PhD position : 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 is based on OFDM modulation. 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, OFDM modulation produces meaningful spurious emissions. Hence, it is ineffective to communicate using OFDM in one of these 10 MHz radio channels while other OFDM-based communications are ongoing in the adjacent channels.
Starting from these considerations, this thesis will explore the possibility of allocating two (or more) of the 10 MHz-wide channels of the ITS band for non-OFDM-based vehicular communications, so as to avoid having any two adjacent channels being used by OFDM-based transceivers.
In particular, the candidate will evaluate the performance of the new Radio Access Technologies (RAT) and waveforms proposed for future 5th-generation (5G) networks. Moreover, he/she will investigate their integration in the ITS band and their compatibility with the 802.11p.
A major scientific problem that this thesis will address is the optimization of the PHY layer in presence of interference due to spurious emissions from adjacent OFDM-based channels. Indeed, this interference is expected to be time- and frequency-variant, and 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.
Tasks
- State of the art of the proposed subject
- Performance Assessment (OFDM spurious emissions impact, 5G RATs performance)
- Design of machine learning-based methods to solve 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 flow graphs models for wireless transmission and reception chains, i.e. connected signal and data processing blocks. Flow graphs define processing steps from packet construction to baseband waveform generation and vice versa. The GNU
Radio toolkit and USRP (Universal Software Radio Peripheral) are an open-source SDR with numerous possibilities.
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
Keywords
V2X communications, Radio Access Technologies, Machine learning, IEEE 802.11p, Software Defined Radio, 5G waveforms
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 ‘Investment for the future plan’ (Programme d’Investissements d’Avenir or PIA). The Institute is dedicated to individual, carbon-free and sustainable mobility.
It comes under the ‘Autonomous vehicle plan’ and was recently added to ‘Eco-mobility’, one of nine ‘solutions for future industry’ 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 competitivity cluster since 2010, VEDECOM is a partnership-based foundation belonging to Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines University. The Institute’s 40 members include firms in the automotive and aviation sectors, mobility ecosystem infrastructure and service operators, academic research bodies and Ile-de-France local authorities, all working together in a pioneering manner.
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