Access profile

The doctoral programme is designed for students who have taken master’s degrees in telecommunications or computer science and wish to examine a topic or area in greater depth to contribute knowledge. Although we could say that this is the ideal starting point, it is not the only one. Students with other educational backgrounds could also be accepted, although they may need to take bridging courses.

The doctoral programme is designed for people with technological interests who are creative and want to advance the state-of-the-art in the subject. This activity requires an attitude to technology that goes beyond user knowledge to reach an understanding of technology itself, which the doctoral student will know how to improve as a result. Doctoral studies have two benefits. First, they meet personal needs to understand things, and second they train the person, providing them with methodology and knowledge that they can use in their professional activity in positions that require technological creativity.

Research and development departments in companies or the creation of emerging companies are places where this knowledge could be exploited to the maximum.

The natural route into the doctoral programme is via the various master’s degrees in Telecommunications Engineering at the UPC taught by the ETSETB and the EETAC, in which case bridging courses are not required. For students from other master’s programmes, the academic committee of the doctoral programme will analyse applicants’ academic record and the area in which they will develop their thesis. Based on this information, the committee will decide whether students need to take bridging courses up to a maximum of 30 credits. As a general rule, students who hold a master’s degree in telecommunications (or an equivalent qualification) from other Spanish or European universities can access the research phase directly. Students with a master’s degree in computer science may be asked to take a bridging course in the subject area of telecommunication networks. Students who come from other master’s degrees should take additional credits so that they can gain the knowledge they need rapidly. The range of topics and approaches used to carry out the research makes it difficult to establish specific admission requirements (some theses have a high mathematics content, others are more focused on application). However, in general, knowledge of tools that can be used for performance evaluation will be assessed. Hence, applicants must be able to handle mathematical models, numerical methods, simulation tools such as ns-3, OMNET, Matlab or have knowledge of programming in Java, C++, C or Python for the construction of prototypes. Knowledge of written and spoken English is essential, as this is the language that will be used in the doctoral degree, for training, generation of publications and reports, and the exchange of knowledge with other researchers.

Output profile

Doctoral candidates who complete a doctoral degree will have acquired the following competencies, which are needed to carry out quality research (Royal Decree 99/2011, of 28 January, which regulates official doctoral studies):

a) A systematic understanding of the field of study and a mastery of the research skills and methods related to the field.
b) An ability to conceive, design or create, put into practice and adopt a substantial process of research or creation.
c) An ability to contribute to pushing back the frontiers of knowledge through original research.
d) A capacity for critical analysis and an ability to assess and summarise new and complex ideas.
e) An ability to communicate with the academic and scientific community and with society in general as regards their fields of knowledge in the manner and languages that are typical of the international scientific community to which they belong.
f) An ability to foster scientific, technological, social, artistic and cultural progress in academic and professional contexts within a knowledge-based society.

The award of a doctoral degree must equip the graduate for work in a variety of settings, especially those requiring creativity and innovation. Doctoral graduates must have at least acquired the personal skills needed to:

a) Develop in contexts in which there is little specific information.
b) Find the key questions that must be answered to solve a complex problem.
c) Design, create, develop and undertake original, innovative projects in their field.
d) Work as part of a team and independently in an international or multidisciplinary context.
e) Integrate knowledge, deal with complexity and make judgements with limited information.
f) Offer criticism on and intellectually defend solutions.

Finally, with respect to competencies, doctoral students must:
a) have acquired advanced knowledge at the frontier of their discipline and demonstrated, in the context of internationally recognised scientific research, a deep, detailed and well-grounded understanding of theoretical and practical issues and scientific methodology in one or more research fields;
b) have made an original and significant contribution to scientific research in their field of expertise that has been recognised as such by the international scientific community;
c) have demonstrated that they are capable of designing a research project that serves as a framework for carrying out a critical analysis and assessment of imprecise situations, in which they are able to apply their contributions, expertise and working method to synthesise new and complex ideas that yield a deeper knowledge of the research context in which they work;
d) have developed sufficient autonomy to set up, manage and lead innovative research teams and projects and scientific collaborations (both national and international) within their subject area, in multidisciplinary contexts and, where appropriate, with a substantial element of knowledge transfer;
e) have demonstrated that they are able to carry out their research activity in a socially responsible manner and with scientific integrity;
f) have demonstrated, within their specific scientific context, that they are able to make cultural, social or technological advances and promote innovation in all areas within a knowledge-based society;
g) have demonstrated that they are able to participate in scientific discussions at the international level in their field of expertise and disseminate the results of their research activity to audiences of all kinds.

Number of places

8

Duration of studies and dedication regime

Duration
The maximum period of study for full-time doctoral studies is three years, counted from the date of admission to the programme to the date of submission of the doctoral thesis. The academic committee of the doctoral programme may authorise a doctoral candidate to pursue doctoral studies on a part-time basis. In this case, the maximum period of study is five years, counting from the date of admission to the programme to the date of submission of the doctoral thesis. For calculating these periods, the date of admission is considered to be the date of the first enrolment for tutorials, and the date of submission the moment in which the Doctoral School officially deposits the doctoral thesis.

