Internship / Master Thesis

Context

 The German Aerospace Center DLR has a dual mandate as the national research center for aeronautics and space, and as the space agency of the German federal government. Approximately 7000 people work for DLR on a uniquely diverse range of topics spanning the fields of aeronautics, space, energy, transport and security research. They collaborate on projects extending from fundamental research to the development of the innovative applications and products of the future. If the idea of joining a top-class team of researchers working in a supportive, inspirational environment appeals to you, then why not launch your mission with us?

Project

The optical communication group of DLR’s Institute of Communications and Navigation develop experimental laser communication systems for optical data links between airborne carriers such as airplanes or satellites and optical ground stations. The system development covers several disciplines such as optics, mechanics, electronics and programming. The successful applicant will support our team in the development of optical systems. Furthermore he/she will perform system tests and possibly will support the team during scientific measurement campaigns. It is an excellent opportunity to work in a cutting edge topic, gain experience on real optical hardware, and improve your engineering skills.

The subject contains tasks like:
- Analysis of the coherent transmission system
- Assembly of a coherent transmitter or receiver
- Development of signal post processing stages
- Verification and performance analysis of the components in the lab or in the field
- Evaluation of measurements and analysis of the results

novembre 2019

Internship / Master Thesis

Context

The German Aerospace Center DLR has a dual mandate as the national research center for aeronautics and space, and as the space agency of the German federal government. Approximately 7000 people work for DLR on a uniquely diverse range of topics spanning the fields of aeronautics, space, energy, transport and security research. They collaborate on projects extending from fundamental research to the development of the innovative applications and products of the future. If the idea of joining a top-class team of researchers working in a supportive, inspirational environment appeals to you, then why not launch your mission with us?

Project

The optical communication group of DLR’s Institute of Communications and Navigation develop experimental laser communication systems for optical data links between airborne carriers such as airplanes or satellites and optical ground stations. The system development covers several disciplines such as optics, mechanics, electronics and programming. The successful applicant will support our team in the development of optical systems. Furthermore he/she will perform system tests and possibly will support the team during scientific measurement campaigns. It is an excellent opportunity to work in a cutting edge topic, gain experience on real optical hardware, and improve your engineering skills.

Tasks:

• Analysis and simulation of the system and further development of post processing units with respect to the scenario requirements

• Signal processing, algorithm and control design of the optical ranging loop using an FPGA

• Design, implementation, verification and performance analysis of algorithms for the optical ranging

• Evaluation of measurements and analysis of the results

Internship / Master Thesis

Context

The German Aerospace Center DLR has a dual mandate as the national research center for aeronautics and space, and as the space agency of the German federal government. Approximately 7000 people work for DLR on a uniquely diverse range of topics spanning the fields of aeronautics, space, energy, transport and security research. They collaborate on projects extending from fundamental research to the development of the innovative applications and products of the future. If the idea of joining a top-class team of researchers working in a supportive, inspirational environment appeals to you, then why not launch your mission with us?

Project

In 5G two new application scenarios emerged and broadened the mobile communication spectrum of services, i.e. massive machine type of communication (mMTC) and ultra-reliable low latency communications (URLLC). In particular, the change in paradigm brought by the new machine-centric data generation requires a re-thinking of many ingredients in the mobile communication standard evolution.
The generation of short packets from a vast population in a sporadic and sometimes unpredictable manner, typical of mMTC data traffic, can lead to large waste of the precious spectrum. In particular, communication mechanisms as the PRACH procedure for granting interference-free communication may become inefficient when small packets are transmitted. In the quest of alternative solutions, modern random access protocols appear to be a natural and potentially efficient answer.

During the internship, the student shall study and implement the 5G PRACH procedure (4 messages exchange) for mMTC scenarios. In the first stage, simplified physical layer models will be considered (e.g. erasure channel) that can be refined considering more realistic terrestrial channels (including fading, multi-path etc.). Alternatively to the standard PRACH procedure - for the same 5G framework - modern random access solutions (e.g. contention resolution slotted ALOHA (CRDSA)) will be considered. The task is to identify the possible advantages of modern random access solutions in terms of efficiency, delay and error probability compared to the standard PRACH solution.

