PhD Position in Specialized Time-Sensitive Wireless Connectivity for Demanding Markets

About Ghent University

Ghent University is a world of its own. Employing more than 15.000 people, it is actively involved in education and research, management and administration, as well as technical and social service provision on a daily basis. It is one of the largest, most exciting employers in the area and offers great career opportunities.

With its 11 faculties and more than 85 departments offering state-of-the-art study programmes grounded in research in a wide range of academic fields, Ghent University is a logical choice for its staff and students.

For the (faculty/department/research group) we are looking for a m/f/x

Doctoral fellow
in the field of Specialized Time-Sensitive Wireless Connectivity for Demanding Markets.

Within the faculty of Engineering and Architecture, the IDLab research group () performs research on internet technologiesanddata science. In these areas, we focus on foundations, system design, and applications. IDLab collaborates with many universities and research centers worldwide and jointly develops advanced technologies with industry.

IDLab has a unique research infrastructure used in numerous national and international collaborations. IDLab is also a core research group of imec, the world-leading research and innovation hub in nanoelectronics and digital technologies. IDLab staff counts about 50 professors, 60 post-doc researchers, 200 PhD researchers and 40 other staff members. These are spread over about
20 research teams.

The research will be conducted within the Intelligent Wireless Networking (iWiNe) team (), internationally recognized for its work on openwifi and wireless Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) (see ( and (Use the "Apply for this Job" box below)..

Future digital infrastructures are increasingly relying on wireless connectivity for applications that require stringent timing guarantees, including industrial automation, robotics, professional audio and video production, autonomous systems, and critical cyber-physical infrastructures. While wireless technologies have become ubiquitous, they still struggle to provide the deterministic behavior, synchronization accuracy, reliability, and predictability required by these demanding markets.

In the FWO SBO project 6GSpecNet, we aim to further develop the foundations of future wireless communication systems capable of delivering application-specific connectivity guarantees. The project will investigate how future 6G networks can evolve beyond best-effort communication towards specialized connectivity services offering well-defined latency, reliability, synchronization, and availability characteristics. A key enabler for this research is openwifi, IDLab’s open-source full-stack Wi-Fi implementation that runs on system-on-chip FPGA platforms ().

Openwifi provides full access to the wireless protocol stack and hardware implementation, making it a unique research platform for exploring and validating future wireless communication concepts.

Building on ongoing developments in openwifi and already available Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) extensions, this PhD will investigate novel mechanisms that bring deterministic communication capabilities to wireless networks, thereby spanning the entire protocol stack (from digital baseband to application level) and end-to-end wired-wireless system. The candidate will contribute both to the scientific foundations and to the practical realization of these technologies through implementation on the openwifi platform and validation in advanced wireless experimentation facilities.

You will:

• Conduct high quality research under the supervision of Prof. Jeroen Hoebeke and Prof. Ingrid Moerman with the aim of obtaining a doctoral degree.
• Study state-of-the‑art technologies in deterministic wireless networking, next‑generation Wi‑Fi, Time‑Sensitive Networking (TSN) and demanding application domains (e.g. industrial automation, robotics, etc.).
• Design novel mechanisms that provide predictable latency, reliability, synchronization accuracy, and service continuity. These mechanisms can range from digital baseband (PHY) and low‑level MAC functionalities on FPGA platforms (e.g. RFSoC) to higher‑layer…