For full-time doctoral candidates, the minimum period of study is two years, counted from the date of an applicant's admission to the programme until the date on which the doctoral thesis is deposited; for part-time doctoral candidates it is four years. When there are justified grounds for doing so, and the thesis supervisor and academic tutor have given their authorisation, doctoral candidates may request that the academic committee of their doctoral programme exempt them from the minimum period of study requirement.

The calculation of periods of study will not include periods of absence due to illness, pregnancy or any other reason provided for in the regulations in force. Students who find themselves in any of these circumstances must notify the academic committee of the doctoral programme, which, where appropriate, must inform the Doctoral School. Doctoral candidates may also temporarily withdraw from the programme for up to one year, and this period may be extended for an additional year. Doctoral candidates who wish to interrupt their studies must submit a justified request to the academic committee of the doctoral programme, which will decide whether or not to approve the request. Each programme will establish conditions for readmission to doctoral studies.

Extension
If full-time doctoral candidates have not applied to deposit their thesis by the end of the three-year period of study, the academic committee of the programme may authorise an extension of up to one year. In exceptional circumstances, a further one-year extension may be granted, subject to the conditions established by the corresponding doctoral programme. In the case of part-time doctoral candidates, an extension of two years may be authorised. In both cases, in exceptional circumstances a further one-year extension may be granted by the Doctoral School's Standing Committee, upon the submission of a reasoned application by the academic committee of the doctoral programme.

Dismissal from the doctoral programme
A doctoral candidate may be dismissed from a doctoral programme for the following reasons:

• The doctoral candidate submitting a justified application to withdraw from the programme.
• The maximum period of study and of extensions thereof ending.
• The doctoral candidate not having enrolled every academic year (unless he or she has been authorised to temporarily withdraw).
• The doctoral candidate failing two consecutive assessments.
• The doctoral candidate having disciplinary proceedings filed against him or her that rule that he or she must be dismissed from the UPC.

Dismissal from the programme implies that doctoral candidates cannot continue studying at the UPC and the closing of their academic record. This notwithstanding, they may apply to the academic committee of the programme for readmission and the committee must reevaluate them in accordance with the criteria established in the regulations.

Enrollment aid

Do not exist.

Organization

• Hesselbach Serra, Xavier

• Aguilar Igartua, Mónica
• Calveras Auge, Anna
• de Andrade Jardim, Marilet
• Martin Escalona, Israel
• Serrat Fernandez, Juan
• Soriano Ibañez, Miquel

• Department of Network Engineering (PROMOTORA)

Agreements with other institutions

There are various joint supervision agreements with European and international universities, for example, with Uruguay, Mexico and Lebanon, among other countries, and projects such as 5GAuRA, which is part of the H2020 Marie Curie Programme.

In addition, verbal agreements have been made with European universities for short-term visits of our doctoral students. As a result, doctoral students have been able to carry out research visits of at least three months in the universities or technology schools of Amsterdam, Grenoble, Glasgow, Milan, Louvain and China (Changsha), among other places.

Joint supervision is also carried out with the Telecommunications Technology Centre of Catalonia (CTTC) in the area of wireless technology, fixed networks and security.

Access profile

The doctoral programme is designed for students who have taken master’s degrees in telecommunications or computer science and wish to examine a topic or area in greater depth to contribute knowledge. Although we could say that this is the ideal starting point, it is not the only one. Students with other educational backgrounds could also be accepted, although they may need to take bridging courses.

The doctoral programme is designed for people with technological interests who are creative and want to advance the state-of-the-art in the subject. This activity requires an attitude to technology that goes beyond user knowledge to reach an understanding of technology itself, which the doctoral student will know how to improve as a result. Doctoral studies have two benefits. First, they meet personal needs to understand things, and second they train the person, providing them with methodology and knowledge that they can use in their professional activity in positions that require technological creativity.

Research and development departments in companies or the creation of emerging companies are places where this knowledge could be exploited to the maximum.

The natural route into the doctoral programme is via the various master’s degrees in Telecommunications Engineering at the UPC taught by the ETSETB and the EETAC, in which case bridging courses are not required. For students from other master’s programmes, the academic committee of the doctoral programme will analyse applicants’ academic record and the area in which they will develop their thesis. Based on this information, the committee will decide whether students need to take bridging courses up to a maximum of 30 credits. As a general rule, students who hold a master’s degree in telecommunications (or an equivalent qualification) from other Spanish or European universities can access the research phase directly. Students with a master’s degree in computer science may be asked to take a bridging course in the subject area of telecommunication networks. Students who come from other master’s degrees should take additional credits so that they can gain the knowledge they need rapidly. The range of topics and approaches used to carry out the research makes it difficult to establish specific admission requirements (some theses have a high mathematics content, others are more focused on application). However, in general, knowledge of tools that can be used for performance evaluation will be assessed. Hence, applicants must be able to handle mathematical models, numerical methods, simulation tools such as ns-3, OMNET, Matlab or have knowledge of programming in Java, C++, C or Python for the construction of prototypes. Knowledge of written and spoken English is essential, as this is the language that will be used in the doctoral degree, for training, generation of publications and reports, and the exchange of knowledge with other researchers.