Internship / Master Thesis

Context

The German Aerospace Center DLR has a dual mandate as the national research center for aeronautics and space, and as the space agency of the German federal government. Approximately 7000 people work for DLR on a uniquely diverse range of topics spanning the fields of aeronautics, space, energy, transport and security research. They collaborate on projects extending from fundamental research to the development of the innovative applications and products of the future. If the idea of joining a top-class team of researchers working in a supportive, inspirational environment appeals to you, then why not launch your mission with us?

Project

Blockchain is emerging as a key solution to enable safe and decentralized interactions within a broad range of systems, and has nowadays found applications that go beyond the original cryptocurrency implementation. In particular, the technology has recently drawn interest in the domain of machine type communications and the internet of things (IoT), where it has the potential of enabling secure and resilient exchange of information in large, non-centralized network of devices such as, for instance, smart grids or industry 4.0 setups. While appealing, the application of blockchain to the internet of things poses specific and non-trivial challenges. On the one hand, IoT devices are often low-power and low-complexity, preventing the implementation of complex protocol stacks, and rendering transmission and reception of messages costly in terms of available resources. Moreover, machine-type communications typically involve exchange of data packets among a massive number of terminals, sharing a common wireless channel in an uncoordinated fashion. Due to these features, the true potential of blockchain in this context is still elusive, and many open research questions remain. An efficient and viable implementation calls thus for dedicated studies to understand the key performance tradeoffs arising in wireless IoT networks.

Tasks

•  Familiarise with the blockchain protocol and with its applications to IoT

• Study, by means of network simulations, the performance of blockchain in a wireless IoT setup

• Identify and investigate the fundamental trade-offs that arise

Internship / Master Thesis

Context

The German Aerospace Center DLR has a dual mandate as the national research center for aeronautics and space, and as the space agency of the German federal government. Approximately 7000 people work for DLR on a uniquely diverse range of topics spanning the fields of aeronautics, space, energy, transport and security research. They collaborate on projects extending from fundamental research to the development of the innovative applications and products of the future. If the idea of joining a top-class team of researchers working in a supportive, inspirational environment appeals to you, then why not launch your mission with us?

Project

The optical communication group of DLR’s Institute of Communications and Navigation develop experimental laser communication systems for optical data links between airborne carriers such as airplanes or satellites and optical ground stations. The system development covers several disciplines such as optics, mechanics, electronics and programming. The successful applicant will support our team in the development of digital signal processing for optical systems. Furthermore he/she will perform system tests and possibly will support the team during scientific measurement campaigns. It is an excellent opportunity to work in a cutting edge topic, gain experience on FPGA based hardware development and improve your engineering skills.

Tasks

• Analysis of current existing ranging system
• Literature research on time transfer techniques
• Development of time transfer system using Xilinx Virtex US+ device
• Functional and performance verification in simulation and on hardware
• Evaluation of measurements and analysis of the results

Internship / Master Thesis

Context

The German Aerospace Center DLR has a dual mandate as the national research center for aeronautics and space, and as the space agency of the German federal government. Approximately 7000 people work for DLR on a uniquely diverse range of topics spanning the fields of aeronautics, space, energy, transport and security research. They collaborate on projects extending from fundamental research to the development of the innovative applications and products of the future. If the idea of joining a top-class team of researchers working in a supportive, inspirational environment appeals to you, then why not launch your mission with us?

Project

The optical communication group of DLR’s Institute of Communications and Navigation develop experimental laser communication systems for optical data links between airborne carriers such as airplanes or satellites and optical ground stations. The system development covers several disciplines such as optics, mechanics, electronics and programming. The successful applicant will support our team in the development of digital signal processing for optical systems. Furthermore he/she will perform system tests and possibly will support the team during scientific measurement campaigns. It is an excellent opportunity to work in a cutting edge topic, gain experience on FPGA based hardware development and improve your engineering skills.

