PhD Engineering: Radio Access Network Slicing (RAN Slicing) for 5G and Beyond Wireless Communications

The School of Engineering of the University of Glasgow is seeking a highly motivated graduate to undertake an exciting 3.5 year PhD project entitled ‘Radio Access Network Slicing (RAN Slicing) for 5G and Beyond Wireless Communications’ within the Systems Power and Energy division.

The next generation wireless communication (5G) and beyond will enable fully mobile and connected society, which is required to support a variety of very diverse user cases in terms of throughput, latency, reliability, availability and scalability. Three main communication scenarios have been identified by 3GPP with each having huge potential applications, i.e., enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) (e.g., supporting mobile HD movie), massive machine type communications (mMTC) (e.g., supporting internet of things communications), and ultra reliable low latency communications (URLLC) (e.g., supporting vehicular to vehicular or virtual reality communications). As a solution to support all scenarios, network slicing enables design, deployment, customization, and optimization of different network slices on a common infrastructure. From the physical layer/RAN perspective, due to the extreme diverse requirement among services and use cases, the service configurations in different resource slices may be significantly different from both base band (BB) and radio frequency (RF) aspects. Such a heterogeneous multi-service system may fundamentally affect the widely used transceiver architecture, algorithms, signal processing procedures and implementations in the traditional single-service system.

The work will include the design, modelling and implementation of the new physical layer network slicing system to support all 5G scenarios and other unforeseen applications in the future digital society.

An ideal candidate should have experience in wireless communications and signal processing. Strong background in mathematics, Maltlab/C programming, telecommunication industry experience are also desirable.

Applications are sought from highly motivated students graduating with first degree (2:1 or higher) in electronics engineering. Previous research experience is greatly valued.

For an informal discussion or for further information on this project, potential applicants are encouraged to contact: Dr Lei Zhang, [Email Address Removed]