PhD Studentship in Enabling Energy Efficiency of the Network Management Function using Autonomic Network Element Intelligence
Ulster Supervisors: Prof Gerard Parr, Prof Dave Bustard, Dr Philip Morrow
BT Advisor: Dr. Mark Shackleton
Expected start date: January 2009
Overview:
The following PhD project has been created under the auspices of the
India-UK Advanced Technology Centre (IU-ATC) of Excellence in Next Generation
Networks Systems and Services
(www.iu-atc.com).
During the lifetime of the project there will be opportunities to spend
a period of time as part of a related internship at BT Adastral Park in Martlesham,
UK and/or to visit one or more partner research institutes in India.
The successful candidate should therefore be willing to travel and spend some
time overseas as part of the research project. An Internship will be
supported by BT whilst any visits to India will be supported by our associated
UKIERI-DST project for the IU-ATC Virtual Graduate Research School.
Arrangements for the internship / visits will be made by the supervisory
team of the PhD project.
Project Specification:
The ever increasing demand for equity of access to Next Generation
Broadband services in UK and India is resulting in higher levels of
energy consumption. The drivers for environmental and climate protection
are now seen as equally important to Telco operators and service providers
as they strive to reduce their capex and opex costs and look for methods
to manage their energy uptake more effectively. Managing Sustainable
Infrastructures and Services are key challenges facing us in the coming
century. Areas to be addressed include opportunities of low-power
consumption access and core networks exchanges, base stations and switches,
and, in particular, energy-efficient devices for rural area deployments
and methods to provide for sustainable expansion and growth of future network
infrastructures (fixed and wireless).
This proposed research theme provides opportunities to explore the correlations that exist between the need for optimal topology and component intelligence and high availability in support of mission critical applications and services and their energy requirements. Within this are challenges to provide for redundancy in a network to provide for autonomic behaviour in the event of failure so that we can have built-in resilience for load share or re-routes when needed for emergency response. This implies that under normal circumstances there are large parts of core and access network infrastructure and attached switches, exchange premises equipment and servers in backup 'sleep', mode for significant periods of time where they still drain power but don't actually carry end-user applications traffic. In this we can consider the role of specific services delivered over networks and the energy impact of delivering these services, given their particular traffic profiles and behavior and also the role and behaviour of different types of customer networked equipment and software services (both retail and business CPE) and their impact on network utilisation and energy consumption.
A particular focus for this project will be to examine the key drivers and KPIs that will provide for the levels of resilience and robustness we requires in today's converging networks, whilst at the same time exploring new methods for optimisation of energy and power consumption between the CPE, Access and Core Network components and devices. Models will be derived to examine the QoS requirements of key classes of application that necessitate such over provision, for example, running government applications and services, banking, homeland security and emergency response. These models will be used to derive cost functions for the actual supply and consumption of power as a measure at per packet, per bit and per connection/flow of user derived traffic presented to the network against the background traffic that is needed to maintain state across the control plane. Such models will be used to inform and create an energy-efficiency index of various network topologies and architectures and will take into account the cost benefits of introducing and planning more intelligent methods and network management protocols and policies to maintain state and self-stabilize in the event of exception conditions. This will have a direct influence on network design and planning decisions that will strive to provide real-time QoS and fault-tolerant infrastructures whilst at the same time optimising the actual levels of energy consumption and the reduction of Co2 emission from network plant.
Eligibility:
Candidates should hold a first or upper second class honours degree in
Computer Science, Electrical Engineering or a cognate area. It is desirable
that candidates will have an MSc in a related subject and technical
experience/knowledge of fixed-wireless Telecommunications Network Protocols and
Data Analytical tools and optimisation techniques for Network Management in
converged IP networks
Whilst this PhD Award is open to local and international candidates, in the context of the IU-ATC we would especially welcome applications from suitably qualified candidates from India. Successful candidates will enrol on a full-time programme of research studies leading to the award of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
The studentship will comprise fees and an annual stipend of £12,940. It will be awarded for a period of up to three years subject to satisfactory progress and is tenable in the School of Computing and Information Engineering at the Coleraine Campus, Northern Ireland, UK.
The closing date for receipt of completed applications is 14th November 2008.
For further information please contact Professor Gerard Parr, Chair in Telecommunications Engineering, University of Ulster - gp.parr@ulster.ac.uk.
Application materials are available from:
Research Office,
University of Ulster,
Cromore Road,
Coleraine,
BT52 1SA,
Tel: 028 7032 4729,
e-mail; hj.campbell@ulster.ac.uk,
Web:
http://research.ulster.ac.uk/info/prospective/apply.html