PhD Studentships in Wireless Broadband Multimedia, University College London, UK

Wireless Broadband Multimedia Services over WiMAX Mesh Networks
UCL in conjunction with British Telecom (BT)

This is a 4-year studentship, leading to the award of an Engineering Doctorate (EngD) Degree, which offers the opportunity to conduct research within an industrial context. An EPSRC funded studentship is available to UK citizens and permanent residents. Applicants must fulfill EPSRC eligibility criteria and the normal academic requirements for admission to study in the Department. This studentship will pay a tax-free stipend of approximately GBP 18,000 per year, plus tuition fees.

The two EngD posts in this project will be based at UCL, working in conjunction with BT, and visiting their Adastral Park site in Suffolk as necessary. They are offered under the Communications Engineering Doctorate Programme, which is jointly run by the Electronic and Electrical Engineering Department and the Computer Science Department at UCL.

Description of Project
As the global standards of WiMAX have been actively developed with many desirable technical features and application functions, many telecom companies and wireless ISPs are very keen to develop, test and deploy WiMAX-based wireless broadband communication networks, in order to fully exploit and benefit from the huge business potentials and commercial opportunities of WiMAX technologies. As a specific metropolitan area networking protocol, WiMAX will enable a wireless alternative for cable, digital subscriber line (DSL), and T1 level services for first-mile/last-mile broadband access, as well as providing backhaul for voice/data communication hotspots. This research project aims to investigate some technical challenges in providing end-to-end QoS performance guarantees for broadband multimedia services and applications over WiMAX mesh networks. Specifically, our principal research objectives are:

* To develop and analyse scalable system-wide resource management, admission control, routing, and peer-to-peer communication algorithms with end-to-end QoS guarantees
* To develop and analyse dynamic power control, channel assignment, packet scheduling and mobility management algorithms for improving system capacity
* To develop a flexible and comprehensive simulation platform for algorithms evaluation and software toolkits for network planning, dimensioning, performance monitoring and prediction

This research work will involve algorithms development, performance evaluation, computer simulation, system integration and, possibly, testbed experiments. Applicants are required to have:

* A bachelor degree (1st or 2.1 honours) or a master degree in Electronic/Electrical Engineering, Computer Science or a related field
* Good knowledge and research experience in MAC and routing algorithms with QoS guarantees
* Good knowledge of cross-layer algorithm design and performance evaluation methodologies
* Strong programming skills, e.g. NS2, Matlab, C, C++, or Java
* Experience in hardware and testbed system development (desirable)
* Good communication and presentation skills

Informal enquiries on the project can be made to Dr Yang Yang y.yang[ at ]ee.ucl.ac.uk For further information on the EngD Programme, see www.ee.ucl.ac.uk/engd or contact Dr Bob Sutherland r.sutherland[ at ]ee.ucl.ac.uk.

To apply please request an application pack from Paul McKenna at endpack[ at ]ee.ucl.ac.uk or phone: +44 (0)20 7679 7307. Candidates should mark their application form WiMAX EngD‘.