The exponential growth of data traffic passing through communication and networking infrastructure across the world is accelerating the development of new technologies and embedded design approaches. The spread of connectivity spurred by Internet of Things (IoT) and the proliferation of mobile devices are helping to address embedded communication system requirements for hardware, software, and security.
5G technology will have a profound impact in business and on consumers across the world. It promises a revolutionary experience with much faster data, shorter network response time (lower latency), instant access anywhere and everywhere, and the capacity for billion devices. Unlike 3G and 4G, 5G promises to expand far beyond our mobile devices and into the applications that touch all facets of our lives.
5G wireless represents the next major generation of mobile telecommunication standard beyond 4G. Forming the next true generation of wireless systems (5G) will require embedded engineering teams to adapt to new integrated design workflows and collaborate with a variety of ecosystem players. From enabling the Industrial Internet of Things to ensure the safety of autonomous vehicles, 5G will change our lives in ways which are hard to imagine.
5G is a catalyst that will bring forward new concepts, advanced techniques and technologies like Al and ML, smart cities and smart cards, telematics and Internet of Things. It is an important catalyst that has been missing in these adjacent technologies. 5G is more a disruptive catalyst than a technology in and of itself.
5G continues to develop ahead of its limited commercialization, in the coming years there will be further scaled deployments and better device support. The Internet of Things (IoT) is quickly connecting objects of all sorts in an effort to capture, analyse and take action on data. In fact, massive IoT which include applications like industrial robotics and autonomous drones need ultra-reliable low latency 5G communications support. .
As 5G and IoT co-evolve, the race is on to produce even smaller, more powerful chips, modems, and other embedded systems that are needed to build next generation smart devices. There is a need to create a comprehensive academic program in Wireless Communication with an emphasis on 5G technology; applications and embedded systems which will provide excellent opportunities not only for future developers but for seasoned professionals as well to learn 5G and IoT systems.
The need for and pursuit of5G
The need for and pursuit of 5G
54% of IoT solutions will require Gbit/Sec data traffic speed.
53% of engineers’ management cite 802.11 and or LTE technology as critical to future success.
Current trends in5GTechnology
5G features new technologies such as Massive MlMO and mm wave. Both these technologies use multiple antennas and beam forming which is a huge departure from previous and current wireless architecture. 5G also includes new wireless control mechanisms that split the control and data to facilitate the concept of network slicing, which scales the level of service to an individual user device.
In addition, the standards proposed for 5G are far more complex than 3G and 4G standards. 5G will transform our networks, therefore industry must transform the way these systems are designed, developed and tested. For algorithm design, simply modelling systems without any real-world validation has not been enough for an idea to advance from concept to production. For test, traditional methods that focus on an individual component will not be able to account for the overall impact of the system.
The challenge and opportunity of the Internet of Things
The Internet of Things (IoT) is the ecosystem of - physical objects devices, vehicles, buildings and all kinds of other objects like embedded electronics, software, sensors and network connectivity. As a by-product, these objects collect and exchange vast quantities of information generating a wealth of actionable insights through big data and analytics.
The network platform supports a diversity of potential use cases called logical network slices, which will enable optimized network experiences to be made available to specific services taking the idea of virtualization as applied to the data center in the development of cloud services and applying it to the radio network. Thus slices of this radio network can be associated with specific services taking the idea of virtualization as applied to the data centre in the development of Cloud Services and applying it to a radio network. Thus slices of the radio network can be associated with specific services and can be logically applied to vertical segments.
The 5G network slices allow the same infrastructure to address things such as IoT data collection, mission critical real-time inter-vehicle control interaction and medical information or emergency and government services. This transmission also sets the stage to leverage traditional enterprise features and application such as skill based routing to the IoT capabilities back into more personal, more intelligent responses. To do this, the network service architecture needs to be secure, scalable and elastic (carrier-grade) to match these expectations.
Today’s IoT is often thought of as simple elements of home automation or fitness monitors that are hi-fi based. The computation services or experiments associated with these applications are typically implemented over the Top (OTT) of broad band connection on a ‘best efforts’ basis. For early adoptions and un-stressed networks this is a satisfactory solution.
The mobile cloud based IoT of 2020 will be embedded in the critical infrastructure of smart automotive, smart health care, smart power distribution and smart cities. The integration of service platforms with connectivity solutions will be a key area of focus for the mobile network provider.
The role of the network provider evolves
In the 5G network, voice, video and messaging are embedded in a vehicle, incorporated into a smart home infrastructure or offered through a wearable.