Access requirements

Applicants must hold a Spanish bachelor’s degree or equivalent and a Spanish master’s degree or equivalent, provided they have completed a minimum of 300 ECTS credits on the two degrees (Royal Decree 43/2015, of 2 February)

In addition, the following may apply:

• Holders of an official degree awarded by a university in Spain or any other country in the European Higher Education Area, pursuant to the provisions of Article 16 of Royal Decree 1393/2007, of 29 October, which establishes official university course regulations, who have completed a minimum of 300 ECTS credits on official university degrees, of which at least 60 must be at the master's degree level.
• Holders of an official Spanish bachelor’s degree comprising at least 300 credits, as provided for by EU regulations. Holder of degrees of this kind must complete bridging courses unless the curriculum of the bachelor’s degree in question included research training credits equivalent in value to those which would be earned on a master's degree.
• Holders of an official university qualification who, having passed the entrance examination for specialised medical training, have completed at least two years of a training course leading to an official degree in a health-sciences specialisation.
• Holders of a degree issued under a foreign education system. In these cases, homologation is not required, but the UPC must verify that the degree certifies a level of training equivalent to an official Spanish master's degree and qualifies the holder for admission to doctoral studies in the country where it was issued. Admission on this basis does not imply homologation of the foreign degree or its recognition for any purpose other than admission to doctoral studies.
• Holders of a Spanish doctoral qualification issued under previous university regulations.

Note 1: Doctoral studies entrance regulations for holders of an undergraduate degree awarded before the introduction of the EHEA (CG 47/02 2014)

Note 2: Governing Council Decision 64/2014, which approves the procedure and criteria for assessing the fulfilment of academic admission requirements for doctoral studies by holders of non-homologated foreign degrees (CG 25/03 2014)

Admission criteria and merits assessment

Ultimately, admission to the doctoral programme will be regulated by the academic committee of the doctoral programme. As described in Section 8 of this document, this body is directed by the coordinator of the doctoral programme, assisted by a committee comprised of lecturers who participate in the programme who are put forward by the research groups. If the ex officio members of the committee consider it necessary, they may propose other lecturers who represent relevant research areas. The composition of the academic committee of the doctoral programme should be approved by the board of the Department.

The function of the academic committee is to ensure the quality of the doctoral programme by participating in the processes of admission, monitoring, evaluation and assessment. If there is no proposal of a thesis supervisor, the academic committee is responsible for assigning one. Based on the applicants’ thesis topic preferences, the member of the academic committee who is most closely associated with this area will propose a supervisor. If the person responsible for this area cannot meet the requirement, another area will be sought and the request will be repeated. If a supervisor cannot be found after consulting all members of the academic committee, the application cannot be accepted.

If a thesis supervisor is available, applicants are then assessed on the following aspects, with a score of 0 to 10 given for each one and the following weightings:

• Academic record and academic background (30%).
• Research experience (10%).
• Language knowledge (10%).
• Other relevant aspects described in the CV that are not considered in the three previous points (5%).
• Evaluation by the doctoral thesis supervisor (30%).
• Evaluation by the academic committee of the doctoral programme (15%).

Students will be accepted if they have a score of 7 points or over. In all cases, applicants will be notified of the decision, and will be given a report on the overall and partial evaluations. So that the decision is not personalised, the supervisor’s and academic committee director’s evaluations will be averaged, and this will be the score that is announced.

Along with admission, the academic committee will provide enrolment recommendations if bridging courses are required. The recommended credits (up to a maximum of 30) for bridging courses correspond to subjects in the area of telematics that can be taken in the shortest time possible.

Training complements

The academic committee for the programme may require that doctoral students pass specific bridging courses. In this case, it will monitor the bridging courses that are taken and establish suitable criteria to limit their duration.

The bridging courses will be on research training, but doctoral students will never be asked to enrol for a number equal to or above 60 ECTS. The academic regulations of doctoral studies state that bridging courses may also be cross-disciplinary. However, this point is likely to be amended so that bridging courses are only associated with research credits, particularly when an applicant enters the doctoral programme with a bachelor’s degree worth 300 ECTS.

Considering the doctoral student activity report (DAD), the academic committee of the programme could propose additional measures to those established in the regulations that lead to the withdrawal of doctoral students who do not meet the established criteria.

