The research programme under which the research will take place is concerned with communications networks and services, with an emphasis on wireless communications, which have permeated all aspects of life and society over the past two decades. The emerging beyond 5G and 6G mobile networks and the Internet of Things, with the increasing number of new technologies and connected devices, are taking on a key role in digitization in almost all economic and social sectors. However, the unprecedented growth of data traffic and number of connections in existing wireless and mobile networks, as well as requirements for new classes of services, have highlighted some constraints in terms of managing various resources that are either inherently scarce, constrained by design or physical phenomena, and/or limited by techno-economic considerations. Future wireless communication networks therefore require a novel, more efficient approach to resource management that supports the deployment of new advanced services.
To reduce spectrum scarcity and further improve the performance of a single sensing or communication system, integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) designs, which integrate sensing capabilities and wireless communications into one system by sharing spectral and signalling resources, hardware platforms, or even network architectures, have recently received significant attention as key enablers for future wireless networks. The requirements of emerging wireless applications, such as vehicular sensing and detection, indoor positioning and activity recognition, and augmented reality require novel and effective design principles for seamless integration of communications and sensing (including radar sensing and more various types of sensing), which will accelerate research progress of ISAC. In addition, the maturity of millimetre wave, massive MIMO, and advanced radar/LiDAR techniques will empower the current wireless networks with various sensing capabilities such as localization/positioning, tracking, object detection/recognition, etc., opening up further opportunities for ISAC.
The research area includes a variety of research topics that may satisfy the candidate’s research interest, including (but not limited to):
- Mobile Computing to detect and recognize the human events and activities via commercial devices, such as WiFi and 5G NR.
- THz Communications to investigate, identify and develop novel THz channel models suitable for the design and evaluation of ISAC, and precise localization in an indoor environment exploiting the 6G communications in THz frequency bands.
- Vehicular Technology and Intelligent Transportation Systems to explore next-generation vehicle information systems and roadside units at a low cost and with a low energy footprint.
- Information Theory to reveal the information-theoretical limits and fundamental trade-offs in ISAC.