Generally, the network provider will continue to host the services, but in specific enterprise use cases, there is no reason why the services cannot be hosted in the enterprise cloud.
Today, 4G LTE prioritizes carrier voice traffic (QoS implementation). With network slices and increased granularity of policy control, 5G networks will be able to offer a wide variety of QoS to different network consumers.
We face a future where next generation 5G networks enabling IoT will become central to everything that we do. The network provider will be just one of the providers of communication services in this world, and in many cases will use the slicing technologies of 5G to allow the network as a service (Naas) to be directly monetized.
How does one address this massive 5G technological transformation which is redefining the (embedded) communication space?
DA-IICT and C R Rao AIMCS jointly proposes a 2 year MTech program in Electronics and Communication (EC) with specialization in Wireless Communication and Embedded systems to create quality intellectual human resources having sound knowledge in wireless communication and embedded systems so that this skill set can enable them to handle the next generation 5G research and innovation challenges.
Genesis and Objectives
This program is developed with the following objectives:
(i) to educate and train PG students who can contribute to advanced wireless communication systems (including 5G systems), cognitive and collaborative communication, satellite communication, embedded systems, IoT and sensor networks, etc.,
(ii) to initiate/develop research projects on wireless communication systems in collaboration with industry (Qualcomm, Broadcomm, etc.), R&D organizations (such as ISRO, DRDO, etc.) and academia (IITs and IISc, NIT, etc.).
The students will undertake a graduate level study and research program on the principles of wireless communication systems and hardware and firmware implementation paradigms in the context of embedded systems. Students will study the conversion of information to be transmitted into a stream of bits, and then into symbols that can be transmitted over wireless channels.
Students will study extensively and research this wireless transmission of information, for different types of information generating sources (audio, video, image, data, etc.) and for different types of information conveying mediums or channels (satellites, microwave, cellular wireless links, etc.),
A high-level summary of topics that students will engage with are advanced modulation and demodulation techniques, Forward Error Correction (FEC) techniques, multi-antenna (SIMO, MISO and MIMO) and multi-carrier (FDMA, OFDMA, SC-FDMA) systems, models of space-time-angle channels, multiuser detection (MUD) and adaptive interference cancellation, iterative message-passing and belief propagation techniques, phased array beam forming and opportunistic scheduling methods over wireless channels, etc.
In today’s world, a mastery over the principles and theory of wireless communication systems is best complemented by an expertise in digital implementation techniques, such as Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), Very Large Scale Integrated (VLSI) circuits, and Digital Signal Processing (DSP) methods. Both a practicing engineer in the industry and a research scholar in the academia face the task of a realistic and tangible implementation of wireless communication systems on practical hardware.
As an example, all the major companies in industry (such as Qualcomm, Broadcom, Intel, Texas Instruments, Analog Devices, National Semiconductor, Keysight/Agilent, Apple, Microsoft, IBM, etc.) have a group of systems engineers who not only research and develop advanced designs of wireless communication systems but also provide a detailed prototype implementation on the hardware and software of their proposed designs.
Accordingly, the students enrolled in this PG program will study both the hardware and the software aspects of the embedded systems, i.e., the systems (in the form of FPGAs, ASICs and DSPs and combinations thereof) on which the mathematical and algorithmic designs of the wireless communication systems are realized/practiced.
In summary, this MTech program will combine elegant mathematics and practical applications. Students will study how the application of mathematics to a branch of engineering has led to becoming a key enabler in today’s technology - the wireless method of communication. As a part of their PG research, students will explore ways of furthering the current state of the art in wireless communications.
Following are several key aspects of the MTech program that will be jointly offered by CR Rao AIMSCS and DA-IICT.
The total number of seats offered will be 23 (18 regular and 5 sponsored candidates).
The fees to be paid for the course shall be as per the existing structure at DA-IICT. Details are available at:
Eligibility and Admission Process
B.E. (first class) or equivalent in Electronics and Communication (EC) or equivalent with consistent good academic records, and having a valid GATE score in EC will be eligible to apply for this program. Admission process will be conducted jointly by CR Rao AIMSCS and DA-IICT.
Final selection will be based on the valid GATE score in EC and personal interview of the select candidates.
Online application website opens 15 April 2019
Last date for submission of online applications 17 May 2019
Announcement of list of candidates called for Interview 31 May 2019
Interview for candidates called for the same 17 June 2019
Announcement of first merit list for admissions 19 June 2019
Commencement of academic session TBD (July 22/29)