Ph.D. position available in "Low-power and batteryless wireless networking and localization"
Deadline: MAY 12, 2025 at 16:00 CEST
Applications are invited from those interested in pursuing a PhD on the Internet of Things (IoT) at the University of Trento, Italy.
Low-power wireless devices are at the cornerstone of the Internet of Things (IoT), for which they provide two fundamental functionalities: the ability to interconnect devices (networking) and to determine their position in space (localization). The core research challenges lie in achieving high reliability and low latency with only a small energy budget. In this respect, batteryless systems push the need for low-power operation even further. These systems typically rely on supercapacitors that remove the dependance on batteries, greatly simplifying mainteinance and reducing environmental impact. However, their available energy is significantly smaller w.r.t. batteries and depleted more rapidly than it is repleted via external sources, e.g., energy harvesters. This mode of operation, alternating activity and recharging periods, results in "intermittent computing", expected to pave the way to a batteryless IoT but also significantly amplifying the challenges above.
The PhD student will explore research themes at the intersection of networking and localization along with the challenges and limits of batteryless, intermittent computing, with the goal of contributing new techniques enabling new tradeoffs between application requirements and expected performance. The reference radio technologies for these research efforts will be ultra-wideband (UWB) and possibly Bluetooth, although others (e.g., IEEE 802.15.4, LoRa, backscatter) are also within scope.
The activities carried out can be characterized as "systems research". Novel ideas and contributions are embodied in prototypes concretely demonstrating feasibility and improvements over the state of the art. Models are used to characterize the performance of prototypes, which are then evaluated experimentally in realistic setups. In this respect, the research group offers unique assets, including a 130-node (~8000sqm) indoor UWB testbed and two accurate (mm-level) optical facilities, along with real-world use cases from ongoing projects.
The research team has a long-standing track record in the general field of low-power wireless technologies for IoT, including award-winning scientific publications, e.g., at IPSN (2009, 2011, 2015, 2023), PerCom (2012), EWSN (2018), and IPIN (2019).
The language of the research group is English.
The Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science (DISI) is a leading and fast-growing research institution, with a young faculty and an international student population. Indicators for scientific production place the department among the top in Europe. The Department and the PhD school closely collaborate with a rapidly growing research and innovation environment.
Trento is a vibrant city with a beautifully preserved historic center, consistently ranked among the best cities for quality of life in Italy. It offers a variety of cultural and sports opportunities all year round, as well as excellent food and wine.
Applications must be filed online before MAY 12, 2025 at 16:00 CEST at the link below.
IMPORTANT: In the application, you must select the scholarship B5 in the Area B (containing "Wireless networking, sensing and localization"). Failure to do so results in ineligibility for the position described here.