The natural route into the doctoral programme is via a master’s degree in Telecommunications Engineering at the UPC, in which case it is not necessary to complete bridging courses. For students from other master’s degree programmes, the academic committee of the doctoral programme will analyse the applicant’s academic record and decide the area in which they will prepare their thesis, as well as whether it is necessary to complete bridging courses, up to a maximum of 30 credits.

Currently, bridging courses are offered in the framework of master’s degrees in Telecommunications Engineering at the UPC taught by the ETSETB and the EETAC (https://eetac.upc.edu/en/study/masters-degrees/masteam, https://matt.masters.upc.edu/).

Below are some of the subjects that are currently offered on these master’s degrees:

Enrolment period for new doctoral students

Students enrolling in the doctoral programme for the first time must do so by the deadline specified in the admission decision.

Unless otherwise expressly indicated, enrolments corresponding to admission decisions issued from the second half of April on must be completed within the ordinary enrolment period for the current academic year.

More information at the registration section for new doctoral students

Enrolment period

Ordinary period for second and successive enrolments: first half of October.

More information at the general registration section

Procedure for the preparation and defense of the research plan

Doctoral candidates must submit a research plan, which will be included in their doctoral student activity report, before the end of the first year. The plan may be improved over the course of the doctoral degree. It must be endorsed by the tutor and the supervisor, and it must include the method that is to be followed and the aims of the research.

At least one of these annual assessments will include a public presentation and defence of the research plan and work done before a committee composed of three doctoral degree holders, which will be conducted in the manner determined by each academic committee. The examination committee awards a Pass or Fail mark. A Pass mark is a prerequisite for continuing on the doctoral programme. Doctoral candidates awarded a Fail mark must submit a new research plan for assessment by the academic committee of the doctoral programme within six months.

The committee assesses the research plan every year, in addition to all of the other activities in the doctoral student activity report. Doctoral candidates who are awarded two consecutive Fail marks for the research plan will be obliged to definitely withdraw from the programme.

If they change the subject of their thesis, they must submit a new research plan.

Formation activities

Activity: Tutorial.
Hours: 288.
Type: compulsory.

Activity: Mobility.
Hours: 480.
Type: optional.

Activity: Assessment based on doctoral student activity report (DAD) and research plan.
Hours: 4.
Type: compulsory.

Activity: Training in information skills.
Hours: 1.5.
Type: optional.

Activity: Research methodology.
Hours: 12.
Type: optional.

Activity: Innovation and creativity.
Hours: 8.
Type: optional.

Activity: Language and communication skills.
Hours: 18.
Type: optional.

Activity: Courses and seminars.
Hours: 18.
Type: compulsory.
At least six seminars will be held per year. Students should attend at least three.

Activity: Specific programme workshops.
Hours: 6.
Type: compulsory.
This doctoral programme participates in an annual workshop, which is already in its third edition. The Barcelona Forum on PhD workshop. Research in Information and Communication Technologies takes one day.

Activity: Publications.
Hours: 50.
Type: compulsory.
Description: training objective and content.
The doctoral programme determines that each student must have at least one relevant JCR publication (as well as other types of publications) to complete their doctoral thesis. Publications can be completed in any phase of the three years of the doctoral degree.

Activity: Other workshops.
Hours: 72.
Type: optional.

Procedure for assignment of tutor and thesis director

The academic committee of the doctoral programme assigns a thesis supervisor to each doctoral candidate when they are admitted or enrol for the first time, taking account of the thesis supervision commitment referred to in the admission decision.

The thesis supervisor will ensure that training activities carried out by the doctoral candidate are coherent and suitable, and that the topic of the candidate’s doctoral thesis will have an impact and make a novel contribution to knowledge in the relevant field. The thesis supervisor will also guide the doctoral candidate in planning the thesis and, if necessary, tailoring it to any other projects or activities undertaken. The thesis supervisor will generally be a UPC professor or researcher who holds a doctoral degree and has documented research experience. This includes PhD-holding staff at associated schools (as determined by the Governing Council) and UPC-affiliated research institutes (in accordance with corresponding collaboration and affiliation agreements). When thesis supervisors are UPC staff members, they also act as the doctoral candidate’s tutor.

PhD holders who do not meet these criteria (as a result of their contractual relationship or the nature of the institution to which they are attached) must be approved by the UPC Doctoral School's Standing Committee in order to participate in a doctoral programme as researchers with documented research experience.

The academic committee of the doctoral programme may approve the appointment of a PhD-holding expert who is not a UPC staff member as a candidate’s thesis supervisor. In such cases, the prior authorisation of the UPC Doctoral School's Standing Committee is required. A UPC staff member who holds a doctoral degree and has documented research experience must also be proposed to act as a co-supervisor, or as the doctoral candidate’s tutor if one has not been assigned.

