Engineering PhD Scholarship

DHPA PhD Studentship

"Compressive Sensing For M2M Applications Including Healthcare And Smart Energy"

University of Bristol - Faculty of Engineering - Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering

An Industrial PhD Studentship funded by the EPSRC through the 2011 Dorothy Hodgkin Postgraduate Award Scheme (DHPA) is available in the Centre for Communications Research (CCR) at the University of Bristol in collaboration with Toshiba Research Europe Ltd (TREL).

In this project, the student will look at ways of designing compressive sensing algorithm to exploit sparsity in M2M data such as biomedical signals or smart energy sensor data. However, the design will have to take special care such that irregularity in the signals which could be vital, will not be lost in the sensing process. Additionally, the student will look at algorithms to best reconstruct the compressed data.

In a nutshell, the project considers the following problems:

• Compressive sensing of M2M sensor data to achieve low rate sampling while capturing all vital irregularities in the signals,
• Design compressive sensing algorithms which are able to protect M2M sensor data from eavesdroppers or wireless sniffers,
• Optimising the reconstruction of compressed M2M data to remove noise and recover the original signal,
• Study implications of applying compressed sensing in a practical M2M environment such as healthcare and smart energy networks.

During the PhD programme, the student may undertake a placement at TREL's Telecommunications Research Laboratory based in Bristol; while the student would benefit from the interactions with industrial researchers as well as the experience of working in an industrial laboratory, this is not mandated and is open to discussion.

This studentship is available from October 2011 for a period of up to 4 years and is funded jointly by the EPSRC through the 2011 Dorothy Hodgkin Postgraduate Award Scheme (DHPA) and by Toshiba Research Europe Ltd. The award provides an annual stipend ca. £13,590 per annum plus an enhancement of £1,430 per annum and full payment of Overseas Tuition Fees. Due to funding restrictions this studentship is only open to students from the countries listed at the OECD website - http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/62/48/41655745.pdf - plus Russia and Hong Kong.

We are seeking students with equivalent of a UK first class honours degree, from a reputable academic institution. We welcome candidates who have strong backgrounds in one of the following areas: electronics and electrical engineering, computer science, applied mathematics, system control, or related disciplines

The project will be supervised by Dr. Rob Piechocki of CCR, and Drs Woon Hau Chin and Zhong Fan at Toshiba Research Europe Ltd. Further details of the CCR's work are at: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/ccr.

Further details of the studentship can be found at: http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/ResearchCareers/dhpa.

Applications must be made online here:  http://www.bristol.ac.uk/prospectus/postgraduate/2011/intro/apply.html
When you apply you will be asked to select a PhD programme by department, please select Electrical and Electronic Engineering and state the name of the studentship in the 'Research Details' section of the application form.

The start date is as soon as possible after the 1 October 2011 and no later than 1 October 2012. This studentship is open until filled.