Current students

The ever-increasing demand for intelligent, automated, and connected mobility solutions pushes for the development of innovative beyond fifth generation (B5G) and sixth generation (6G) cellular networks. A radical transformation on the physical (PHY) layer of vehicular communications is foreseen, which will exploit the use of new communication technologies and new portions of the spectrum, such as millimeter waves, to improve the throughput and reduce the latency. This is the research area that is targeted in my PhD activity, where the goal is to investigate how the PHY design is conceived in the current standards in order to assess potential enhancements. The main motivation is the possibility that some of the fundamental 5G New Radio (NR) PHY layer parameters may be designed and tuned in an intelligent way to improve the Quality of Service (QoS). This can be achieved by adapting in a pro-active manner not only the PHY layer settings, e.g., numerology, modulation, and coding, but also the network deployment, e.g., optimal positioning/localization or selection of the optimal link according to the channel condition, surrounding environment, users’ behavior, and network state. The adaptation can be implemented by integrating both the data shared by connected vehicles and/or pre-defined statistics and models.  B5G networks will cope with a high degree of heterogeneity in terms of services and specifications, trying to fulfil the requirements of the 5G vision of everything, everywhere, and always connected. In particular, the B5G PHY should be able to support an agile and opportunistic usage of the spectrum. To achieve it, several waveforms are currently under investigation to improve the overall system performance in terms of reliability, spectral efficiency, and resilience to the wireless channel impairments. Even if the primary waveform choice remains Orthogonal Frequency Division multiplexing (OFDM), alternative schemes, e.g., Generalized Frequency-Division Multiplexing (GFDM) and Orthogonal Time Frequency Space (OTFS), can offer advantages in various scenarios, such as the vehicular one. As matter of facts, the study of advanced waveforms for 5G and beyond wireless network finds as practical application the scenarios of the cellular communications assisted by drones and/or NR V2X due to harsh channel conditions.