A thesis supervisor may step down from this role if there are justified reasons (recognised as valid by the committee) for doing so. If this occurs, the academic committee of the doctoral programme will assign the doctoral candidate a new thesis supervisor.

Provided there are justified reasons for doing so, and after hearing any relevant input from the doctoral candidate, the academic committee of the doctoral programme may assign a new thesis supervisor at any time during the period of doctoral study.

If there are academic reasons for doing so (an interdisciplinary topic, joint or international programmes, etc.) and the academic committee of the programme gives its approval, an additional thesis supervisor may be assigned. Supervisors and co-supervisors have the same responsibilities and academic recognition.

The maximum number of supervisors of a doctoral thesis is two: a supervisor and a co-supervisor.

For theses carried out under a cotutelle agreement or as part of an Industrial Doctorate, if necessary and if the agreement foresees it this maximum number of supervisors may not apply. This notwithstanding, the maximum number of supervisors belonging to the UPC is two.

More information at the PhD theses section

Permanence

The academic committee of the programme may authorise an extension of up to one year for full-time doctoral candidates who have not applied to deposit their thesis by the end of the three-year period of study, in the terms outlined in the Academic Regulations for Doctoral Studies of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. In the case of part-time candidates, an extension of two years may be authorised. In both cases, in exceptional circumstances a further one-year extension may be granted by the Doctoral School's Standing Committee, upon the submission of a reasoned application by the academic committee of the doctoral programme.

A doctoral candidate may be dismissed from a doctoral programme for the following reasons:

• The doctoral candidate submitting a justified application to withdraw from the programme.
• The maximum period of study and of extensions thereof ending.
• The doctoral candidate not having enrolled every academic year (unless he or she has been authorised to temporarily withdraw).
• The doctoral candidate failing two consecutive assessments.
• The doctoral candidate having disciplinary proceedings filed against him or her that rule that he or she must be dismissed from the UPC.

Dismissal from the programme implies that doctoral candidates cannot continue studying at the UPC and the closing of their academic record. This notwithstanding, they may apply to the academic committee of the programme for readmission and the committee must reevaluate them in accordance with the criteria established in the regulations.

International Mention

The doctoral degree certificate may include International Doctorate mention. In this case, the doctoral candidate must meet the following requirements:

a) During the period of study leading to the award of the doctoral degree, the doctoral candidate must have spent at least three months at a respected higher education institution or research centre outside Spain to complete courses or do research work. The stays and activities carried out must be endorsed by the thesis supervisor and authorised by the academic committee of the programme. The candidate must provide a certifying document issued by the person responsible for the research group of the body or bodies where the stay or activity was completed. This information will be added to the doctoral student’s activity report.
b) Part of the thesis (at least the summary and conclusions) must be written and presented in one of the languages commonly used for science communication in the relevant field of knowledge, which must not be an official language of Spain. This rule does not apply to stays and reports in Spanish or to experts from Spanish-speaking countries.
c) At least two PhD-holding experts belonging to a higher education institution or research centre outside Spain must have issued officially certified reports on the thesis.
d) The thesis examination committee must have included at least one PhD-holding expert from a higher education or research institution outside Spain who was not responsible for the candidate’s stay abroad (point a) above).
e) The thesis defence must have taken place on UPC premises or, in the case of joint programmes, at the location specified in the collaboration agreement.

List of authorized thesis for defense

• BARBECHO BAUTISTA, PABLO ANDRES: Contribution to smart management services for electric vehicle charging using vehicular networks
  
