Student project: ISI-aware beamforming for IR-UWB communication

Improve state-of-the-art IoT communication technology robustness in multipath environment

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

What you will do

IR-UWB is a low-power technology for position tracking and short-range communication applications. Due to its short transmitted pulse, some may argue that IR-UWB has no multipath fading penalty when the multipath channel delay spread is short. However, if the multipath channel has longer spread than the symbol duration, inter-symbol interference (ISI) occurs which degrades the communication performance. The likelihood of ISI is higher as IEEE 802.15.4ab amendment introduces higher 62.4 Mbps and 124.8 Mbps data rate modes.

Equalizers exist to mitigate the ISI, however, they add complexity to receivers which are meant to be low-power low-cost devices, and a tradeoff should be made between complexity and performance in different data rates and channel conditions. Beamforming with ISI awareness can mitigate ISI while potentially reducing the ISI mitigation complexity on systems with multi-antenna infrastructure for applications like angle-of-arrival estimation. The multipath components with excess delay may come from reflections that have different angle-of-arrival than stronger paths. Due to channel reciprocity, both transmitter and receiver beamforming can help mitigate ISI.

Your tasks in this project:

• Phase 1: Literature study on channel equalization and ISI-aware beamforming
• Phase 2: Modeling and design:
  • Develop simple simulation test bench for different data rate modes to evaluate bit error rate (BER) performance.
  • Model the communication signal, and formulate ISI-aware beamformer design problem. Explore different beamforming strategies (maximizing SNR, zero-forcing, MVDR, custom optimization, etc) for different data rate modes.
  • Explore beamforming antenna array geometry (1D vs 2D) in various indoor multipath environments.
• Phase 3: Evaluation
  • Simulate and/or measure multipath channels, and compare performance and complexity of common equalizers for IR-UWB with ISI-aware beamforming.
• Phase 4: Thesis / paper writing

What we do for you

• You will work in the signal processing and modeling team (SPM-NL) that has many years of experience in system, algorithm, and application design in communication, localization, and sensing applications
• You will get to know the latest communication system and protocol, and have the chance to make it better
• You will get hands-on experience with signal processing algorithm innovation, wireless system testing and channel characterization

Who you are

• You are a MSc student in Electrical Engineering
• You have a background of wireless communication, have good understanding of signal processing
• You are proficient in software modeling in Python/MATLAB
• You are self-starter and able to work independently
• You are available for a period of 8-10 months
• You are entitled to do an internship in the Netherlands
• Good written and verbal English skills
  
  

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 NOW’.
Should you have more questions about the job, you can contact jobs@imec.nl.