Supervisor profile and contact: Dr. Henrik Klessig <henrik.klessig@de.bosch.com>

Institution: Robert Bosch GmbH

Description of the job: Robert Bosch GmbH is seeking to hire an Early Stage Researcher (ESR) to join the 5GSmartFact project. The project offers an excellent research and training programme: 1) Opportunity to join a network of leading universities, research institutes and companies in the field of wireless communications and industrial automation, 2) Training programme including regular summer and winter schools to build technical skills as well as soft skills.

Mission: One of the major goals of factories is to steadily increase competitiveness, which is mainly achieved by increasing the efficiency of production processes. One key ingredient for this is the accurate positioning of all kinds of manufacturing assets. Today’s positioning solutions range from ultra-sound, to laser, to LIDAR and to ultra-wide band; however, many of them are not accurate enough and to date there exists no cost-efficient, flexible, unified and holistic positioning system for all kinds of factory use cases.5G promises to bring along positioning capabilities that currently targets an accuracy of somewhat around 30 cm. Because a typical factory is a well-controlled environment, available context information, such as AGV routes and process information, can enrich the information basis and positioning accuracies in the one-digit cm range and even below can become possible. In this context, the aim of the work is to design, implement and validate innovative 5G-based indoor positioning algorithms that particularly make use of context information and sensor fusion.

Main functions: The main objective is to analyze and optimize standalone 5G-based radio positioning techniques, possibly by combining different approaches (e.g. time-of-flight, angle-of-arrival) and frequency bands (e.g. 3.6 GHz und 26 GHz). This includes comprehensively evaluating their performance in typical industrial propagation environments, as well as analyzing and optimizing the network topology for 5G-based positioning in industrial settings, including distributed antenna systems and backhaul. As a next step, relevant context information needs to be identified, which can help improve positioning accuracy, e.g. standard routes of AGVs, position of other objects, etc. Based thereon, suitable approaches to make use of this additional information are designed and implemented. Complementarily, methods for sensor fusion that consider additional data obtained, e.g., from MEMS sensors are integrated. Then, the performance of the developed algorithms is evaluated in live production environments and the algorithms are iteratively optimized.

Secondments: The work includes a 4 months secondment at i2CAT (supervised by Prof. Josep Paradells) and another secondment of 3 months at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, (supervised by Prof. Josep Vidal), both located in Barcelona, Spain.

Doctoral programme: The ESR will be enroled in the Doctoral programme of the department of Signal Theory and Communications of UPC .

Requirements of the candidate

• Education level: Master

• Degree/speciality: Electrical Engineering or Computer Science

• Language skills: Fluent in English, ideally level C1 or C2 according to the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR); German is a plus but not required.

• Research experience: Ideally, the candidate has already some experience in conducting research, writing scientific papers and performing appropriate experiments – but it is not a strict requirement.

• Other skills: 1) The candidate requires a strong background in at least two of the following fields: wireless communications, signal theory, positioning technology, sensor fusion, and industrial automation. 2) The candidate ideally has strong programming skills, also regarding simulation of complex systems and the implementation of a demonstrator. 3) Open, collaborative and communicative attitude; 4) Excellent written and verbal communication, as well as presentation skills; 5) Excellent organizational skills, creative, innovative, independent thinker; 6) Motivation to collaborate in an interdisciplinary team.

Apply: Job application form and Robert Bosch vacancies website. Please remember to send your application to both websites