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Kato Laboratory at Graduate School of Information Sciences, Tohoku University, is involved in research & development, education and scholarly activities in the broad area of communication networks and systems. Our research focuses on next-generation Internet and pattern recognition applied technologies. The research areas of interest include, but are not limited to wireless and mobile communications, Low Earth Orbit satellite communication systems, network security, development of ¡Èsmart¡É applications for next generation networks, and character and document recognition using statistics and probability.

Following are brief introductions of the key research concentration areas:


- Wireless and Mobile Communications -

The field of wireless and mobile communications is one of the fastest growing areas of the networking industry. Wireless communications enable users to have access to their desired data beyond time and space limitations, above all with higher degree of mobility. The research topics of interests are listed hereunder:

  • Mobility management methods
  • Contents delivery techniques over heterogeneous wireless networks
  • Mobile Ad Hoc Networks
  • Routing protocols for wireless networks
  • Development of schemes for guaranteeing Quality of Service in wireless networks


- Low Earth Orbit Satellite Communication Systems -

Because of their extensive geographical reach, flexible and rapid deployment features, and inherent multicast capabilities, satellite network systems are seen as an attractive solution to realize the dream of global personal communications. Given the recent advances and ongoing improvements in satellite technologies, broadband satellite based services are likely to open a promising and strong market for service providers and operators. This research program includes different issues in satellite networks, mainly those related to frequent handover occurrences and unfairness among long and short RTT connections. Our research in this topic includes:

  • Location-aware mobility management methods for satellite networks
  • Contents delivery over satellite networks
  • TCP performance over satellite networks
  • Efficient and fair transmission protocols for satellite networks
  • Design and development of an efficient integration of satellites with terrestrial networks


- Network Security -

Recent events have illustrated that the underlying Internet infrastructure is exposed to a high risk of malicious attacks. Without adequate security, cyber terrorism may deprive large enterprises from making efficient use of the Internet and defense organizations may fail to guarantee the safety of their personnel in battlefield scenarios. To secure the usage of the Internet, its vulnerability to these illegitimate attacks should be investigated. This challenging task underpins the research work of this area. Our research in this topic includes:

  • Efficient and scalable tools for network traffic monitoring
  • Denial-of-Service Trace-back techniques
  • Ingress filtering techniques for attack preventions


- Next-Generation Network Applications -

With the recent developments of mobile computing and increasing popularity of wireless communication, video conferencing or accessing the Internet content from mobile devices (e.g. handset, pagers and PDA) is no longer an imaginary scene. The following lists some topics we investigate for the development of next generation ¡Èsmart¡É network applications:

  • Wireless Application Protocols (WAP)
  • QoS and traffic classes in mobile networks
  • Human-oriented network interface applications
  • Context-aware and location-aware distributed services
  • ¡ÈSmart¡É applications for high-speed and large-scale mobile networks


- Pattern Recognition Technologies -

Developing intelligent computer systems with the ability of processing information in a human-like manner is considered to be one of the most challenging tasks in the computing area. Pattern recognition techniques play a major role in realizing this vision. In Kato laboratory, we search the usage of statistical and neural approaches in the development of practical recognition systems. The following gives a list of the topics under studies in this area:

  • Usage of multi-dimensional network information for the development of efficient management applications
  • Usage of statistical information in the development of highly accurate handwritten character recognition systems.