  Author: BARBECHO BAUTISTA, PABLO ANDRES
  Thesis file: (contact the Doctoral School to confirm you have a valid doctoral degree and to get the link to the thesis)
  Programme: DOCTORAL DEGREE IN NETWORK ENGINEERING
  Department: Department of Network Engineering (ENTEL)
  Mode: Temporary seizure
  Deposit date: 20/04/2022
  Reading date: pending
  Reading time: pending
  Reading place: pending
  Thesis director: AGUILAR IGARTUA, MONICA | URQUIZA AGUIAR, LUIS FELIPE
  Committee:
       PRESIDENT: FERNANDEZ VILAS, ANA
       SECRETARI: DE LA CRUZ LLOPIS, LUIS JAVIER
       VOCAL: TRIPP BARBA, CAROLINA
  Thesis abstract: The most promising solution to reduce carbon emissions due to transportation is migrating from fossil-fuel vehicles to electric vehicles (EVs). In recent years, the decisive shift of drivers to use EVs has been affected by several factors. One of the main concerns refers to EV charging time. Due to long charging times and scarce charging points in cities, a growing concern of cities' administrations refers to supporting services for the new generation of mobility, known as the "Electro-mobility."The information sensed by vehicles (e.g., battery state of charge) could be helpful for other vehicles and mobility authorities in order to efficiently manage traffic and provide intelligent transport services (ITS). Vehicular communications enable communication between vehicles (V2V) and between vehicles and fixed infrastructure (V2I) managed by the city's authorities. Here, Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs) routing protocols minimize the use of fixed infrastructure since they employ multi-hop V2V communication to reach access points located along cities.This thesis aims to contribute to designing smart management services for electric vehicles supported by vehicular networks. The first step to achieving this global objective has been the study of components and tools to assess realistic electro-mobility scenarios. In addition, we have analyzed the impact of each of those components on the simulation results. Then, we have designed a smart management service for EV charging. Here, challenges include the selection of an appropriate charging point for each energy-requiring EV. We create a communication framework based on vehicular communications that allow vehicles to perform anticipated charging slot reservations.In contrast to the literature, we develop a traffic-aware charging service that considers current traffic conditions throughout the city. In this manner, we select the optimal charging point where the minimum charging time is guaranteed. In addition, we find the best charging point that minimizes the total travel time to the destination, including the stop to charge the battery.Besides, we have improved the global simulation process by developing two tools to handle large-scale simulations and mimic the realism of urban traffic mobility. First, our approach simplifies the process by automatizing simulation campaigns and generating realistic mobility scenarios. Also, we have tackled the issue of locked traffic simulations due to traffic jams. We have included an online vehicles' re-route functionality to cope with that problem, allowing cars to change their route to a less congested alternative route. Definitively, we claim that using our tools can reduce simulation times and avoid manually writing or editing simulation files, which is usually an error-prone task.Finally, based on machine learning techniques, we minimize the gas emissions of fossil-fuel vehicles and reduce electric vehicles' energy consumption. Using the vehicular network jointly with a reinforcement learning model, we adjust vehicles' acceleration/deceleration in the proximity of traffic light (TL) signals to drive with a moderate speed. The goal is to optimize driving in cities by avoiding excess fuel burn in the case of gas vehicles and by reducing energy consumption in the case of EVs.
  

Last update: 19/05/2022 04:45:30.

List of lodged theses

• OSMAN, MOHAMMED OSMAN: Control Logic Distribution trade-offs in Software-Defined Wireless Networks
  
  Author: OSMAN, MOHAMMED OSMAN
  Thesis file: (contact the Doctoral School to confirm you have a valid doctoral degree and to get the link to the thesis)
  Programme: DOCTORAL DEGREE IN NETWORK ENGINEERING
  Department: Department of Network Engineering (ENTEL)
  Mode: Normal
  Deposit date: 18/05/2022
  Reading date: pending
  Reading time: pending
  Reading place: pending
  Thesis director: MANGUES BAFALLUY, JOSEP
  Committee:
       PRESIDENT: AGÜERO CALVO, RAMÓN
       SECRETARI: ZOLA, ENRICA VALERIA
       VOCAL: BARANDA HORTIGÜELA, JORGE
  Thesis abstract: The SDN (Software-Defined Networks) architecture separates the data and the control planes of the networks. It logically centralizes the control of a network in a central point that is an SDN controller, which acts as a brain of the network and is in charge of telling each network node how to forward incoming packets by installing the appropriate forwarding rules. One of the main advantages it brings is programmability through this single entity (the logical controller) with which network management applications must interact to apply their policies. Through agreed-upon APIs, the network managers can exploit the full potential of SDN.SDN generally assumes ideal control channels between the SDN controller and the network nodes, which may not be the case in challenging environments that are becoming more common due to dense deployment of small cells (SCs) with reduced coverage in 5G and beyond 5G deployments. In 5G and beyond 5G use cases, cost-effective wireless transport networks are required to connect the SCs. In this context, mmWave technology is a good player to connect the SCs as mmWave provides larger radio spectrum chunks that in turn provide larger bandwidth and higher data rate.To manage the dense deployment of SCs in the mobile networks, on the network management/control front, network programmability and virtualization are also an integral part of 5G and beyond 5G networks. In this regard, to provide end-to-end connectivity, management and orchestration of all the segments of the networks ranging from RAN (Radio Access Network), transport network to the core is vital. On the transport networks side (the main focus of the dissertation), SDN plays an important role as SDN enables programmability and virtualization in the network.Though SDN Provides huge flexibility in network management by splitting the control plane from the data plane, it has some limitations in wireless networks context as separation of the control plane from the data plane introduce the extra points of failure in the SDN paradigm (e.g., control communication channel failure, SDN controller failure). In the wide-area networks (WAN) scenarios where in-band channels (e.g., microwave or mmWave links) are responsible to carry control traffic between the forwarding nodes and the SDN controller, the assumption of the availability of a reliable network may not be possible as the performance of the wireless link changes with the environmental conditions, which leads to a high risk of experiencing channel impairments, which might cause centralized SDN operation failure by affecting communication between the transport component of SCs and the SDN controller.To overcome SDN from failure, the dissertation presents a hybrid SDN scheme that explores the benefits of centralized and distributed operations depending on control communication channel conditions. Our hybrid SDN approach combines both centralized and distributed modes in the same node to form a hybrid control plane architecture. We introduce a local agent in the node that is composed of a monitoring framework to detect reliability of the control communication channel and a decision module that conceive a novel control logic switching algorithm to make a decision whether to operate in a centralized or distributed mode. We evaluate the proposed solution under a variety of unreliable network conditions (e.g., link impairments, control packet loss) to investigate the operational performance of the hybrid SDN during high loss conditions. The experimental results show that the proposed hybrid SDN solution substantially improves the aggregated throughput, particularly when control channel packet loss ratios increase, which in turn keeps the network operational in hard conditions where the centralized SDN would result in a non-operational network.
  