Tasks- Analysis of coherent transmission system

• Development of digital signal processing stages using Xilinx RFSoC device
• Development of backend interface for 5G communication
• Functional and performance verification in simulation and on hardware
• Evaluation of measurements and analysis of the results

TFM

Context:

Nokia is a major network vendor with numerous activities related to 5G. Nokia Bell Labs, part of Nokia, focusses on future disruptive research, 3GPP standardization research, early prototyping, and products, as well as other enablers to make 5G a success.

Area: Mobile communications

Project:

Nokia Bell Labs Aalborg

NOVI-8, Alfred Nobels Vej 27, 3rd floor, DK-9220 Aalborg East, Denmark

Data de publicació

TFM

Context:

Nokia is a major network vendor with numerous activities related to 5G. Nokia Bell Labs, part of Nokia, focusses on future disruptive research, 3GPP standardization research, early prototyping, and products, as well as other enablers to make 5G a success.

Area: Mobile communications

Project:

Nokia Bell Labs Aalborg

NOVI-8, Alfred Nobels Vej 27, 3rd floor, DK-9220 Aalborg East, Denmark

TFM

Context:

Nokia is a major network vendor with numerous activities related to 5G. Nokia Bell Labs, part of Nokia, focusses on future disruptive research, 3GPP standardization research, early prototyping, and products, as well as other enablers to make 5G a success.

Area: Mobile communications

Project:

Nokia Bell Labs Aalborg

NOVI-8, Alfred Nobels Vej 27, 3rd floor, DK-9220 Aalborg East, Denmark

TFM

Context:

Nokia is a major network vendor with numerous activities related to 5G. Nokia Bell Labs, part of Nokia, focusses on future disruptive research, 3GPP standardization research, early prototyping, and products, as well as other enablers to make 5G a success.

Area: Telecommunications, network protocols, IEEE 802-1Qbv Industrial IoT applications, Industry 4.0

Project:

Advanced robotics in medical and factory applications, autonomous vehicles, and creating advanced audio and video experiences. Common to all of these future applications is the assumption of extremely reliable communications, e.g. message or content delivery with precise microsecond accuracy and with years between failures.

IEEE TSN is positioned as the future Industrial Ethernet standard for Industry 4.0 use-cases and it is standardized for both wired environments but also recently wireless environments based on 5G wireless. Although just emerging in real deployments, IEEE TSN extensions are expected to become the defacto way to ensure critical services can run over wired and wireless Ethernet connections.

In this study, the objectives are as follows

• Gain intuitive understanding of performance of key TSN features (Qbv gate controls, pre-emption) as a function of wired and wireless link speed and per-hop latency via performance simulations (e.g. OMNET++)

• Develop and explore scheduling or multi-domain approaches to optimize complex multi-hop environments with many bridges and applications, and document their performance via system simulations with mixed traffic

• Conclude as to viability of components in the TSN toolbox for future wired and 5G wireless deployments

Nokia Bell Labs Aalborg

NOVI-8, Alfred Nobels Vej 27, 3rd floor, DK-9220 Aalborg East, Denmark

TFM

Context:

Precise and reliable positioning is nowadays of paramount importance in several mass-market civil and transport applications (smart cities, autonomous driving), safety-critical receivers, space exploration and a plethora of engineering fields. In general, Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) is the positioning technology of choice, but these systems were originally designed to operate under clear skies and its performance clearly degrades under non-nominal conditions.

Therefore, the main drawback on the use of GNSS rises in challenging harsh propagation scenarios naturally impaired by multipath, shadowing, weak signal conditions, high dynamics, strong fading or ionospheric scintillation. In addition, these systems can be intentionally or unintentionally interfered/attacked (i.e., jamming, spoofing). In the last decade, the mitigation of such vulnerabilities has been the main driver on advanced receiver design to provide position accuracy, reliability and integrity [1]. For instance:

• Space exploration and lunar navigation: very low signal conditions and possible high dynamics –> need to modify standard receiver architectures.
• Ionospheric scintillation in scientific applications and air traffic management: need to take into account possible fast phase variations and deep amplitude fades.
• Urban canyon (autonomous driving in highly populated cities): multipath, shadowing and low satellite visibility à robust receiver design.

