Researcher Information - Dr Peter Vial


Personal Details

Name Dr Peter James Vial
Affiliation University of Wollongong
Contact Details 7 Rosewood Street Albion Park Rail
Shellharbour, NSW
Phone: 0242215499
Fax: 0242213236
Email:
(this email address is displayed using a Javascript function with the aim of stopping email collectors)
Website http://www.elec.uow.edu.au/people/staff/p.vial/

Biography

Mr Vial was born in England Lewisham on the 9th of April 1962 and registered in Australia House, London.

Returning to Australia in 1964, he attended St Francis Xavier's Catholic Primary School in Wollongong, Illawarra Grammar School in West Wollongong and Our Lady of the Sacred Heart (OLSH) Boarding School, Bowral. From 1975 to 1980 he attended St Paul's College Bellambi (now called Holy Spirit College) where he went from the academically challenged (called Marsellin) level to Dux of the School in 1980.

In 1981 he joined BHP Steel as a cadet studying Electrical Engineering at the University of Wollongong. Mr Vial graduated in 1987 with a Honours Degree in Electrical Engineering. While with BHP Mr Vial worked at various locations within the Slab and Plate Products Divison at Port Kembla including the CEED, Coke Ovens, Sinter Plant, Slab Yard and Electrical Maintenance Services gaining experience in commissioning and maintaining electrical equipment. In 1987 he was transferred to the Slab Caster and assisted in commissioning of the No. 3 and 4 Slab Casters gaining experience on programming various Programmable Logic Controllers. Transferring to the Software Engineering Section Mr Vial gained experience in programming mainframe computers and IBM PC's for crane tracking and Breakout Prediction Systems.

In 1991 Mr Vial left BHP to pursue other interests including starting a Masters Degree in Telecommunications. Joining the University as a Teaching Fellow in September 1992 he contributed to the design of a new undergraduate telecommunications laboratory in consultation with the late Professor Gary Anido. He has also contributed to the design of the Digital Signal Processing Laboratory's and running a short course in DSP in 1995. In May 1996 Mr Vial received a Honours Masters in Telecommunications Engineering (Research).

In 1999 Mr Vial enrolled part-time in a Diploma in Education (Mathematics) which he completed in 2000. His study leave during 2000 was done at Warrawong High and Warilla High teaching Years 7, 8, 9 and 10 Mathematics. This experience contributed to his excellent teaching where multiple student surveys at the University have commented on. He delivered two fourth year undergraduate electives, one in first session and the other in second session of 2000 which also included teaching Master of Engineering Studies students. The first was Telecommunications Queueing Theory (half the subject in 2000 done in conjunction with Mr R Raad, all of this subject in 2001, 2002, and 2003) and He graduated in December 2000. The second was Telecommunications Network Management, which he also presented in 2001, 2002, and 2003. In 2001 he designed and tested a laboratory for the new subject WWW Engineering and delivered half of the lectures on Java and Internet enabled devices such as TINI. He learnt Java in the vacation between Spring 2000 and Autumn 2001 experimenting with the TINI device. Also, in the first 5 months of 2000 he worked on a Power Quality Database using ACCESS '97 and Visual Basic macros / modules and SQL. Two papers originating from the Power Quality and WWW Engineering laboratory were presented in September 2001 at the AUPEC conference.

In Spring Session of 2001, he prepared and delivered as Coordinator the new subject Internet Technology 2 (ECTE292). At the same time he also developed a laboratory programme for Internet Technology 2 which used TIMS (Telecommunications Instructional Modelling System), a SNMP free network package called 'tkined', and a series of ARENA modules illustrating various aspects of dynamic routing, being Distance Vector Algorithms, Distance Vector Algorithms and Routing loops, and Link State Algorithm (all contained in this zip file along with the extended version of the paper which was presented at the IEEE Communications Conference in Feb 2002 at Sydney, Manly). He uses WebCT to deliver WWW Engineering, Telecommunications Queueing Theory and Internet Technology 2. Telecommunications Network Management is delivered through a simple Web page on the Schools local server.

On January 1st 2004 he was promoted from Associate Lecturer to Lecturer through the promotions committee.

He submitted his PhD in late Feb 2009 within the School of Electrical, Computer and Telecommunications, which he started in June 2001 under Professor Tad Wysocki (now in Omaha) but submitted under Dr David Stirling. His PhD dissertation was accepted in late May 2009 and he graduated with a PhD on the 24th of July 2009. His research interests include congestion control in Frame Relay networks, teletraffic engineering mobile networking, and wireless communications with Space Time Spreading Techniques (which was his PhD research topic).

Areas of Expertise

Research Areas Space-Time Communications; Wireless Access; Networks and Protocols; Teletraffic Theory; Channel Modeling;
Application Areas Mobile Communications; Wireless Data Communications; Broadband Communications; Internet Technology;