BTIIC-12: Real-time Communications and IMS in 5G

BT Ireland Innovation Centre:

This studentship is one of twelve such PhD studentships, offered in collaboration with British Telecom and tenable in the School of Computing, Faculty of Computing, Engineering and the Built Environment at Ulster University based at the Jordanstown campus. The studentships relate to different research topics in future telecommunication networks and services with a particular emphasis on Intelligent Systems, Future Big Data Analytics, Internet of Things (IoT), Cyber Security, Fixed and Mobile Network Services. They are part of the recently funded BT Ireland Innovation Centre (BTIIC) which is a collaborative project between BT and Ulster University, with a large presence in BT Belfast. BTIIC is an ambitious research and engineering project, initially running for 5 years, and funded by Invest Northern Ireland. It comprises two Research Workstreams: (i) Intelligent Systems, and (ii) IoT – Trust, Security and Dependability. The research topics proposed for the 12 studentships are in these broad areas.

Project summary:

Ultra-reliable real-time communication has been identified as one of the potential drivers for the next generation of telecommunications networks known as 5G. Real-time communication use cases include a number of Person to Person, Person to Machine/Application as well as Internet of Things (IoT) applications including automated traffic control and driving, collaborative robots, eHealth, remote object manipulation, remote surgery, public safety and see-through vision for assisted driving or real-time video distribution and processing (e.g. facial recognition) amongst others. These include a requirement for real-time multimedia communications, and the consequences of failure are often severe. This project investigates special purpose networking technologies that could extend the range of applications for the IoT by providing inherently dependable networks. Such use-cases are extremely important to test the validity and correctness of protocols and solutions in the presence of system component failures and also to assess the resilience and robustness of applications and services operating over fixed-wireless boundaries. In particular, the project will investigate how the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), an architecture developed by the 3GPP for the delivery of real-time multimedia services via Internet Protocol (IP), can be adapted for a 5G environment.

Additional Application Information:

On the application form applicants should select one main BTIIC project and a maximum of two further project titles in which they are interested.

During the lifetime of the project there will be opportunities to work with BT Belfast Global Development Centre and there also may be openings to spend a period of time as part of a related Internship at BT Adastral Park Research Laboratories in Martlesham, Suffolk, UK (see (http://atadastral.co.uk/). Arrangements for the internship / visits will be made by the supervisory team of the PhD project in conjunction with BT, subject to satisfactory student academic performance on the project.

ATAS Summary:

Ultra-reliable real-time communication has been identified as one of the potential drivers for the next generation of telecommunications networks known as 5G. Real-time communication use cases include a number of Person to Person, Person to Machine/Application as well as Internet of Things (IoT) applications. These include a requirement for real-time multimedia communications, and the consequences of failure are often severe. This project investigates special purpose networking technologies that could extend the range of applications for the IoT by providing inherently dependable networks. In particular, the project will consider how the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), an architecture developed by the 3GPP for the delivery of real-time multimedia services via Internet Protocol (IP), can be adapted for a 5G environment.

Keywords:
Computing, IoT, Real-Time Communication, 5G