The research group started in 1992 and belongs to the Computer Architecture Department of the Tecnical University of Catalunya (UPC Barcelona TECH). The University has been granted as an Campus of International Excellence (Barcelona Knowledge Campus) and the Computer Architecture Department holds a PhD Program awarded by a Quality Honorable Mention by the Spanish Ministry since 2003. The research group is recognised both as a research group of the UPC and as a consolidated research group of the Catalan Goverment Generalitat de Catalunya (2005SGR-00481, for the period 2005-2008, and 2009SGR-1140, for the period 2009-2013).

Most of the topics covered by this research group are strongly related with broadband networks and broadband services and applications: switching, protocol development and performance, traffic modeling, network resource management policies and bandwidth allocation, traffic and congestion control, routing strategies,  internetworking, network management, IP and optical networks convergence, quality of service management and transport protocols.

Key research topics are: capture and traffic analysis, traffic modeling, traffic engineering, congestion control, switching and routing protocols. These issues within the group are developed for both IP / MPLS as well as for Optical Networks. In the latter case are included the development of control plane protocols and network physical level.

The Broadband Communications Research Group (CBA) is a founding member of the Advanced Broadband Communications Center (CCABA) of the UPC.