Project:

The starting point is to understand the standard GNSS receiver architecture and the main signal processing aspects, from the received signal to time-delay and Doppler shift estimation, and position computation. This needs to acquire knowledge on basic estimation theory tools (i.e., lower bounds, maximum likelihood, least squares and Kalman filtering). Once the nominal GNSS behaviour is mastered, the following step is to understand the impact on the received signal caused by the different harsh propagation conditions (i.e. application dependent) and interferences/attacks. A further improvement of standard GNSS position, velocity and time (PVT) solutions is the so-called direct position estimation (DPE), which may be interesting to explore for new challenging applications [5]. These concepts can be further extended to a cooperative navigation scenario, where several GNSS receivers share information to improve the overall system performance. To explore these extensions is the main goal of the MSc Thesis!

Two main applications can be analysed:

• Space exploration: understand, analyse, characterise and improve current high-sensitivity GNSS-based solutions [6].
• Autonomous systems: obtain cooperative robust PVT solutions for safety-critical applications (i.e., autonomous driving in urban environments), taking advantage of recent robust signal processing techniques [4] [3].

The overall goal of this project is to understand how a research-oriented technological project works, from the problem formulation and theoretical fundamentals, to the development of new solutions and results dissemination (article publication).

References

[1] M. G. Amin, P. Closas, A. Broumandan, and J. L. Volakis. Vulnerabilities, threats, and authentication in satellite-based navigation systems [scanning the issue]. Proceedings of the IEEE, 104(6): 1169-1173, June 2016.

[2] J. Lee et al. Monitoring and mitigation of ionospheric anomalies for GNSS-based safety critical systems: A review of up-to-date signal processing techniques. IEEE Signal Processing

Magazine, 34(5): 96-110, 2017.

[3] D. Medina, H. Li, J. Vilà-Valls, and P. Closas. On Robust Statistics for GNSS Single Point Positioning. In Proc. of the IEEE ITSC, 2019.

[4] J. Vilà -Valls, D. Vivet, E. Chaumette, F. Vincent, and P. Closas. Recursive LCWF for Robust Multi-Channel Signal Processing. to appear in Signal Processing, 2019.

[5] F. Vincent, E. Chaumette, C. Charbonnieras, J. Israel, M. Aubault, and F. Barbiero. Asymptotically Efficient GNSS Trilateration. Signal Processing, 137:270-277, 2017.

[6] F. Vincent, E. Chaumette, and J. Vilà -Valls. Doppler-aided Position Estimation for HS-GNSS. In Proc. of the IEEE Asilomar, 2019.

Data de publicació

TFM

Context:

Integrated to the Electronic, Optronic and Signal (DEOS) Department of ISAE-SUPAERO, you are part of the
Navigation team. You participate in the study of functions designed to improve the estimation in position
and speed of a navigation system, for indoor navigation applications.
Among the different alternatives for autonomous indoor localization and navigation, Ultra-WideBand (UWB)
ranging is a promising solution to achieve high positioning accuracy. The accuracy of the localization solution
mainly depends on the quality of range measurements, the geometry of the network, and the performance of the
positioning algorithm.

Project:

Within this framework, you will realize the study of the state-of-the-art on the use of the UWB signals for navigation,
and on robust navigation algorithms. You will then apply your acquired knowledge in a simulator using simulated
and real data.

You will be entrusted with the following missions:

• Improvement of the existing UWB navigation algorithms.

       o Impact of network's geometry on the navigation solution
       o Study on the contribution of dynamic bias in the observation model
       o Add robust navigation features.

• Validation of the algorithms throughout simulations, then with real measurements obtained on a mobileplatform in order to prove the efficiency and robustness of the developed algorithms.

Depending on the work done, it will be possible to publish the obtained results in an international conference or journal article.

Methods: Kalman filtering, Matlab programming

Data de publicació