10 of Today's Really Cool Network & IT Research Projects

Here's what top university and college researchers are cooking up for wireless, cloud, security and other tech innovations

New enterprise and consumer network technologies are coming fast and furious these days via well-heeled startups, and yes, even more established tech players. But further back in the pipeline, in the research labs of universities and colleges around the world, that's where the really cool stuff is happening. Take a peek at some of the more intriguing projects in areas ranging from wireless to security to open source to robotics and cloud computing.

University at Buffalo and Northeastern University researchers are developing hardware and software to enable underwater telecommunications to catch up with over-the-air networks. This advancement could be a boon for search-and-rescue operations, tsunami detection, environmental monitoring and more. Sound waves used underwater are just no match for the radio waves used in over-the-air communications, but the researchers are putting smart software-defined radio technology to work in combination with underwater acoustic modems. A ten-fold improvement could be had, if early testing is to be believed.

"The remarkable innovation and growth we've witnessed in land-based wireless communications has not yet occurred in underwater sensing networks, but we're starting to change that," says Dimitris Pados, PhD, Clifford C. Furnas Professor of Electrical Engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at UB, a co-author of the study...