Ph.D. POSITION on 'Smart radio resource management in heterogeneous ITS-G5 / 5G vehicular networks

Nowadays, the security of traditional and autonomous vehicles is one of the most important issues facing automotive industries and researchers. Wireless Vehicular Ad-hoc NETworks (VANETs) enhance road safety by allowing vehicles and other road users to exchange information. As an example, vehicles can use VANETs to disseminate their perception of the surrounding environment or their present position. In this way, several potentially critical driving situations can be avoided.
The present European and American standards for Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) communications, collectively defined as Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communications, are both based on the IEEE 802.11p standard, with minor variations. This standard adopts the OFDM modulation, which offers robustness to Doppler spread (if the PHY layer is appropriately designed) and multipath fading effects. In Europe, V2X communications have been allocated 5 contiguous radio channels of 10 MHz each in the 5.9 GHz band (also called ITS band).
However, the 802.11p random channel access, the meaningful spurious emissions of OFDM and the insertion of guard intervals between consecutive transmitted symbols represent major drawbacks of this technology, limiting both its scalability and its spectrum efficiency. This has motivated the development of alternative solutions in accordance with the paradigm of future 5th-generation (5G) networks.
Starting from these considerations, this thesis will explore the possibility of using non-OFDM-based waveforms and an alternative channel access scheme in a part of the ITS band. In particular, the candidate will evaluate the performance of the new Radio Access Technologies (RAT) and waveforms proposed for 5G networks. Moreover, he/she will investigate their potential for a seamless integration with the existing technology.
A major scientific problem that this thesis will address is the optimization of the PHY- and MAC-layer taking into account the interference due to spurious emissions from adjacent OFDM-based channels. Indeed, this interference is expected to be time-and frequency-variant, as well as location dependent. Particular care will have to be taken in designing an effective Radio Resource Management (RRM) scheme and in appropriately selecting the Modulation and Coding Scheme (MCS) to be adopted in each subcarrier (or block of subcarriers) to cope with a given time-frequency interference pattern. To this aim, the candidate will have to devise, implement and test an effective scheme to learn and predict the interference.
Keywords
V2X communications, Radio Access Technologies, Optimization, IEEE 802.11p, Software Defined Radio, 5G waveforms
Tasks
- State of the art of the proposed subject
- Performance Assessment (OFDM spurious emissions impact, 5G RATs performance)
- Design of solutions to the described problem
- Implementation and Tests on Software Defined Radio
Tools
The main tool the candidate will be using is a Software Defined Radio (SDR). SDR is an increasingly adopted technology in industry and research. It defines software chains or flowgraphs models for wireless transmission and reception chains, i.e. connected signal and dataprocessing blocks. Flow graphs define processing steps from packet construction to basebandwaveform generation and vice versa. The GNU Radio toolkit and USRP (Universal Software Radio Peripheral) are an open-source SDR with numerous possibilities. GNU Radio implementation [5] of the IEEE 802.11p has been proposed in [6]. It has been tested and foundinteroperable with a COTS (Commercial Off-The-Shelf) receiver.
Other hardware and software tools to be used are:
- GNU Radio toolkit
- MATLAB
- COTS transceivers implementing the IEEE 802.11p protocol
- USRP B210 from Ettus Research
Skills and profiles
- Knowledge and/or experience on wireless digital communications
- Knowledge and/or experience on C++ programming languages and open source software (Linux)
- Autonomy / Curiosity
- Good command of written and spoken English (mandatory)
Our Institute
VEDECOM was created in February 2014 and is an Institute for Energy Transition (ITE) established as part of the French government’s forward-looking investment plan (Programme d’Investissements d’Avenir). The Institute is dedicated to individual, carbon-free and sustainable mobility.
It is also a part of the French autonomous vehicle plan and was recently added to ‘Eco-mobility’, one of nine ‘solutions for the industry of the future’ that form part of a government scheme called ‘Nouvelle France Industrielle’, designed to reinvigorate the country’s industry.
With the backing of its founders and of the Mov’eo competitiveness cluster since 2010, VEDECOM is a partnership-based foundation belonging to the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines.
The Institute’s 40 members include major actors of the automotive and aviation sectors, mobility ecosystem infrastructure and service operators, academic research bodies and local authorities, all working together in a pioneering manner.
Please visit www.vedecom.fr for further information.
Contact for questions and application
Candidates are invited to contact Rafik Zitouni and Mattia Minelli:
firstname.lastname-AT-vedecom.fr
Please send a detailed CV, a motivation letter as well as transcript from the last two years.
A recommendation letter would also be appreciated.
The duration of the Ph.D. thesis is 36 months.
Monthly net salary: around 1600€ per month
Date of beginning: October 1st, 2017