We have an open position for a PhD student on the research area of Information Theory at IMT Nord Europe, former IMT Lille Douai, in Lille.
The proposed project will be on efficient code design for finite-blocklength coordination, at the intersection between Information Theory, Coding, Large deviations and Neyman-Pearson theory.
Summary:
Ensuring cooperation of autonomous devices in a decentralized network is an ambitious objective that compels us to go beyond the traditional problem of reliable communications. We propose to use the notion of coordination , which is intended as a way of enforcing a prescribed joint behavior of the devices through communication, by synthesizing joint distributions which approximate a target behavior of the agents. With this project, we intend to move one step closer to real-life applications by looking at
the short block-length regime. Moreover, this PhD thesis will tackle two complementary aspects of coordination with short packets. First, we will have to design efficient coding schemes which are consistent with the known capacity bounds for the coordination region in the short block-length setting.
At the same time, given the lack of results on finite-length coordination, we aim at better understanding the nature of the coordination problem by deriving new bounds for multi-user network settings.
Objectives:
Within this PhD, we intent to focus on the following objectives:
Objective 1: Design of coordination coding schemes
Objective 2: Derivation of new coordination rate regions for multi-nodes networks
Additional information:
Director: Laurent Clavier, IMT Nord Europe, CERI Systèmes Numériques
Supervisors:
Giulia Cervia, IMT Nord Europe, CERI Systèmes Numériques
Anne Savard, IMT Nord Europe, CERI Systèmes Numériques
Location: Lille (approximately 1h30 away from Paris by TGV, 1h30 away from London by Eurostar, and 30 minutes from Bruxelles)
The successful candidate will be a member of the Digital System group of IMT Nord Europe (former IMT Lille Douai, website: http://imt-lille-douai.fr/en/about-us/identity/). IMT Nord Europe is located in Villeneuve d’Ascq, at approximately 1h30 by TGV train from center Paris.
The successful candidate can start as soon as possible.
Applications are sought from France, EU and international candidates with an outstanding academic background, especially in information theory, channel coding or related disciplines. Demonstrable mathematical skills will be essential. The candidate should be familiar with key engineering programming languages (Matlab, Python, …)
Applicants must have an Msc degree (M2, engineer degree or equivalent in France). A good and working knowledge of the English Language is required.
How to apply:
Interested candidates have to send their detailed CV, academic records (from Bsc to Msc level), at least two academic referees and a short motivation letter via email to the contacts below.
Applications will be received until the position is filled.
Contacts:
Giulia Cervia
Email: [email protected]
Webpage: https://sites.google.com/view/giuliacervia/home-page
Anne Savard
Email: [email protected]
Webpage: https://pro.univ-lille.fr/anne-savard/
References:
● P. Cuff, H. H. Permuter, and T. M. Cover, Coordination Capacity, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, 2010
● Y. Polyanskiy, H. V. Poor, and S. Verdu, Channel coding rate in the finite blocklength regime, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, 2010
● G. Cervia, T. Oechtering and M. Skoglund, (ε,n) Fixed-Length Strong Coordination Capacity, accepted at IEEE ITW 2021
● G. Cervia, L. Luzzi, M. Le Treust and M. R. Bloch, Strong coordination of signals and actions over noisy channels with two-sided state information, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, 2020
● M. R. Bloch, L. Luzzi, and J. Kliewer, Strong coordination with polar codes, IEEE Allerton 2012
● A. Savard, C. Weidmann, Optimized codes for the binary coded side-information problem, IEEE ISTC, Bremen, Germany, Aug. 2014
● A. Savard , L. Clavier, On the two-way diamond relay channel with lattice-based Compress-and-Forward, IEEE WCNC, Barcelona, Spain, April 2018