Postdoctoral position offer: Hybrid Beamforming schemes for downlink - 18 month Fixed term contract at IMT Nord Europe

Unit : Centre for Digital Systems

Line Manager : Sylvain Lecomte

Type of contract and duration : Fixed term contract - 18 months

Workplace : Villeneuve d’Ascq

CONTEXT :

Public establishment belonging to IMT (Institut Mines-Télécom), placed under the supervision of the Ministry of Economy, Finance and Industrial and Digital Sovereignty, IMT Nord Europe has three main objectives: providing our students with ethically responsible engineering practice enabling them to solve 21st century issues, carrying out our R&D activities leading to outstanding innovations and supporting territorial development through innovation and entrepreneurship. Ideally positioned at the heart of Europe, 1 hour away from Paris, 30 min from Brussels and 1h30 from London, IMT Nord Europe has strong ambitions to become a main actor of the current industrial transitions, digital and environmental, by combining education and research on engineering and digital technologies.

Located on two main campuses dedicated to research and education in Douai and Lille, IMT Nord Europe offers research facilities of almost 20,000m² in the following areas:

- Digital science,

- Processes for industry and services,

- Energy and Environment,

- Materials and Processes.

For more details, visit the School’s website : www.imt-nord-europe.fr

The position is vacant within the Centre for Education, Research and Innovation (CERI) Digital Systems. It covers a wide disciplinary field linked to constrained systems (the Internet of Objects, robotics), Humans (and in particular their interactions with the digital world) or even complex systems through the prism of Artificial Intelligence and Automation. The 34 lecturer-researchers and 6 engineers at CERI are able to cover all teaching fields in the field of digital sciences and technologies (Telecoms, Networks, Systems, Data, Artificial Intelligence, Applications, Cybersecurity, etc.).

It is structured around 3 research groups: ARTS (Autonomous Resilient Systems), HIDE (Human, Interaction, DEcision) and McLEOD (Modelling and Control of Complex systems in Large Environments requiring Optimized Decision).

BRIEF:

Sub-Terahertz (THz)-band (0.1-1 THz) communication is envisioned as a key wireless technology of the next decade. The sub-THz band will help overcome the spectrum scarcity problems and capacity limitations of current wireless networks, by providing an unprecedentedly large bandwidth which can enable applications including Terabit-per second backhaul systems, ultra-high-definition content streaming among mobile devices and wireless high-bandwidth secure communications.

Many open challenges need to be addressed. It is well known that the adverse channel conditions at sub-THz frequencies (strong obstruction losses) restrict the communication to line-of-sight (LoS) or slightly obstructed LoS situations. Such limitations can be compensated by means of using a large number of antennas, which results in large array gains. However, traditional techniques cannot be directly transposed to sub-THz bands as they do not consider the specific radio-frequency (RF) impairments of sub-THz systems in particular, medium to strong oscillator phase noise. Moreover, digital beamforming techniques for such antenna arrays cannot be implemented easily due to their high cost and power consumption. Hybrid beamforming [1] is expected to play a crucial role in enabling high data rates and reliable communication links over short distances, since it combines the advantages of analog and digital beamforming while mitigating their respective drawbacks.

Besides, it is vital to reduce the large power consumption experienced by power amplifiers at each RF chain due to high peak-to-average power ratio. This can be achieved by developing power-efficient schemes with spatial modulation techniques consuming less power and achieving the same spectral efficiency. The application of spatial modulation (SM) techniques [2] in sub-THz communications has recently attracted substantial research interest.

Objectives:

• Investigate the state-of-the-art hybrid beamforming schemes for sub-THz communication. Both Fully-Connected and Array of Sub-Array architectures will be considered.
• Design Phase-noise-resilient hybrid beamforming schemes.
• Integrate the proposed HB schemes with spatial modulations to enhance the spectral efficiency and reduce the required transmit energy

REQUIRED PROFILE :

The person recruited must have obtained his/her doctorate no later than 3 years before the contract start date.

Interested candidates should meet the following criteria:

• PhD degree,
• Strong knowledge of mathematical optimization (convex, non-convex),
• Good background in communication theory, signal processing,
• Advanced programming skills (Matlab, Python),
• Good written and communication skills in English.

CONDITIONS :

The job is to be filled ASAP for a period of 18 months.

INFORMATION AND APPLICATION METHODS :

For any information on the missions, please contact Dr. Yahia Medjahdi: yahia.medjahdi@imt-nord-europe.fr and Dr. Arthur Louchart: arthur.louchart@imt-nord-europe.fr

For any administrative information, please contact the Human Resources Department: jobs@imt-nord-europe.fr

In addition, the position can be adapted for a disabled person.

INFORMATION ABOUT THE WORKING ENVIRONMENT AT IMT NORD EUROPE:

- Possibility of partial teleworking

- Exceptional working environment

- Plenty of holiday

- Collective catering on site

- Public transport paid for home-work journeys (75%)

- Sustainable mobility package (for car-pooling or cycling)

- Family supplement based on family composition

- Wide range of social benefits (1st installation compensation, financial aid, holiday vouchers, etc.)

- Stimulating innovation ecosystem (start-ups, students, research, businesses)

DEADLINE DATE FOR SUBMISSIONS : 03/11/2024