Doctoral scholarship holder resilient communications for future 6G networks

Technology » Telecommunications technology

Organisation/Company University of Antwerp Research Field Computer science » Informatics Computer science » Other Engineering » Communication engineering Engineering » Electrical engineering Engineering » Other Technology » Energy technology Technology » Telecommunications technology Researcher Profile First Stage Researcher (R1) Application Deadline 28 Sep 2026 - 21:59 (UTC) Country Belgium Type of Contract Temporary Job Status Full-time Is the job funded through the EU Research Framework Programme? Not funded by a EU programme Is the Job related to staff position within a Research Infrastructure? No

Offer Description

Let’s shape the future - University of Antwerp

The University of Antwerp is a dynamic, forward-thinking, European university. We offer an innovative academic education to more than 20000 students; conduct pioneering scientific research and play an important service-providing role in society. We are one of the largest, most international and most innovative employers in the region. With more than 6000 employees from 100 different countries, we are helping to build tomorrow's world every day. Through top scientific research, we push back boundaries and set a course for the future – a future that you can help to shape.

The Department of Computer Science in the Faculty of Science is looking for a full-time (100%) doctoral scholarship holder in the field of resilient communications for future 6G networks.

The research of this PhD position will be conducted in the IDLab-UAntwerp research group, which is embedded in imec and the University of Antwerp in Belgium.

IDLab-UAntwerp , a core research group of imec, part of the University of Antwerp, counts about 100 members. The group performs fundamental and applied research on advanced wireless communications, Integrated Sensing and Communications (ISAC), non-terrestrial networks, AI-driven future communication networks, and AI solutions. While imec was founded in 1984 and is today the world’s largest independent research and innovation centre for nanoelectronics and digital technology. The worldwide team of 6,000 scientists, engineers, and innovators from over 100 countries, is driven by a shared passion to push boundaries.

Position

The offered position contributes to the imec.prospect Resilient Communications (ResCom) project that aims to provide resilient cellular communication through technological innovations, which are integrated into a “resilient-by-design” reference architecture (a resilient blueprint) to ensure connectivity and service continuity for both the general public and emergency responders during crises. A major power outage, such as the one that affected Spain, Portugal, and south of France in Spring 2025, is a representative example of such crisis that disrupted telecommunications, transportation, and emergency response systems. The project will develop solutions for resilience against communication jamming, backhaul failure, core network failure, and extended energy provision failure.

The objective of this PhD research is to develop novel energy optimization mechanisms for maintaining network operation during long-term energy provision failures. The candidate will design and analyse an energy consumption model for modern cellular base stations that accounts for contribution of multiple components and functions, such as idle static power, MIMO operation, pilots, dynamic bandwidth and transmit power dependent components. The goal is to propose a strategy for a graceful shutdown of the base station, meaning that network capabilities will be downgraded gracefully with time. Additionally, the potential of renewable energy sources to further extend the network lifetime will be investigated. The developed methods will be analytically characterized, optimised, validated through simulation and experiments. For experiments, IDLab-UAntwerp's world-class research infrastructure, including GPU Lab, Software Defined Radios and programmable beamformers, as well as research infrastructure provided by industrial project partners will be used.

As a PhD candidate, you are expected to perform the following tasks:

• You will conduct high-quality research under the supervision of Prof. Jeroen Famaey as a member of the IDLab-UAntwerp research group at imec and the University of Antwerp.
• You will closely collaborate with other researchers at IDLab-UAntwerp.
• You will write detailed technical evaluation reports on the developed solutions, implementation, and experiments, leading to publications in major conferences and journals in the field of wireless communications, signal processing, and/or embedded computing.
• You will assist in teaching lab sessions of relevant courses at bachelor or master level (at most 10% of your time).

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