Job Description

The Role

Applications are invited for a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Experimental Radio Propagation Studies for different mobile environments and to study the impact of precipitation on mm wave fixed radio links from fixed links data obtained at multiple mm wave bands and the high-end weather station installed at Durham University.

The successful candidate will be working in the Communications and THz node in the department of Engineering under the supervision of Professor Salous who is the lead academic for the EPSRC project Transmission Channels Measurements and Communication System Design for Future mmWave Communications (mmWave TRACCS), which is collaborative with Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and University College London (UCL). The research addresses the higher frequencies in the 140-170 GHz (termed D-band) and beyond (275 GHz band). At these frequencies, where there is plenty of available spectrum to satisfy the spectrum hungry applications of wireless systems, new designs are required. The project brings the complementary expertise to research, design and experimentally demonstrate systems working at these frequencies, in an integrative and holistic fashion. For such work, there are three key challenges relating to the radio channel and the signal and system design.

Challenge 1: to design wireless communication systems, it is paramount to have a verifiable model of the physical propagation channel by collecting measurement data from bespoke designed equipment termed "channel sounder", which sends signals over the air and the receiver measures these signals after propagation. Such a model depends on several physical factors e.g. the frequency of transmission, the bandwidth of the signal, and the propagation channel physical parameters, such as the channel size and environment and whether it is indoors or outdoors, environmental factors, presence of obstacles, water moisture and other factors. Professor Salous and her group at Durham has been building channel sounders for over thirty years and the models she has developed are considered amongst the best in the world, used by regulators, industry and the United Nations through the International Telecommunications Union, (ITU). In this project Professor Salous and the successful candidate will conduct measurements and develop unique models for future generation wireless systems using the new channel sounding capability in the D Band and at the higher 275 GHz band. The models will be verified in a practical setting through collaboration with the teams at QMUL and UCL.

Challenge 2: The transmission of information at high frequencies requires specialist circuit and equipment design. There are few antennas that can transmit and receive the signals and process them spatially. Professor Yang Hao at QMUL, who has been designing antennas for high frequencies for nearly three decades, will design specialist antennas, to integrate to the system designed at Durham for full channel measurements. The outcome is a system with multiple antennas that can focus the transmission beams and change their shape and direction so that a system can be constructed that will fully utilize the benefits of the high frequencies and link to signals addressed by the UCL team.

Challenge 3: for the past 20 years the UCL team, led by Professor Darwazeh, has designed and demonstrated the use of specialist signals for mobile and wireless systems that can maximise the amount of information while minimizing the energy required for good signal transmission. UCL will design spectrally and energy efficient signals, based on the D Band channel models derived at Durham and suitable for transmission using the antennas designed by QMUL; the outcome will be a complete transmission system at D Band with projected bit rates beyond 50 Gbit/s.

Times Higher Education