Two PhD positions on ultra-reliable intra-aircraft wireless communication

In the case of avionics, the most important advantages of wireless systems are weight reduction, resulting in less fuel consumption, flexibility, ease of layout, maintenance and modification. Despite their advantages, wireless technologies have been hardly adopted in aviation where most intra-aircraft connectivity relies on wired technologies. The use of wireless technologies is limited to in-flight online interconnectivity for the customers and to in-flight entertainment. The main reason for this is that current wireless technologies are not able to provide the reliability, security, and low-latency levels needed to effectively support the operation of the various aircraft functions.

The project will investigate techniques to guarantee high levels of reliability in wireless networks inside aircrafts, comprising robustness for interference, failure and attacks, and with high levels of availability, flexibility, and dealing with stringent latency constraints. Besides making use of well-known diversity techniques at the physical layer such as channel coding and multiple antennas, the project will investigate diversity techniques at the link and network layers. It is the intention to investigate intelligence mechanisms embedded in the network that will be able to detect, localize, analyze and predict connectivity disruptions and attacks and consequently take the necessary countermeasures. The proposed techniques will be validated using simulation tools and experimental set ups.

One of the PhD positions focusses on the design and analysis of mechanisms for highly reliable wireless communications, exploring multi-connectivity techniques, traffic class definition, network modeling and analysis to achieve high reliability levels under strict latency constraints. It is also the intention to pay attention to 5G/6G and time-sensitive networking (TSN) standards

The second PhD position aims at the design and evaluation of end-to-end wireless networks including the control and data planes and the implementation of a laboratory test setup for evaluation. Emphasis is given to provide reliability and security using standardized wireless technologies (WiFi and 5G/6G).