Multimedia Communications Lab

The Multimedia Communications Laboratory (MCL) at Boston University focuses on topics in pervasive computing and networking.

Our recent projects explore enabling smart spaces with network connectivity, occupancy sensors, and indoor positioning. We’ve recently received support from the Boston University Institute for Global Sustainability (IGS), in collaboration with BU Sustainability and the Office of Research to pilot an indoor air quality sensor and portal. This work leverages a device developed in association with colleagues at the BU School of Public Health.  The grant is highlighted at the Campus Climate Lab research site.

We’ve extensively explored the use of the visible spectrum in optical communications and lighting as part of the NSF Smart Lighting Engineering Research Center. Being interdisciplinary, our work is part of both the Photonics Center and the Center for Information and Systems Engineering. We are keenly interested in ways to enable future dense networking as the number and capability of mobile and embedded devices increases.  This targets indoor spaces, where humans spend most of their time, and outdoor scenarios that are dominated by the containers in which we travel.

The lab’s legacy work is in the area of distributed multimedia information systems emphasizing time-dependent and continuous media data such as audio and video and includes our work on the Virtual Video Browser, one of the first database-driven streaming and delivery platforms.

We’ve also collaborated with the Center for Coastal Network Sensing at the University of Massachusetts, Boston in various projects for ecological study that employ solar-powered remotely-sited video cameras.