Ph.D. positions on ultra-reliable intra-aircraft wireless communication

The Center for Wireless Technology Eindhoven (CWTe) of the Electrical Engineering (EE) department of TU/e has two open Ph.D. positions as part of the recently granted European project Horizon 2020 ADENEAS (Advanced Data and power Electrical Network Architectures and Systems). ADENEAS aims at developing advanced technologies for intra-aircraft data communication and power distribution. One of the technologies for data distribution that ADENEAS will investigate is ultra- reliable 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.

ADENEAS 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. The main idea is to combine in-network intelligence with diversity at several layers of the protocol stack. At the physical layer the approach is to rely on cognitive radio and software defined radio (SDR) technology for creating robustness, adapting and optimizing the radio communication to the channel conditions and, ensure interoperability and upgradability to new and evolving standards. 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, in addition to supporting self-configuration, self-organization and self-healing, 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 Ph.D. position is intended to investigate multi-layer diversity techniques and in-network intelligence for ultra-reliable reliable wireless communication. This position will be embedded in the Electro-optical Communication (ECO) group. The second Ph.D. position targets software-defined radio and cognitive radio techniques and will be embedded in the Integrated Circuit (IC) group. The two Ph.D. researchers are intended to work closely together in the context of the CWTe.