PhD student position in Communication Networks

The Computer Networks group at the department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Luleå university of Technology opens a position for one PhD student for the project:

Towards 4G: Architecture for wireless access networks with heterogeneous PHY-layer technologies

The project targets extending the architecture of cellular access networks to enable new services to users with terminals supporting multiple radio access technologies. The motivation behind this project lays in the intersection of technology areas: multihop mobile ad hoc networks, heterogeneous access technologies like WiMax, WiFi and next generation 3G.

After almost a decade of research on mobile ad hoc networks still we do not witness their appearance on a commercial market. In addition to purely technical problems (i.e. poor performance of standard TCP/IP protocols over multihop wireless links) so far there is no clear application that can attract operators and end users. Amongst other corner stones, it is extremely difficult to create business cases in completely distributed and uncoordinated environment.

On the other hand in the telecom domain already now the wide spread of smartphones capable of communicating over several radio interfaces opens for telecom operators a new niche of services to be provided to end users. However, presently, the available radio technologies are mainly used independently of each other in uncoordinated manner.

This project intends to bridge the gap between the heterogeneous technologies. We foresee that architecture with a native support for heterogeneous wireless transmissions will facilitate solutions to essential technical problems of ad hoc networks connected amongst others to efficient naming services, optimal routing, load balancing and congestion control as well as simplify network manageability and billing. This in our vision should create new business opportunities for cellular operators and service providers that can sell innovative, value added services to customers.

The project focuses on connectivity and performance issues of the new architecture. To assure reliable connectivity a new set of protocols including service discovery, QoS signalling, routing should be introduced. The standard TCP/IP protocols should be adapted to computationally and energy constrained mobile terminals. The goal of the project is to provide communication services with predictable quality to the end users. To achieve this various cross-layer optimization techniques and efficient load balancing and scheduling schemes should be introduced.

A successful candidate should have a MSc in Telecommunications or Computer Science obtained during last two years, be proficient in at least two programming languages (C/C++, TCL, Matlab), demonstrate fast adaptation to new programming paradigms and environments. A successful candidate should demonstrate high analytical skills. Master level knowledge of networking is required. Experience with one of commonly used network simulators is a plus.