Applications are invited for a PhD studentship, to be undertaken at Imperial College London (Communications and Signal Processing Research Group, Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering). This studentship is funded by an EPSRC CASE award and industrial partner BT Group. BT Group is the UK’s leading provider of fixed and mobile telecommunications and related secure digital products, solutions and services. As part of the project, the student will work closely with staff at BT and benefit from mentoring and supervision of their staff.

The project will be supervised by Prof. Bruno Clerckx (Professor of Wireless Communications and Signal Processing, Imperial College London) and Dr Anvar Tukmanov (Senior Manager - Wireless Research, BT Group).

Summary of Project:

The project will be a game changer for future ultra-fast microwave systems, breaking the barriers of current energy consuming digital-domain and analog-domain processing, and designing fundamentally new and faster communication and signal processing transceiver architectures that emulate in the analog domain the operations of modern digital baseband processors, while being more energy and hardware efficient.

Context:

Digital signal processors (DSP) are widely used for advanced computational tasks, but face several limitations, including limited speed, high power consumption, and increased complexity due to the costly digital-to-analog and analog-to-digital converters (DAC/ADC) required. Microwave systems make heavily use of DSP for communications, sensing, and imaging whose challenges are further exacerbated by the ever-increasing needs for larger data rates and sensing capabilities in 6G and beyond requiring thousands of antennas/sensors (e.g. ultra-massive MIMO with many radio frequency radio-frequency chains) and/or larger bandwidths at higher carrier frequency bands. This renders the current technology based on DSP not sustainable nor scalable for future requirements of microwave communications and sensing systems.

Objectives:

The project aims at re-thinking computing of communications and signal processing tasks by harnessing the way signals flow through physical components to perform calculation instantly in the analog domain without crunching numbers in a traditional digital sense. This PhD studentship aims at uniquely synergizing cross-domain research activities between the analog world of microwave circuit theory and the digital world of signal and communication theory, and revisit the interplay between those two worlds to enable new and low-complexity analog computing paradigms for ultra-massive MIMO.

Novelty and Expected Outcomes:

The project holds the potential to surpass current 5G design approaches and pave the way for highly promising architectures for 6G and beyond. Preliminary results show that this analog computing technology for ultra-massive MIMO systems with thousands of antennas can match the performance of fully digital architectures while operating at just 1/5000th of the computational complexity. The significant reductions in computational complexity, and hence energy consumption, and the potential for scalability to a very large number of antennas and users are critical advantages compared to traditional digital and hybrid analog-digital massive mimo architectures.

Skills and Technologies:

Participants will develop proficiency in communication theory, wireless communications, signal processing for communications, and microwave circuit theory. They will gain a deep understanding of communications systems, with opportunities for collaboration with industry partners to ensure the research aligns with practical needs.

Why Join This Project?

This project offers a unique opportunity to make a tangible impact on the telecommunications industry by working at the forefront of communications, signal processing, circuit theory. It provides access to advanced resources, a leading research group, industry collaborations, and a pathway to developing highly sought-after skills in the rapidly evolving landscape of Telecom engineering solutions.

Funding:

This PhD studentship is jointly funded by the EPSRC and BT Group. The post is open to home and overseas applicants, but only home fees will be covered by the funding. Overseas applicants will be expected to cover the difference between the UKRI indicative rate and Overseas fees ( Who pays home fees in England ). It includes an EPSRC stipend rate of approximately £22,780 per year (tax-free) plus £3000 per year (tax-free) top-up from industry for four years, support of research expenses, travel to collaborators, conferences and a secondment at BT Group. The student should ideally be able to start on the first day of the 2025/26 academic year (27 September 2025).

Duties and responsibilities

The responsibilities include studying the relevant literature, defining the research problems based on the project descriptions, conducting independent research, regularly reporting progress and results in both oral and written format, collaborating with other team-members, and writing reports/papers of the research outcomes when appropriate. The successful candidate will be based at the Communications and Signal Processing Group at Imperial College London, but will have the opportunity to visit BT Group to attend meetings and undertake a secondment at their premises.

Essential Requirements:

Applicants should have a first-class Master’s degree (or equivalent Msc) in Electrical and Electronic Engineering. Suitable backgrounds for these PhD positions include, but are not limited to, wireless communications, communication theory, signal processing, microwave circuit theory. They should be highly motivated individuals with a keen interest in conducting interdisciplinary research. Students must also meet the eligibility requirements for postgraduate studies at Imperial College London.

Further Information and application :

Please click HERE to apply.

Please choose Electrical and Electronic Engineering Research Program and Communications and Signal Processing Research Group, then indicate Prof. Bruno Clerckx as a potential supervisor when making the application.

The application should include a covering letter, research statement and your CV. Full guidance on the application process is available HERE . For queries regarding the application process, please contact [email protected] .

Closing Date: 30 March 2025

About Imperial College London

Imperial College London is the UK’s only university focussed entirely on science, engineering, medicine and business and we are consistently rated in the top 10 universities in the world.

Additional information on the PhD programme in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering can be found here .