Clearing 2010 Clearing 2010
return to top
return to top

CWIND

The Centre for Wireless Network Design

Head: Prof Jie Zhang profile...

Introduction

CWiND was founded in January 2006. The founding Director of the Centre is Professor Jie Zhang profile... Professor of Wireless Communications and Networks. Professor Zhang joined the University in 2002. From 1997 to 2001, he was with University College London (Dept. of EE Eng.) and Imperial College (Centre for Process Systems Eng.), Oxford University (Dept. of Eng. Sci.) and Aircom International Ltd.

The missions of CWIND are:

  • To develop novel approaches that will solve telecommunications network planning and optimisation problems of real industrial interests;
  • To investigate and develop innovative methods that will bring fundamental changes to telecommunications network planning and optimisation;
  • To become one of the best-funded, one of the best-known, and the leading group in wireless network planning and optimisation in academia in the world.
Head:
Other Associated Academic Staff:
Researchers:
Research Students:

The particular strength of CWIND lies in the interdisciplinary and inter-sectoral expertise possessed by its members, which covers wireless communications, operations research, high end computing, and commercial radio network planning tools development experience.

Many CWiND members worked with Ericsson, Nokia, Siemens, Nortel, Vodafone, Telefonica R&D, Intel, Bynear and Aircom before joining the group.

Research interests

The main research interests of CWiND members are the simulation, planning and optimisation of mobile communications networks such as 3G/4G cellular networks, WiFi, WiMAX and digital broadcasting (e.g. DVB) networks. Network planning and optimisation plays a vital role in the deployment and maintenance of wireless communications networks. Without proper planning, infrastructure-based wireless communications networks such as 2G/3G/4G cellular can neither be successfully deployed, nor be successfully expanded. Up to 30% of the cost can be saved for cellular radio networks with advanced planning and optimisation tools.

In the last few years, the Centre members have not only developed their own radio network simulation, planning and optimisation platforms (e.g., for UMTS/HSPA and WiMAX), but also bought a number of market leading commercial network planning tools, e.g. Atoll, WinProp, ASSET3G, RanOpt and Advantage.

Another notable research interest of the Centre is real-time communications, e.g. real-time packet scheduling. The work of Dr Sijing Zhang is internationally recognized and has lead to a number of publications in top journals. The work on real-time communications is being expanded to multimedia communications in cellular, WiMAX and WLANs etc.

The research interests of CWiND cover a large spectrum of radio network planning and optimisation and are listed as follows:

  • Indoor/outdoor radio propagation models and scenarios;
  • Automatic radio propagation model tuning;
  • Automatic configuration algorithms of femtocells;
  • Mobility management in femto/macrocell scenarios;
  • Interference analysis and mitigation in femto/macrocell scenarios;
  • Use of measurements in network planning (e.g. probe data and drive test data);
  • Processing of measurement data and analysis of network data;
  • Indoor radio network planning and optimization (repeaters, DAS, picocells and femtocells) methods and tools;
  • Approaches and tools for automatic UMTS/HSPA/LTE/WiFi/WiMAX radio network planning and optimisation;
  • The application of high performance computing (HPC) in network simulation, planning and optimisation;
  • Novel simulation methods for 3G/4G radio networks;
  • MAC protocols, performance analysis and simulation of WLANs and MANETs and wireless mesh networks, etc;
  • Heterogeneous wireless networks (UMTS/HSPA/LTE/WiFi/WiMAX/DVB) planning and optimization;
  • Radio resource management (RRM);
  • Dynamic frequency allocation and spectrum sharing techniques;
  • Self-optimization in LTE networks;
  • Cooperative relay in UMTS/HSPA/LTE and WiMAX networks;
  • Wireless mesh network planning and optimization methods and tools;
  • Real-time communications and QoS in wireless networks.

Research funding

Since 2003, CWiND members have been awarded over 20 research projects (worth over £4.0 million to the group) by the EPSRC, the European Commission (FP6/FP7), the Nuffield Foundation and the university. From Jan. 2009 to Dec. 2011, there will be at least 10 EPSRC/FP6/FP7 projects (funding secured) running with over £3.0 million grant value to CWiND. The proposals submitted by CWiND members have been constantly highly evaluated.

These projects are centred on new radio propagation models, UMTS/HSPA/WiMAX/LTE simulation, planning and optimization, indoor radio network design, femtocells and real-time communications.

Collaborations

Collaboration is the key factor to the success of the Centre. We are extremely interested in collaborating with both mobile communications industry and academia to promote research in radio network planning and optimisation at national, EU and international levels.

The Centre has collaborations and/or links with a large number of telecommunications equipment vendors, mobile operators and companies specialising in network planning and optimisation tools across the world. These companies range from large international firms to SMEs and start-ups.

The Centre also has numerous connections with academia in the EU, the UK and China.

We constantly seek collaborations to bid for research funding from the EPSRC, and the EC. Please don’t hesitate to contact us: email jie.zhang@beds.ac.uk for possible joint research bids at both national and EU level.

We are also very interested in carrying out R&D or consultancy projects that are directly funded by the industry or other organisations.

Vacancies

From June to Dec. 2009, there will be three Research Fellow vacancies at postdoctoral level (the pay is highly competitive) in the area of radio network planning and optimisation, high performance computing, statistics, and wireless communications.

Two PhD studentships funded by the university and our industrial partners will be available from May 2009.

For the above posts, we mainly look for candidates who have high potentials. The candidates can come from a diverse background (e.g., subjects in mathematics, electronic engineering, telecommunications, computing, automatic control, etc).

Please be noted that these posts are highly competitive, unless you have an excellent/outstanding track records and/or high potentials, there is no point to apply.

If you are interested, please express your interests to Prof. Jie Zhang and CC to jobs.cwind@yahoo.co.uk. In the “subject” field, please specify either Research Fellow or PhD studentship.

The deadline for application is roughly the end of April 2009 (need to be confirmed with the Human Resources).

News and events

In 2008, CWiND members won two EPSRC (standard) and four FP7 projects totalling over £1.0 m to CWiND.

CALL FOR PAPERS - PlanNet2009

First International Workshop on Planning and Optimization of Wireless Communication Networks (PlanNet2009) to be held in conjunction with IWCMC 2009, Leipzig, Germany, 21-24 June, 2009

For more information click here PlanNet2009

IEEE ICC 2009 Femtocell panel

IEEE ICC 2009 Femtocell panel

Prof. Jie Zhang is organising a femtocell panel titled “Femtocells: deployment and applications” at IEEE ICC 2009.

Organiser:

Jie Zhang (CWiND, University of Bedfordshire)

Panellists:

(1) Simon Saunders (The Femto Forum)

(2) Peter (Yuefeng) Zhou (Huawei Technologies)

(3) Andy Tiller (Ip.access)

(4) Vit Stencel (T-Mobile)

(5) Guillaume de la Roche (CWiND, University of Bedfordshire)

return to top