PhD Researcher - IoT: hardware/software co-design of radio and network platforms

Belgium, Gent

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Job description

Funtion description

During the past decades we have witnessed the explosive emergence of wireless IoT technologies and standards. There is a continuous evolution of wireless technologies, covering different ranges (from short range personal areas networks, local areas networks up to wide area networks) and different spectral bands (both unlicensed industrial, scientific and medical (or ISM) bands and licensed bands). The availability of wireless networks and technologies has triggered the appearance of plenty of wireless and/or mobile devices, ranging from very small, embedded devices like wireless sensors up to more powerful devices like mobile laptops. Mobile & wireless applications have become an important part of our daily lives and as a consequence the number of mobile & wireless devices and networks that coexist in the same environment is continuously increasing.
Hardware/software co-design of flexible and modular radio and network platforms
In the vision of the Internet of Things, future wireless networks will exist of densely deployed heterogeneous devices competing for the same (limited) wireless resources offered by heterogeneous network technologies. Every device may further run multiple applications with very diverging traffic demands (e.g. in terms of throughput, latency, reliability, energy consumption, synchronization, exposure, etc.). The goal of this PhD is to design, implement and validate flexible and modular hardware/software architectures for controlling and coordinating the wireless communication across heterogeneous wireless devices and networks, hereby guaranteeing a minimum level of quality for each application. Such HW/SW architectures have to support (re)programmability and (re)configurability, enabling (1) on the fly deployment / composition / update of transceiver chains and network protocol stacks, (2) runtime selection of transceiver operation modes and network protocols, and/or (3) runtime (re)configuration of transceiver and network parameters. Such hardware/software architectures should be supported on high-end as well as on low-end devices with small footprints (low memory & processing capacity, small footprint FPGA).
Responsibilities
During your research, the following activities will be part of your work.

• Analyse the current wireless network technologies thoroughly and will develop new network architectures, algorithms, protocols and concepts in one of the defined research areas.
• Build up hands-on experience by implementing these network concepts and by evaluating through experimental validation on a large-scale wireless testbed (more info, see http://ilabt.iminds.be) or through detailed simulations.
• Participate in the framework of European and national research projects (in collaboration with industry).
• Publish and present results both at international conferences and in scientific journals.
• Work towards realizing a PhD in about 4 years.
• Build towards a future academic career through project experience & high-profile scientific publications, or towards a promising IoT industry career through collaborations with several high-impact industry partners.

Our offer

We offer a competitive salary with interesting social benefits and a challenging, stimulating and pleasant research environment, where you can contribute to the worldwide research for the Future Internet.

Desired skills and experience

Profile

We are looking for candidates with the following qualifications and skills:

• You have a Master’s degree in Computer Science, Informatics, ICT or Electronics. You are acquainted with the low level programming languages (C, C++). For position 5, hands-on experience with digital design (Verilog, VHDL) and FPGA programming is highly desired. Experience and a strong interest in existing or new wireless network technologies are a plus.
• You are interested to do research in an academic environment either for a 4 years period in view of a PhD degree or for a 2 years period as a project researcher.
• You are able to plan and carry out your tasks in an independent way.
• You have strong analytical skills to interpret the obtained research results.
• You are a responsible, communicative and flexible person.
• You are a team player.
• You respect the predetermined milestones in research projects.
• Your English is fluent, both speaking and writing.

Practical info

Review of applications starts and will continue until the positions are filled, but for full consideration please apply before February 15th, 2016. If you are interested in this job opening and your profile corresponds to the requirements listed above, please:

• Attach your motivation letter and CV, indicating “PhD Researcher on IoT: hardware/software co-design of radio and network platforms” in the subject.
• Include a motivation letter explaining clearly the relevance of your skills for the selected position.
• Include the name, email address, phone number and some recommendation letter of at least one person that we can contact for references.

About the employer

About iMinds

iMinds is an independent research organization whose task, assigned by the Flemish Government, is to encourage Innovation through excellent Digital Research. Along with strategic research programs, iMinds offers companies and organizations active support in research and development and, for that purpose, stimulates companies, authorities and non-profit organizations to work together on IT research projects. iMinds also offers programs to inspire, train and coach the next generation of IT entrepreneurs. The goal of iMinds’ incubation & entrepreneurship program is to bring IT innovations to the market, either by helping to build and grow successful high-tech IT ventures or by driving innovation in industry partnerships and collaborative research.
iMinds Research consists of more than 850 researchers working at the 5 Flemish universities (Ghent, Leuven, Brussels, Antwerp and Hasselt). It is an international, multidisciplinary research environment with top talent coming from more than 50 countries throughout the world.

About IBCN

The research Group IBCN (Internet-based Broadband Communication Networks and Services) is associated with iMinds and is also part of Ghent University. Ghent University is a leading technical university in Belgium (ranking 71 in the world in the Shanghai Ranking) and is located in a beautiful medieval, medium-sized city with a very high quality of life. The IBCN group performs fundamental and applied research on internet-based communication networks and services, more specifically with the focus on: (1) Network Modeling, Design and Evaluation, (2) Mobile & Wireless Networking, (3) High Performance Multimedia Processing, (4) Autonomic Computing & Networking, (5) Service Engineering, (6) Content and Search Management, and (7) Data Analysis and Machine Learning. Innovative solutions are developed both through fundamental research projects, as well as through collaborations with international industry partners. A well-established experimental test environment and a number of technology platforms support these activities.
The research unit of ‘Mobile & Wireless Networking’ consists of 30 motivated researchers performing research on the following topics: IoT, Sensor Networks, Cooperative and Cognitive Networks, Wireless Access, Self-Organizing Distributed Networks (Internet of Things) and Experimentally-supported research.

Working as a researcher within this technical environment in the IBCN group can be a truly enriching experience. You will gain a lot of expertise within different application domains like health and care, transport and logistics, media, energy, smart cities, etc.