What I'm doing now and how the CDT in Communications experience has helped my career

I'm currently a Senior Standards Strategist at Vodafone and an Honorary Industrial Fellow at the University of Bristol.   I represent Vodafone within 3GPP RAN on RF topics related to 4G, 5G and beyond. My overall responsibility is to ensure the development of specifications align with Vodafone stakeholder product roadmaps and to derive eco-system projects related to area of standards work. Prior joining Vodafone, I worked as a Senior Researcher at the University of Bristol covering wide range of wireless topics.

The CDT provided me with overreaching opportunities to work on latest advanced wireless technology and to collaborate with leading multinational manufacturers of test and measurement equipment, network providers and universities.

Why I chose the CDT route and what I gained from being part of the CDT in Communications

I received my master degree in mobile communications engineering from Heriot-Watt University in 2013. I was then offered PhD scholarships from several universities, but I decided to gain practical experience in telecom industry. Hence I worked at Alcatel-Lucent (Nokia) on small cells at the Platform Development Department within R&D for one year. This has showed me the potential benefits of having a PhD in collaboration with industry to cover real-world implementation challenges. The CDT program at the University of Bristol offered exactly what I wanted.  It has a proven record of strong collaboration work with telecom industries covering wide range of 5G topics.

PhD project topic

My thesis title is “On Evaluating the Practicality of Using Massive MIMO in Real-World Scenarios and Identifying Solutions to Operational Deployments”. My PhD project was proposed by the BBC to evaluate the practicality of using massive MIMO for wireless cameras. When I started my PhD, the project was extended to cover the use of massive MIMO in 5G technology. I first analysed the differences between theoretical and real-world results. Based on this analysis, I then proposed, designed, built, and tested novel algorithms and methodologies for power control, user grouping and user synchronization, further enhancing the spectral efficiency gains for massive MIMO. This has also enabled reliable data transmission and mitigated the differences between theoretical and real hardware implementations.

As a result of my PhD work, I led the massive MIMO team on the world’s first urban 5G Showcase ‘Layered Realities Weekend ’ at Bristol in 2018 to successfully establish twelve reliable spatially multiplexed video streams.  I also co-led a massive MIMO team on measurement and demonstration campaigns with British Telecom (BT), National Instruments (NI) and Lund University, helping to build mobile operator perspective on the deployment and use of massive MIMO technology. As a result of this work, we received the 2017 Collaborate to Innovate (C2I) Award under the ’Information, Data & Connectivity’ category. Additionally, I was a member of the University of Bristol research team that set spectral efficiency world records in collaboration with the research team from Lund University. I also played a significant role in several successful measurement campaigns with leading institutions to characterise massive MIMO performance, including the world’s first mobility deployment for massive MIMO at Lund University in 2016.

How the CDT training/secondments benefitted my PhD research

During my PhD, the CDT program provided me with the opportunity to participate in conferences, measurement campaigns, round-table meetings and trainings. I was lucky to travel to several places around the world such as Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. I had the chance to meet brilliant researchers in different places around the world. I really enjoyed my PhD journey!