The Institute for Digital Communications (IDCOM) is the UK's leading research institute in signal processing and communications and is home to the Li-Fi research and development centre. University of Edinburgh has three major centres of activity; signal processing, communications systems and tomographic imaging. Their programme of research delivers world leading research in signal and image processing and communications from fundamental theoretical and algorithmic work through to its translation to specific audio, imaging, radar/sonar, and communications applications.

The Institute has excellent research facilities, including state-of-the-art computing systems and laboratories for agile tomography, and audio signal processing, as well as the Li-Fi research and development centre for visible light communications. Internationally recognized for their research on communications systems and signal processing, the university offers research topics including: green radio; visible light communications; cognitive radio; compressive sensing; distributed sensor signal processing; and agile tomography.