Last update: 20/05/2022 04:30:19.

List of defended theses by year

• BOJOVIC, BILJANA: Cellular and Wi-Fi technologies evolution: from complementarity to competition
  
  Author: BOJOVIC, BILJANA
  Thesis link: http://hdl.handle.net/10803/673517
  Programme: DOCTORAL DEGREE IN NETWORK ENGINEERING
  Department: Department of Network Engineering (ENTEL)
  Mode: Normal
  Reading date: 12/01/2022
  Thesis director: GIUPPONI, LORENZA
  

  Committee:
       PRESIDENT: AVALLONE, STEFANO
       SECRETARI: UMBERT JULIANA, ANNA
       VOCAL: FERRAGUT MARTÍNEZ-VARA DE REY, JAIME
  Thesis abstract: This PhD thesis has the characteristic to span over a long time because while working on it, I was working as a research engineer at CTTC with highly demanding development duties. This has delayed the deposit more than I would have liked. On the other hand, this has given me the privilege of witnessing and studying how wireless technologies have been evolving over a decade from 4G to 5G and beyond.When I started my PhD thesis, IEEE and 3GPP were defining the two main wireless technologies at the time, Wi-Fi and LTE, for covering two substantially complementary market targets. Wi-Fi was designed to operate mostly indoor, in unlicensed spectrum, and was aimed to be a simple and cheap technology. Its primary technology for coexistence was based on the assumption that the spectrum on which it was operating was for free, and so it was designed with interference avoidance through the famous CSMA/CA protocol. On the other hand, 3GPP was designing technologies for licensed spectrum, a costly kind of spectrum. As a result, LTE was designed to take the best advantage of it while providing the best QoE in mainly outdoor scenarios. The PhD thesis starts in this context and evolves with these two technologies. In the first chapters, the thesis studies radio resource management solutions for standalone operation of Wi-Fi in unlicensed and LTE in licensed spectrum. We anticipated the now fundamental machine learning trend by working on machine learning-based radio resource management solutions to improve LTE and Wi-Fi operation in their respective spectrum. We pay particular attention to small cell deployments aimed at improving the spectrum efficiency in licensed spectrum, reproducing small range scenarios typical of Wi-Fi settings. IEEE and 3GPP followed evolving the technologies over the years: Wi-Fi has grown into a much more complex and sophisticated technology, incorporating the key features of cellular technologies, like HARQ, OFDMA, MU-MIMO, MAC scheduling and spatial reuse. On the other hand, since Release 13, cellular networks have also been designed for unlicensed spectrum. As a result, the two last chapters of this thesis focus on coexistence scenarios, in which LTE needs to be designed to coexist with Wi-Fi fairly, and NR, the radio access for 5G, with Wi-Fi in 5 GHz and WiGig in 60 GHz. Unlike LTE, which was adapted to operate in unlicensed spectrum, NR-U is natively designed with this feature, including its capability to operate in unlicensed in a complete standalone fashion, a fundamental new milestone for cellular. In this context, our focus of analysis changes. We consider that these two technological families are no longer targeting complementarity but are now competing, and we claim that this will be the trend for the years to come.To enable the research in these multi-RAT scenarios, another fundamental result of this PhD thesis, besides the scientific contributions, is the release of high fidelity models for LTE and NR and their coexistence with Wi-Fi and WiGig to the ns-3 open-source community. ns-3 is a popular open-source network simulator, with the characteristic to be multi-RAT and so naturally allows the evaluation of coexistence scenarios between different technologies. These models, for which I led the development, are by academic citations, the most used open-source simulation models for LTE and NR and havereceived fundings from industry (Ubiquisys, WFA, SpiderCloud, Interdigital, Facebook) and federal agencies (NIST, LLNL) over the years.
  

