The PhD Topic:

In cyberphysical systems, sets of autonomous agents communicate to each other so as to coordinate their actions in a meaningful and optimal way. In the context of the internet of things (IoT), smart cities and homes, and autonomous vehicles, coordination is system-critical for many systems. In particular, it plays a major role for autonomous vehicles and automated manufacturing sites as part of the future Industry 5.0, which represent main use cases for future 6G standards.

The field of  “information-theoretic coordination” has focused on the analysis of the optimal performances of cyberphysical systems for almost a decade now, with a large body of interesting and impressive results. In this project we refine the existing results with a new set of encoding rules (the so called likelihood encoding rules) and we analyze the performances that can be achieved with these new encoding rules in various timely coordination scenarios.  For example applications where observations or data have to be kept secret from external attackers, or setups where even the mere fact that communication is ongoing should not be detectable by non-informed terminals. Such requirements are important to prevent industrial sabotage or enable military applications.

Supervisors: Giulia Cervia, IMT Nord Europe, giulia.cervia@imt-lille-douai.fr  and Michele Wigger, Telecom Paris, IP Paris, michele.wigger@telecom-paris.fr

Working Environment: The PhD student will be enrolled at the doctoral school of IP Paris, and spend part (30-70%) of the time working at the COMELEC department of Telecom Paris and part (30-70%) of the time at IMT Nord Europe in Lille. Regular one-to-two weekly meetings will be held with both supervisors. Participation in biweekly research group meetings is excepted, as well as participation in international workshops and schools.

Funding: The PhD will be funded by the ANR project CLECI.

Research Domains: The project lies in the fields of information theory and communications, with application to automated systems.