Situated and autonomic communication an EC FET European initiative

The recent advances in communication and networking technologies and the way in which these are being integrated in the human, working and social framework have made it increasingly evident that there are a number of technical and socio-economic areas whose understanding is still less than satisfactory, and in which long-term research is needed. Current communication/networking solutions appear neither tasknor knowledge-driven, and they are not fully scalable in relation to the ongoing explosion of communication needs, at macro and micro levels. In general, we can observe that the increasingly higher density mesh of components of communications systems and the resulting growing complexity of control requires more and more distributed and self-organizing structures, relying on simple and dependable elements able to collaborate to produce sophisticated behaviors. The main feature of future communication paradigms will be the ability to adapt to an evolving situation, where new resources can become available, administrative domains can change and economic models can vary accordingly. To promote and structure the European research efforts in this long-term research area, a proactive initiative titled ”Situated and Autonomic Communications” was defined in the Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) part of the IST research program funded by the European Commission. Its definition took place in several open workshops organized by FET under the theme ”Communication Paradigms for 2020” (see http://www.cordis.lu/ist/fet/comms.htm).