Section: Partnerships and Cooperations

European Initiatives

User-Centric Networking (UCN)

• Type: FP7

• Instrument: Specific Targeted Research Project

• Duration: October 2013 - September 2016

• Coordinator: Technicolor

• Other partners: Eurecom, Fraunhofer FOKUS, Intamac, University of Cambridge, University of Nottingham, Martel, NICTA, Portugal Telecom

• Inria contact: Renata Teixeira

• Abstract: This project introduces the concept of User Centric Networking (UCN), which is a new paradigm leveraging user information at large to deliver novel content recommendation systems and content delivery frameworks. UCN recommendation and content delivery systems will leverage in-depth knowledge about users to help them find relevant content, identify nearby network resources and plan how to deliver the actual content to the appropriate device at the desired time. These systems will additionally account for influences from users' social networks on their content consumption. The goal of this project is to design a UCN system architecture for user-centric connected media services. We will build UCN upon three complementary research pillars:

  1. understanding user context: This data can be broadly categorized into three groups. First, the physical and environmental context A second category of data is that which can be extracted from social network interactions. The third category of data is behavioural

  2. profiling and predicting user interests: By gaining a deep understanding of the user, we may be able to cast a much wider net in the content ocean and locate a richer catalogue of interesting content for the user

  3. personalizing content delivery: Rather than the user (or the service provider) having to worry about the mode of connectivity, device, service, location, etc., the network intelligently directs and adapts the transport stream, or perhaps pre-fetches and replicates content chunks, to the particular and immediate needs of the user.

• See also: http://usercentricnetworking.eu/