Distributed Communication Architectures

In the Distributed Communication Architectures (DISCO) research department, we are primarily concerned with the overall implementation of distributed communication architectures in software systems. The main focus of our research includes:

• Transparency:

Here we look at transparency both from the user's perspective and at a technical level.
Users of a system should be able to understand it easily so that they can decide whether the action to be carried out is in their interest before interacting or transferring data. The aim here is to avoid ‘dark patterns’ and to clearly present and communicate the intention of the respective application.
On a technical level, the concepts and software developed should be made available to society. Through our open source contributions, we enable the direct application and expansion of our research results.

• Privacy & security:

In addition to the transparency of which data is transmitted in the respective system, the data and privacy of the users must be protected. We are working on secure architectures for software systems and demonstrator environments based on the ‘zero trust’ principle.

• Cyber-physical contracts:

Cyber-physical contracts combine transparency and privacy and were developed by us as an alternative to conventional smart contract systems in order to describe and process generic cyber-physical processes.
A contract is derived from a transparent contract template in which the tasks of a contract and their responsibilities are clearly defined. This makes it clear to each party before the interaction what information must be transmitted to the other party during the execution of the contract. This strengthens the privacy of the parties involved, as the decision as to whether a contract should be entered into can be made before the first interaction.
The data transmitted in the contract is securely encrypted and, unlike other smart contract systems, can only be viewed by the parties involved.  An independent legal report under the direction of Prof Dr Indra Spiecker gen. Döhmann also confirms that the cyber-physical contracts we have developed can be used for legally binding contracts.
In addition, cyber-physical contracts are more energy-efficient and do not require the use of a blockchain, as any payment processes are not part of the system but can be defined independently and individually in each contract.
Our research in the field of cyber-physical contracts is based on several publications and open-source publications:

• Concept paper "Cypher Social Contracts A Novel Protocol Specification for Cyber Physical Smart Contracts"
• Reference implementation and expansion of the concept within the publication "Fides: Distributed Cyber-Physical Contracts"
• An abstraction for LoRaWAN devices to also participate in digital contracts in regions without an internet connection, in the publication "Cyber-Physical Contracts in Offline Regions"
• A central implementation that was used for authentication processes in a Zero Trust architecture, among other things, in the publication: "Decentralized Policy Enforcement in Zero Trust Architectures"
• Our current research on the transfer of cyber-physical contracts into web programming languages.