PDRA in Experimental Radio Propagation Studies

The Role

Applications are invited for a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Experimental Radio Propagation Studies for both indoor and outdoor mobile environments for potential spectrum sharing and modelling of the impact of precipitation on mm wave fixed radio links from the high-end weather station installed at Durham University and measurement data.

The successful candidate will be working in the Centre for Communication Systems led by Professor Salous who is the lead academic at Durham University for the EPSRC project Transmission Channels Measurements and Communication System Design for Future mmWave Communications (mmWave TRACCS), which is a collaborative project with Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and University College London (UCL). The project brings the complementary expertise of leading industry and UK research groups, to research, design and experimentally demonstrate systems working in typical deployment scenarios, in an integrative and holistic fashion. For such work, there are key challenges relating to the radio channel 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 a specialist and 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, but mainly the transmission signal parameters e.g. the frequency of transmission, the bandwidth of the signal, and the propagation channel physical parameters, such as whether the environment is indoors or outdoors, environmental factors, presence of obstacles, water moisture, and other factors. Professor Salous and her group at Durham have 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.

Challenge 2: Different method for spectrum sharing need to be identified for potential deployment in networks and in network planning tools and modelling of the impact of weather conditions on radio links.

The successful applicant will be expected to

1. Conduct wideband radio propagation measurements in typical indoor and outdoor environments and analyse the data using Matlab code to estimate the appropriate channel parameters in various wave bands for the design of radio systems.
2. Collect the data and analyse it and relate it to weather data for prediction models. The results are to be generated in a suitable format for modelling in radio systems.

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