Doctoral School for Dependable Electronic-Based Systems

Optimization methods for robust wireless network planning & design

PhD project

 

Supervisor: Prof. Joachim Schauer (FH JOANNEUM)
Co-Supervisor: Prof. Kay Römer (TU Graz)
Collaborator: Prof. Martin Milanič (University of Primorska)

Doctoral School for Dependable Electronic-Based Systems.

Electronic-based systems (EBS) make our world “smart” by combining advanced electronics and software, often in networked systems that interact with the physical world through sensors and actuators. Most EBS applications in production or transportation are safety-critical: EBS failures may cost human lives. We thus aim to find fundamental concepts and methods, but also application-oriented tools to make EBS dependable, where dependability summarizes attributes of a system allowing humans to trust EBS.

The PhD project.

Wireless network planning & design problems are studied with a focus on robust optimization. Robust means that the resulting networks should not only work in the desired way but they should also be tolerant against failures of individual network components, external disturbances or changes in the network topology. Concrete problems that will be studied during the PhD project are the positioning of anchor points in wireless sensor networks as well as wireless mesh networks.

Your skills.
  • Master’s degree in Computer Science, Applied Mathematics or a similar field
  • Very good skills in the design and analysis of algorithms, in graph algorithms and in a programming language (e.g. Python)
  • Basic knowledge in discrete optimization methods, including mixed integer programming and metaheuristics
  • Experience with wireless network design problems and embedded systems
Our research group.

Our research group is part of the Big Data and Artificial Intelligence Research Center of the FH JOANNEUM . We focus on application-oriented research projects in the fields of data science and optimization. We apply innovative research topics to industrial applications, where our strength is the great variety of different methods we use and a cooperation with a software development team at our institute which allows us to provide customized software prototypes for practical usage.

Hard facts.

This position is funded for 4 years and is paid with a minimum gross salary of 38,588.20 €/year for a full-time employment (40 h/week).