Wireless Networks & Mobility @DACS

Master Projects ­ Wireles Networks & Mobility

The DACS group focuses on 2 different areas in field of networking: network security and wireless networks & mobility. The later area, for which possible master projects are described on this page, revolves around the design, modelling, and analysis of systems, protocols, and algorithms for wireless networks and their applications. Examples of such networks and applications are for instance cellular networking technologies like (beyond) 5G, current and future versions of WiFi, vehicular networks, and wireless networks for smart manufacturing applications. In this area of research M.Sc. and B.Sc. projects are available on a regular basis. For an up-to-date overview of the available B.Sc. project, please contact Suzan Bayhan. More information on our research and (example) M.Sc. projects can be found below. For more information, please contact Suzan Bayhan, Hans van de Berg or Geert Heijenk.

Wireless Networks for Cooperative Driving

In order to reduce the environmental impact of road traffic, and to increase road safety and efficiency, wireless communications can be used to exchange relevant information between (partly) automated vehicles. Using these so-called vehicular networks, information about a vehicle's current location, speed, acceleration etc., measured sensor (video) data, and planned trajectories can be exchanged. Ultimately vehicles can fully coordinate their driving behaviour in a distributed manner, using vehicular networks. [diagram]

The requirements on vehicular networks are very stringent, in terms of bandwidth, delay and reliability. Furthermore, the characteristics of the offered traffic are very specific, i.e., messages may be transmitted periodically, messages may be destined to a certain area instead of a node with a certain address (geocasting). To address these topics, novel types of communication networks are being developed, either using a variant of WiFi, IEEE802.11p, or cellular networks, notably, 5G. In this line of research, M.Sc and B.Sc projects are available on a regular basis addressing (evaluation of) new vehicular network protocols and algorithms, application for cooperative driving, the joint modelling and performance evaluation of cooperative driving and vehicular networking.

Below we list some possible topics to do an assignment on. If you find any of the topics intresting, please feel free to contact us.

Assignments

mmWave beam control for geocasting in vehicular networks

The increasing amounts of sensor (camera) data generated by vehicles may require increasing communication bandwidth between cooperatively driving vehicles. A promising way to provide high data rate links between vehicles is using mmwave communications. However, in order to overcome the severe propogation path loss at mmwave frequencies, beam forming with high antenna gains is required. For cooperative driving, it may be important to distribute sensor (camera) information to multiple vehicles in an area (geocasting). An open research area is how to control the beamforming for such geocasting. Wider beams allow for reaching multiple receivers at the same time, at the cost of link budget, i.e., range. Relaying can help covering larger distances if the range of mmwave transmission is insufficient. It has been shown that information exchanged using beacon messages at below 6GHz (covering a larger range omnidirectional) can help for mmwave beam control.

This assignment investigates how variable beam widths and relaying can help for mmwave geocasting in vehicular networks, and how these can be controlled in a distributed way using sub 6GHz beacons.

Contact: Geert Heijenk

Design and Analysis of Wireless Access Networks

Wireless networks act as a key enabler for many applications enriching user experience and bringing convenience in many aspects of human life. However, with the increasing use of wireless servicies and the number of wireless dvices, there is an urgent need for designing more efficient and more environmentally friendly wirless acess networks. As for efficiency, an important aspect is spectral efficiency, eg., using the already congested spectrum resources efficiently such that existing systems can deliver their services with a high quality of service without affecting each other's performance drastically on the shared (unlicensed or licensed) spectrum. At the same time, with growing concerns on climate change, it is important to ensure that the wireless access networks operate energy efficiently.

Below, we list some possible topics to do assignment on. If you find any of the topics interesting, please feel free to contact us.

Assignments

Spectrum sharing for wireless networks

Many wireless networks such as WiFi operate at unlicensed spectrum as these spectrum bands do not require acquiring a license. Similarly, rather than exclusive-spectrum use, spectrum access based on temporal or spatial sharing in the licensed bands can offer many benefits in terms of spectrum efficiency. However, wireless networks sharing the spectrum might cause service degradation or disruption on each other if they do not implement efficient coexistence and spectrum sharing schemes.

In this line of research M.Sc. and B.Sc. projects are available on regular basis addressing spectrum sharaing challenges or design of mechanisms to monitor the current spectrum usage and identify the anomalies and performance evaluation of spectrum sharing schemes.

Contact: Suzan Bayhan

Energy saving mechanisms at WiFi APs

The goal of this MS thesis is to improve energy savings at a WiFi AP by analyzing the traffic characteristics and predicting the best times to put the AP in low-energy consumption mode. With increasing density of connected devices and especially cloud-based IoT sensors, a WiFi AP has constant traffic, which makes it difficult to implement sleeping at the APs. The thesis will also look into possible approaches to distinguish time-critical traffic from others to improve energy saving at a WiFi AP. A key challenge is to enable possible energy-saving approaches without drastically affecting application performance. As a research methodology, the student can perform measurements to derive traffic characteristics of WLAN and understand the predictability of the traffic.

Contact: Suzan Bayhan