• RONY, RAKIBUL ISLAM: Joint access-backhaul mechanisms in 5G cell-less architectures
  
  Author: RONY, RAKIBUL ISLAM
  Thesis file: (contact the Doctoral School to confirm you have a valid doctoral degree and to get the link to the thesis)
  Programme: DOCTORAL DEGREE IN NETWORK ENGINEERING
  Department: Department of Network Engineering (ENTEL)
  Mode: Normal
  Reading date: 13/05/2022
  Thesis director: LOPEZ AGUILERA, MARIA ELENA | GARCIA VILLEGAS, EDUARD
  

  Committee:
       PRESIDENT: DE ANDRADE JARDIM, MARILET
       SECRETARI: CALVERAS AUGE, ANA M.
       VOCAL: GUTIÉRREZ TERAN, JESÚS
  Thesis abstract: Older generations of wireless networks, such as 1G and 2G were deployed using leased line, copper or fibre line as backhaul.Later, in 3G and 4G, microwave wireless links have also worked as backhaul links while the backbone of the network was still wireline-based. However, due to multiple different use cases and deployment scenarios of 5G, solo wireline based backhaulnetwork is not a cost-efficient option for the operators anymore. For cost-efficient and fast deployment, wireless backhaul optionsare very attractive. As drawbacks, wireless backhaul links have capacity and distance limitations. To take the advantages of boththe solutions, i.e., wired and wireless, 5G transport networks are anticipated to be a heterogeneous, complex, and with stringent performance requirements.To address the aforementioned challenges, wireless backhaul options are providing more attractive solutions, and hence, technologies using the same resources (e.g., frequency channels) may be used by both access and backhaul networks. In this scenario, blurring the separation line between access and backhaul networks allows resource sharing and cooperation between both the networks and minimizes the network deployment and maintenance cost significantly. Therefore, in 5G, the access and backhaul networks cannot be seen as separate entities; rather, we seek to integrate them together to ensure the best use ofresources.In this thesis, firstly, we investigate the challenges and potential technologies of 5G transport network. Later, to address these challenges, we identify and present different approaches to perform joint access-backhaul mechanism. An initial performanceevaluation of access-aware backhaul optimization is presented, where backhaul network is dynamically assigned with the required resources to serve the dynamic requirements of a 5G access network. The evaluation results and discussions manifest the resource efficiency of joint access-backhaul mechanisms.Functional splits in different layers of the access network comes as an intelligent solution to reduce the enormous capacity requirements of the transport network in a centralized radio access network approach, which tends to centralize almost all the functionalities into a central unit, leaving only radio frequency functions at the access points. From the joint access-backhaul mechanism perspective, we propose a novel technique, which takes the benefit of functional splits at physical layer, to design a heterogeneous transport network in an economical budget-limited and capacity-limited scenario.Till today, the limited capacity of the wireless backhaul links remains a challenge, and hence, frequency spectrum becomes scarce, and requires efficient utilization. To address this challenge, a joint spectrum sharing technique to implement joint accessbackhaul mechanism is presented. Evaluation results show that our proposed joint spectrum sharing technique, where spectrumallocation in the backhaul network follows the access network's traffic load, is fair and efficient in terms of spectrum utilization.We also propose a machine learning technique, which analyses data from a real network and estimates access network's traffic pattern, and subsequently, assigns bandwidth in the access network according to the traffic estimations. Presented evaluation results show that a well-trained machine learning model can be very efficient to obtain an efficient utilization of frequencyspectrum.
  

Last update: 19/05/2022 05:01:04.

Research groups

• BAMPLA-Design and Evaluation of Broadband Networks and Services
• GRXCA-Research Group on Cellular and Ad-hoc Networks
• ISG-Information Security Group
• MAPS-Management, Pricing and Services in Next Generation Networks
• SISCOM-Smart Services for Information Systems and Communication Networks
• WNG-Wireless Networks Group

Teachers

• Aguilar Igartua, Mónica
• Agusti Torra, Anna
• Alins Delgado, Juanjo
• Barcelo Arroyo, Francisco
• Calveras Auge, Anna
• Casademont Serra, Jordi
• Casals Ibañez, Lluis
• Cervello Pastor, Cristina
• Cruz Llopis, Luis Javier de la
• Domingo Aladren, Maria del Carmen
• Esparza Martin, Oscar
• Fernandez Muñoz, Marcel
• Forne Muñoz, Jordi
• Garcia Villegas, Eduard
• Gomez Montenegro, Carles
• Gorricho Moreno, Juan Luis
• Guasch Murillo, Daniel
• Hernandez Serrano, Juan Bautista
• Hesselbach Serra, Xavier
• Lopez Aguilera, Maria Elena
• Martin Escalona, Israel
• Mata Diaz, Jorge
• Melus Moreno, Jose Luis
• Muñoz Tapia, Jose Luis
• Pallares Segarra, Esteve
• Paradells Aspas, Jose
• Parra Arnau, Javier
• Pegueroles Valles, Josep
• Postigo Boix, Marcos
• Remondo Bueno, David
• Rico Novella, Francisco Jose
• Rincon Rivera, David
• Sallent Ribes, Sebastian
• Serrat Fernandez, Juan
• Soriano Ibañez, Miquel
• Vidal Ferre, Rafael
• Zola, Enrica Valeria