Research Associate / PhD Student (f/m/d): Physical Layer Security and Hardware Demonstrator Development

Research Associate / PhD Student (f/m/d): Physical Layer Security and Hardware Demonstrator Development

The project aims to develop, implement, test, and demonstrate physical-layer security strategies that exploit wireless channel characteristics, multi-antenna transmission, and adaptive signal processing to improve the confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity of wireless communications.

The Chair of Theoretical Information Technology at TUM offers a position as Research Associate / PhD Student (f/m/d) for Physical Layer Security and Hardware Demonstrator Development.

Physical-layer security is becoming increasingly important for protecting next-generation wireless networks against eavesdropping, spoofing, manipulation, and other adversarial attacks. Conventional cryptographic methods alone may not be sufficient for highly dynamic, distributed, or resource-constrained wireless systems. The project aims to develop, implement, test, and demonstrate physical-layer security strategies that exploit wireless channel characteristics, multi-antenna transmission, and adaptive signal processing to improve the confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity of wireless communications.

You will design, implement, and analyze physical-layer security strategies using advanced simulation and measurement platforms. Specific tasks include:

• Implementing physical-layer security strategies derived from theoretical work, such as wiretap codes, artificial-noise transmission, secure beamforming, physical-layer authentication, and channel-based secret-key generation.
• Simulating wireless communication systems under different adversarial scenarios, including passive eavesdropping, active spoofing, and intentional jamming.
• Analyzing the influence of realistic propagation channels, mobility, hardware impairments, and imperfect channel-state information on the achievable security performance.
• Implementing selected physical-layer security strategies on RFSoCs or software-defined radios.
• Conducting real-world experiments to investigate deviations between theoretical models, software simulations, channel emulations, and hardware implementations.