokur, “Directive Dual-Band Fabry-Perot Cavity Antenna for 5G–IoT Near-Ground Communications”, 13th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation, March 2019.

Collaboration with the Tecnológico de Monterrey (Mexico)

This has resulted in the joint production of more than ten publications, the most recent of which is:

Fidel Alejandro Rodríguez-Corbo, Leyre Azpilicueta, Mikel Celaya-Echarri, Ana Vázquez Alejos, Francisco Falcone, “Propagation Models in Vehicular Communications”, IEEE Access, vol. 9, pp. 15902 – 15913, 2021. (JCR: 4.64, 2020; Q1).

Collaboration with the University of Abdelmalek Essaadi (Morocco)

Professor Ana Vázquez Alejos has co-directed two doctoral theses with Professor Otman Aghzout of the same university. There have been 35 joint publications, the most recent being:

H. Klaina, O. Aghzout, Ana Vazquez Alejos, Leyre Azpilicueta, Imanol Picallo, Peio Lopez Iturri, Francisco Falcone, “Characterization of Impairments in the Detection of RFID Tags for Smart Agriculture Applications”, IEEE APS-URSI, Montréal, Quebec, Canada, July 5-10, 2020.

Collaboration with the New Mexico State University (USA)

Collaboration in which Professor Ana Vázquez Alejos undertook an extended research stay within the Marie Curie programme. A total of 19 joint publications have been made, the most recent being:

Rowida Meligy, Imanol Picallo, Hicham Klaina, Peio Lopez Iturri, José Javier Astrain, Mohamed Rady, Jesús Villadangos, Ana Vazquez Alejos, Francisco Falcone, “Analysis and Design of IoT Enabled Low Cost Distributed Angle Measurement System”, 6th International Electronic Conference on Sensors and Applications, 15-30 November 2019.

Collaboration with the Sharif University of Technology, Tehran (Iran)

That resulted in:

R. Kazemi, F. Pérez-González, M.A. Akhaee and F. Behnia. Data hiding robust to mobile communication vocoders, IEEE Trans. on Multimedia, vol. 18, no. 12, pp.
2345-2357, December 2016.

Collaboration with the Bilkent University, Ankara, (Turkey)

That resulted in:

M. Namazi, C. Eryonucu, E. Ayday and F. Pérez-González. Dynamic Attribute-Based Privacy-Preserving Genomic Susceptibility Testing. 34th Annual ACM Symposium
on Applied Computing, SAC 2019, Limassol, Cyprus, April 2019.

Collaboration with the Innsbruck U. (Austria)

That resulted in:

C. Pasquini, P. Schottle, R. Bohme, G. Boato, and F. Pérez-González. Forensics of High Quality and Nearly Identical JPEG Image Recompression. 4th ACM Workshop on Information Hiding and Multimedia Security, IHMMSEC 2016, Vigo, Spain, June, 2016.

Collaboration with the Aix-Marseille Université (France)

Professor Enrique Costa Montenegro collaborates with Patrice Bellot, from this French university. Ms Bellot has also been the supervisor of doctoral stays made by a student on our programme. The collaboration has resulted in the following publications:

Tamara Álvarez-López, Milagros Fernández-Gavilanes, Enrique Costa-Montenegro, Jonathan Juncal-Martínez, Silvia García-Méndez, Patrice Bellot “A Book Reviews Dataset for Aspect Based Sentiment Analysis” 8th Language & Technology Conference, November 17-19, 2017, Poznań, Poland.
Tamara Álvarez-López, Milagros Fernández-Gavilanes, Enrique Costa-Montenegro, Patrice Bellot “A Proposal for Book Oriented Aspect Based Sentiment Analysis: Comparison over Domains” International Conference on Applications of Natural Language to Information Systems
Tamara Álvarez-López, Patrice Bellot, Milagros Fernández-Gavilanes, Enrique Costa-Montenegro “From Genre Classification to Aspect Extraction: New Annotation Schemas for Book Reviews”2018 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence (WI)

Collaboration with the Porto Research, Technology & Innovation Center (Portugal)

Collaboration is maintained with Professor Luis Miguel Pinto which focuses on the co-direction of doctoral theses and the preparation of project applications.

Collaboration with the Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto, (Portugal)

Professor Juan Carlos Burguillo Rial has co-directed two doctoral theses with Professor Benedita Malheiro. Thirty joint publications have been produced, the most recent being:

F Leal, B Malheiro, B Veloso, JC Burguillo (2020). Responsible processing of crowdsourced tourism data. Journal of Sustainable Tourism.

Collaboration with the Universidad Libre de Bruselas (Belgium)

Professor Juan Carlos Burguillo Rial has co-directed a doctoral thesis with Professor Tom Lenaerts. Five joint publications have been produced, the most recent being:

EF Domingos, J Grujić, JC Burguillo, FC Santos, T Lenaerts (2021). Modeling behavioral experiments on uncertainty and cooperation with population-based reinforcement learning. Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory 109, 102299

Collaboration with the Cardiff University (UK)

The GDAF group has a long-standing collaboration with Prof. P.J. Tasker of the University of Cardiff. The most recent publications are:

M. Fernandez-Barciela, A. M. Pelaez-Perez, S. Woodington, J. I. Alonso and P. J. Tasker, “Stretching the Design: Extending Analytical Circuit Design from the Linear to the Nonlinear Domain” IEEE Microwave Magazine Vol.15, no. 6, pp.106-120, 2014
Alejandro Rodríguez-Testera; Ana Peláez-Pérez; Mónica Fernández-Barciela; Paul J Tasker: 'Design of Injection-Locked Oscillator Circuits Using an HBT X-parameterTM -Based Model', IET Microwaves, Antennas and Propagation Journal, 9 (4) 380 – 388, 2015.

Collaboration with the Universidade do Minho, (Portugal)

Professors Luis Álvarez Sabucedo and Juan Manuel Santos have collaborated in recent years with researchers from the Computer Communications and Networks Group at this university. They have undertaken research stays for doctoral students at the Universidade do Minho and have recently jointly published the following paper:

Carvalho P., Rito-Lima S., Álvarez-Sabucedo L., Santos-Gago J.M., & Silva J.M.C.: Towards a holistic semantic support for context-aware network monitoring. Computing 102:2565–2585 (2020).