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Arlington-Based Graduate Research Assistants (Ph.D.)

CCI seeks research and development (R&D) graduate research assistants (GRAs) to work on experimental research, testing and evaluation in advanced wireless communication networks, particularly Open Radio Access Networks (O-RAN).

The research will be conducted in the O-RAN Alliance Open Testing and Integration Center (OTIC) at the Virginia Tech Research Center in Arlington and the Washington, D.C., metro area.

GRAs wll be part of the Acceleration of Compatibility and Commercialization for Open RAN Deployments (ACCoRD) team project,  working with such industry partners as AT&T, Verizon, Keysight, Fujitsu, Mavenir, Radisys, and Nokia.  

They’ll also actively collaborate with researchers at Virginia Tech, University of Texas at Dallas, Northeastern University, Rutgers University, and Iowa State University, as well as with our external collaborators government and industry.

Key Job Responsibilities

GRAs will join CCI’s xG Testbed research team and the ACCoRD team led by Testbed Director Aloizio Da Silva, and will follow O-RAN Alliance specification and 3GPP standards while conducting  cutting-edge research in: 

  • Open Centralized Unit (O-CU).
  • Open Distributed Unit (O-DU).
  • Open Radio Unit (O-RU).
  • Network Function Virtualization (VNF).
  • Radio Intelligent Controller (RIC). 

GRAs will conduct testing and evaluation for new and existing solutions, while developing proof of concept, algorithm design, implementation, and testing in software and hardware.

Key Job Requirements

  • Knowledge in computer networks
  • Knowledge in wireless communication networks
  • Programming skills in C, C++ and Script languages
  • Knowledge of cellular telecommunication systems
  • Interests in hardware-software co-design
  • Interests in experimental/applied research and prototyping

Electrical and Computer Engineer (ECE) students are preferred.

Key Job Activities

  • Deployment of end-to-end 5G network using open-source platforms
  • Deployment, implementation, analysis, and integration of multi-core environments into CCI xG Testbed software architecture
  • Development of O-RAN Non-RT-RIC and Near-RT RIC  rApp/xApp/macroservice using AI/ML models
  • Integration of Prometheus open-source monitoring system to the CCI xG Testbed software architecture
  • Support edge computing configuration and implementation into CCI xG Testbed system design and architecture
  • Implementation of 5G Core VNFs instantiation (mainly AMF and UPF)
  • Implementation of O-RAN use cases for validation
  • Design and implementation of test cases
  • Write testing and evaluation reports
  • Integrate hardware and software components from different vendors as well as open-source
  • Write papers and tutorials

Key Job Deliverables

  • O-RAN Software Defined Radio (SDR)-based open-source reference architecture.
  • Technical report of multi-core environments into CCI xG Testbed software architecture describing performance evaluation
  • Demos and showcases based on the ACCoRD project use case multi-vendor pairing.
  • Demo of Prometheus open-source monitoring system integrated and operational at CCI xG Testbed
  • Test case suites for O-RU and O-DU OFH autonomous testing.
  • Publication in high-caliber conference and journals

For More Information

Contact CCI xG Testbed Director Aloizio Da Silva at aloiziops@vt.edu.