Student project: High-Speed Wireless Connectivity for Mobile Robots

*Important for non-EU students: You'll need to be registered at a Dutch university to meet immigration requirements.

Enable robots to communicate at gigabit speeds while moving—by building and testing next-generation wireless networks.

What you will do

The goal of this project is to experimentally evaluate and compare state-of-the-art wireless technologies for mobile robot communication, focusing on throughput, latency, reliability, and robustness under motion.

The project considers modern wireless technologies. For example,

• Wi-Fi 6E / Wi-Fi 7, offering very high throughput and flexible indoor deployment;
• Private 5G, enabling low-latency communication, QoS, and managed mobility;
• High-speed IR-UWB, where imec has demonstrated 124.8 Mbps data rates in silicon, with next-generation chips expected to scale further., positioning UWB as a potential short-range high-reliability communication technology beyond its traditional role in ranging.

You will build and configure a wireless testbed, integrate the radios on mobile robots, and perform systematic measurement campaigns to quantify performance under realistic conditions such as robot motion, human obstruction, interference, and multi-robot load.

This project emphasizes hands-on system design and experimental benchmarking, providing concrete insights into how different wireless technologies perform in real robotic deployments.

What we do for you

You will work on cutting-edge research at the intersection of wireless communication and robotics. Imec-NL provides a flexible research environment with access to advanced wireless hardware, experimental facilities, and in-house expertise in UWB, Wi-Fi, and 5G/6G technologies. You will gain hands-on experience with real systems, not just simulations, and your work will be relevant to both academic research and industrial robotics applications.

Who you are

• MSc student in Electrical Engineering, Telecommunications, Embedded Systems, Robotics, or related field.
• Available for a period of  9 months.
• Affinity with wireless communication systems and experimental work.
• Experience with Python, MATLAB, or similar tools.
• Interest in robotics or cyber-physical systems is a plus.
• Self-starter, able to work independently.
• Good written and verbal English skills.
• Entitled to do an internship in the Netherlands.

Interested

Does this position sound like an interesting next step in your career at imec? Don’t hesitate to submit your application by clicking on ‘APPLY’.
Should you have more questions about the job, you can contact jobs@imec.nl.