PhD project in Visible Light Integrated Sensing and Communication (VL-ISAC)
PhD @University of Southampton posted 2 days agoJob Description
About the project
Imagine a world where there is Internet access and radar-assisted living and quantum security, wherever there is light. The objective of this project is to implement Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC) in visible light bands.
ISAC is anticipated to serve as a pillar of 6G. However, the seamless integration of communication and sensing technologies remains challenging in the highly congested Radio Frequency (RF) bands. By contrast, the bandwidths available in the unlicensed Visible Light (VL) band ranging from 400 THz to 800 THz offers the potential of achieving both Gigabits-per-second (Gbps) communication and millimeter-precision sensing.
However, VL-ISAC still faces several challenges.
- Firstly, a signal emitted from LED will encounter both line-of-sight (LoS) and non-LoS (NLoS) paths, such as reflections from walls. This multipath phenomenon inevitably misleads localization and data detection.
- Secondly, although the LED-based illumination infrastructure can effectively support downlink data transfer, user-initiated uplink transmission remains a critical challenge.
- Thirdly, how to optimize conflicting objectives in communication and sensing functionalities remain an open problem.
This project will explore multi-carrier waveform designs for mitigating multi-path, optical Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface (RIS) for steering signal propagation as well as enabling backscatter-based uplink user data, machine learning techniques for multi-objective optimization.
This project will be supervised by Dr Chao Xu, who’s the first researcher from the University of Southampton to achieve the highest score 100/100 in the EU’s Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) fellowship proposal evaluation.
Entry requirements
A UK 2:1 honours degree, or its international equivalent.
Fees and funding
Horizon Europe fee waivers automatically cover the difference between overseas and UK fees for qualifying students.
To learn about funding opportunities visit our Doctoral College scholarships and bursaries information.
Funding will be awarded on a rolling basis, so apply early for the best opportunity to be considered.
How to apply
You need to:
- choose programme type (Research), 2025/26, Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences
- select Full time or Part time
- choose ‘PhD in Engineering’
- add name of the supervisor in section 2
Applications should include:
- a personal statement
- your CV (resumé)
- 2 academic references
- degree transcripts to date
Contact us
Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences
If you have a general question, email our doctoral college (feps-pgr-apply@soton.ac.uk).
Project leader
For an initial conversation, email Dr Chao Xu (cx1g08@soton.ac.uk).
