Dr James Irvine
Reader
Electronic and Electrical Engineering
Personal statement
My area of interest is resource management and security for wireless communication systems. In over 20 years at Strathclyde, I have co-authored 3 books, 7 patents and over 120 research papers, and worked on a very wide variety of projects, from consultancy for multi-national wireless operators to small local businesses, and working on small scale circuit design to giving evidence as an expert witness. For much of the past 15 years, I was an Academic Co-ordinator for research programmes in the Mobile VCE consortium of universities, operators and manufacturers, including ‘Software Based Systems’, the ‘Personal Distributed Environment’, and ‘Instant Knowledge’ - secure context-aware networks. I am currently Vice-Chair of the User Needs and Requirements Working Group of the Wireless World Research Forum, and am General Co-chair of IEEE VTC2015-Spring in Glasgow.
I am active volunteer in IEEE, currently chairing the Standards Education Committee and Conference Publications Committee, and well as being Vice-President for Publications of the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society. A Board member since 2002, I was VTS President 2008-9, and was a member of Educational Activities Board chairing the web portals Editorial Board and then Strategy Committee 2010-3.
On the teaching side, I am Course Director of the Computer and Electronic Systems degree which is run jointly by the EEE and Computer Science departments, which is quite appropriate as I studied on a similar inter-faculty course as an undergraduate.
Area of Expertise
- Radio Resource Management;
- Error Control Coding;
- Wireless System Design;
- 4G, 3G and 2G Wireless Systems;
- Wireless Sensor Networks;
- Wireless Health Monitoring;
- Security Protocols for Wireless Networks;
- Communications for Power Networks;
- Privacy
Prize And Awards
- UBICOMM - Best Paper Award
- Recipient
- 11/2011
- Distinguished Lecturer
- Recipient
- 1/9/2011
Publications
- A novel contrastive loss for zero-day network intrusion detection
- Wilkie Jack, Hindy Hanan, Michie Craig, Tachtatzis Christos, Irvine James, Atkinson Robert
- IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management Vol 23, pp. 2064-2076 (2026)
- https://doi.org/10.1109/TNSM.2026.3652529
- IP/MPLS and MPLS/TP teleprotection latencies over high voltage power lines
- Ghanem Kinan, Ugwuanyi Stephen, Irvine James
- International Conference on Wireless and Mobile Computing, Networking and Communications (2023)
- Communication requirements and deployment challenges of cloudlets in smart grid
- Ugwuanyi Stephen, Ghanem Kinan, Hansawangkit Jidapa, McPherson Ross, Khan Rabia, Irvine James
- 2021 IEEE International Conference on Smart Applications, Communications and Networking, pp. 1 (2022)
- Security vs bandwidth : performance analysis between IPsec and OpenVPN in smart grid
- Ghanem Kinan, Ugwuanyi Stephen, Hansawangkit Jidapa, McPherson Ross, Khan Rabia, Irvine James
- 2022 International Symposium on Networks, Computers and Communications, ISNCC 2022 2022 International Symposium on Networks, Computers and Communications (ISNCC) 2022 International Symposium on Networks, Computers and Communications, ISNCC 2022 (2022)
- https://doi.org/10.1109/isncc55209.2022.9851717
- Submission on Statement of Scope – CMA Mobile Ecosystems Market Study
- Paul Greig, Irvine James
- (2021)
- Challenges and promises of 5G for smart grid teleprotection applications
- Ghanem Kinan, Ugwuanyi Stephen, Asif Rameez, Irvine James
- IEEE International Symposium on Networks, Computers and Communications (2021)
Teaching
EE579: Advanced Microcontroller Applications (Level 5 module, option for CES, EEE)
This module teaches advanced microcontroller and embedded system design, including assembly language, real time operating systems, and advanced interfacing. At the end of this course students must construct a stand-alone product, capable of working independently of the development system. Assessment is by project.
EE470: Information Transmission & Security (Level 4 module, option for EEE, CES, EME)
This module provides a foundation in communications theory, including information theory, coding theory, a background in discrete mathematics, algebraic coding theory, before investigating cryptographic techniques and protocols. Assessment is by coursework and exam.
EE805: Communications for Power Networks (Masters level module, CDT)
The aim of this course is to provide students with the opportunity to develop a conceptual framework for analysing different communication networks used within the power industry (e.g. LANs, WANs, wireless networks and Internet). The course also introduces and discusses Industry standards as well as operational aspect of communications networks.
EE812: Cyber Security and Data Privacy (Masters level module, CDT)
The aim of this course is to provide students with an insight into the security requirements of power networks, the basic security primitives which can be used to provide protection to these networks, and and understanding of user security and privacy. The course covers the application of security processes to power networks and components, and also discusses case studies of attacks on industrial networks.
Research Interests
Mobile communications has been my main area of research, with specific application to mobility, resource management and coding. However, over the past few years I have been building up work in applications of mobile systems, in particular to assistive technologies and smart homes, and related and more general aspects of system security and privacy, in collaboration with Royal Holloway University of London. An important application of these technologies is in short range wireless networks (Personal Networks/Sensor Networks) between user devices, and a number of research programmes are now targeting this area with applications in health, system monitoring and vehicular networks.
Professional Activities
- IEEE Tech Summit 2025
- Member of programme committee
- 2/10/2025
- PNDC: A replica environment for innovation validation
- Contributor
- 10/6/2025
- PNDC Knowledge Exchange Forum: Spring 2025
- Member of programme committee
- 25/3/2025
- IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference
- Participant
- 12/2020
- IEEE International Symposium on Networks, Computers and Communications
- Participant
- 20/10/2020
- IEEE Blockchain 2019
- Participant
- 17/7/2019
Projects
- Resilient Digitalising Infrastructure (ReDI) SCDT
- Walls, Lesley (Principal Investigator) Patelli, Edoardo (Co-investigator) White, Chris (Co-investigator) Irvine, James (Co-investigator) Strens, Fiona (Co-investigator) Anderson, Heather (Administrator)
- The ReDI (Resilience in Digitalising Infrastructure) SCDT aims to produce ‘new resilience thinkers’ – not just in the graduates we deliver but also in the building of a whole community including staff from partner and stakeholder organisations and academics working in relevant fields.
ReDI will innovate in how the doctoral-level studentships are delivered, aligning ambitions between industry and academics, borrowing from the cohort approach proposed in the original EPSRC CDT and making the most of the freedoms implicit in an independently funding model. Our Industry partners and co-funders are keen to support this programme which aligns with their ambitions, including:
•Partners should together shape high level ‘challenge themes’ to reflect real world context;
•The themes should drive a co-creation process for PhD project definition involving partners, academics and students;
•‘Resilience Foundations’ training upfront should provide students with a shared, baseline understanding of key risk and resilience topics;
•Partners should be engaged with the whole student cohort (although individual students may be industry co-supervised and take on placements);
•A programme of activities should be supported to bring together partner staff with academics, students and other stakeholders to develop shared knowledge and build a community.
Financial summary:
University SCDT funds: £180,000
External funds: £490,000 (Strathclyde share of £980,000 from industry & NPL)
Total Strathclyde project value: £670,000 - 01-Jan-2025 - 30-Jan-2028
- ENA Flex API Tactical Assessment Copy
- Irvine, James (Principal Investigator) McPherson, Ross (Co-investigator) Paul, Greig (Co-investigator) McPherson, Ross (Researcher)
- 11-Jan-2023 - 29-Jan-2024
- Dorset Open Networks Ecosystem DONE
- Irvine, James (Principal Investigator)
- 01-Jan-2023 - 31-Jan-2025
- Care & Equity - Logistics UAS Scotland Phase 3 (CAELUS 2) (Future Flight Challenge)
- Fossati, Marco (Principal Investigator) Akartunali, Kerem (Co-investigator) Cashmore, Michael (Co-investigator) Irvine, James (Co-investigator) MacBryde, Jillian (Co-investigator) Maddock, Christie (Co-investigator) Patelli, Edoardo (Co-investigator) Tapinos, Efstathios (Co-investigator) Vasile, Massimiliano (Co-investigator)
- 01-Jan-2022 - 31-Jan-2024
- DEFGRID - The Utility DSbD Demonstrator (ISCF Digital Security by Design)
- Atkinson, Robert (Principal Investigator) Andonovic, Ivan (Co-investigator) Coffele, Federico (Co-investigator) Irvine, James (Co-investigator) Michie, Craig (Co-investigator) Tachtatzis, Christos (Co-investigator)
- 01-Jan-2022 - 31-Jan-2025
- Innovation Voucher with Morphic Technology Ltd: Communication System for Deep Forested Environment
- Ugwuanyi, Stephen Okwudili (Principal Investigator) Viner, Jeremy (Co-investigator) Irvine, James (Research Co-investigator)
- Scottish Funding Council Innovation Voucher Project focused on developing a messaging system for deep forested environments on the 27 MHz frequency bands with Bikers at Glentress in Scotland as the use case.
- 09-Jan-2021 - 28-Jan-2023
Contact
Dr
James
Irvine
Reader
Electronic and Electrical Engineering
Email: j.m.irvine@strath.ac.uk
Tel: 548 4072