Working Student for the Implementation of a Medical Testbed
Communication networks, programming
Your goal is to implement a network for critical medical applications based on an existing open-access 5G networking framework as well as the adaptation of this network according to the needs of our research.
Description
Beginning from 1st October 2024
Future medical applications put stringent requirements on the underlying communication networks in terms of highest availability, maximal throughput, minimal latency, etc. Thus, in the context of the 6G-life project, new networking concepts and solutions are being developed.
For the research of using 6G for medical applications, the communication and the medical side have joined forces: While researchers from the MITI group (Minimally invasive Interdisciplinary Therapeutical Intervention), located at the hospital "Rechts der Isar", focus on the requirements of the medical applications and collecting needed parameters of patients, it is the task of the researchers at LKN to optimize the network in order to satisfy the applications' demands. The goal of this joint research work is to have working testbeds for two medical testbeds located in the hospital to demonstrate the impact and benefits of future 6G networks and concepts for medical applications.
Your task during this work is to implement the communcation network for those testbeds. Based on an existing open-access 5G network implementation, you will implement changes according to the progress of the current research. The results of your work, working 6G medical testbeds, will enable researchers to validate their approaches with real-world measurements and allow to demonstrate future 6G concepts to research, industry and politics.
In this project, you will gain a deep insight into how communication networks, especially the Radio Access Network (RAN), work and how different aspects are implemented. Additionally, you will understand the current limitations and weaknesses as well as concepts for improvement. Also, you will get some insights into medical topics if interested. As in such a broad topic there are many open research questions, you additionally have the possibility to also write your thesis or complete an internship.
Prerequisites
- Most important: Motivation and willingness to learn unknown things.
- C/C++ and knowledge about how other programming languages work (Python, etc.) and/or the willingness to work oneself into such languages.
- Preferred: Knowledge about communication networks (exspecially the RAN), 5G concepts, the P4 language, SDN, Linux.
- Initiative to bring in own ideas and solutions.
- Ability to work with various partners (teamwork ability).
Please note: It is not necessary to know about every topic aforementioned, much more it is important to be willing to read oneself in.
Contact
Supervisor:
Implementation of a Medical Communication Library in C++
Description
Supervisor:
Network Planning in the Medical Context
Description
In future communication systems such as 6G, in-network computing will play a crucial role. In particular, processing units within the network enable to run applications such as digital twins close to the end user, leading to lower latencies and overall better performance.
In this thesis, the task is to develop and evaluate an approach to dimension networking resources such as networking devices and processing units depending on the envisioned medical applications to be executed. This work is in cooperation with our partners at MITI (Hospital „Rechts der Isar“).
The result will be an approach to dimension and plan networks for future medical applications.
Prerequisites
· Motivation
· Ideally some experience in optimization problems
· Basic networking knowledge
· Basic programming skills
Supervisor:
Optimizing the Availability of Medical Applications
Description
In future communication systems such as 6G, in-network computing will play a crucial role. In particular, processing units within the network enable to run applications such as digital twins close to the end user, leading to lower latencies and overall better performance.
In this thesis, the task is to develop and evaluate an approach to optimize the availability of medical applications, i.e., modular application functions (MAFs), when executed in the network. For that, suitable real use cases are identified together with our partners at MITI (Hospital "Rechts der Isar"). The optimizing approach then leads to a specified distribution of the processing and networking resources, satisfying the minimum needs of critical applications while considering the needed availability.
The result will be an evaluated placement approach for applications in the medical environment considering the availability.
Prerequisites
· Motivation
· Ideally some experience in solving optimization problems
· Basic networking knowledge
· Basic programming skills
Supervisor:
Minimizing the Power Consumption of Medical Applications
Description
In future communication systems such as 6G, in-network computing will play a crucial role. In particular, processing units within the network enable to run applications such as digital twins close to the end user, leading to lower latencies and overall better performance.
In this thesis, the task is to develop and evaluate an approach to minimize the power consumptions of medical applications, i.e., modular application functions (MAFs), when executed in the network. For that, suitable real use cases are identified together with our partners at MITI (Hospital "Rechts der Isar"). The optimizing approach then leads to a specified distribution of the processing and networking resources, satisfying the minimum needs of critical applications while considering the power consumption.
The result will be an evaluated power minimizing approach for applications in the medical environment.
Prerequisites
· Motivation
· Ideally some experience in solving optimization problems
· Basic networking knowledge
· Basic programming skills
Supervisor:
In-Network Placement of Medical Applications
Description
In future communication systems such as 6G, in-network computing will play a crucial role. In particular, processing units within the network enable to run applications such as digital twins close to the end user, leading to lower latencies and overall better performance.
In this thesis, the task is to place medical applications, i.e., modular application functions (MAFs), in the networking considering various parameters similar to [1]. For that, suitable real use cases are identified together with our partners at MITI (Hospital "Rechts der Isar"). The optimizing approach then leads to a specified distribution of the processing and networking resources, considering various important parameters.
The result will be an evaluated placement approach for applications in the medical environment.
[1] A. Hentati, A. Ebrahimzadeh, R. H. Glitho, F. Belqasmi and R. Mizouni, "Remote Robotic Surgery: Joint Placement and Scheduling of VNF-FGs," 2022 18th International Conference on Network and Service Management (CNSM), Thessaloniki, Greece, 2022, pp. 205-211, doi: 10.23919/CNSM55787.2022.9964591.
Prerequisites
· Motivation
· Ideally some experience in solving optimization problems
· Basic networking knowledge
· Basic programming skills
Supervisor:
Processing Priorization of MAF Chains in the Medical Context
Description
In future communication systems such as 6G, in-network computing will play a crucial role. In particular, processing units within the network enable to run applications such as digital twins close to the end user, leading to lower latencies and overall better performance. However, these processing resources are usually shared among many applications, which potentially leads to worse performance in terms of execution time, throughput, etc. . This is especially critical for applications such as autonomous driving, telemedicine or smart operations. Hence, the processing of more critical applications must be prioritized.
In this thesis, the task is to develop and evaluate a priorization approach for chains of modular medical applications, i.e., modular application functions (MAFs). Hereby, this work extends an already existing work, focusing on the placement of only single MAFs with prioritization. In this work, suitable real use cases are identified together with our partners at MITI (Hospital "Rechts der Isar"). The priorization approach then leads to a specified distribution of the processing and networking resources, satisfying the minimum needs of critical applications.
The result will be an evaluated priorization approach for applications in the medical environment.
Prerequisites
· Motivation
· Ideally some experience in solving optimization problems
· Basic networking knowledge
· Basic programming skills
Supervisor:
Detailed Requirement Analysis for the Reliability and Availability of Medical Network Communication
Description
6G soll als neuer und zukünftiger Mobilfunkstandard den Menschen in den Fokus rücken. Neben sehr geringen Latenzen und extrem großen Datenübertragungsraten wird das Netzwerk zuverlässiger, sicherer und dynamischer. Diese Eigenschaften sind besonders in der Medizin und der Medizingerätetechnik gefragt, um intelligente Datenübertragung zwischen Geräten und Menschen zu ermöglichen. Im Rahmen des Verbundprojektes „6G-life“ sollen zwei medizinische Demonstratoren entwickelt werden, die diese Netzwerkeigenschaften untersuchen. Ein Demonstrator ist ein robotisches Telediagnostiksystem zur Remote Untersuchung von Patienten. Ein zweiter Demonstrator beschäftigt sich mit der raumadaptiven Erfassung von Vitalparametern.
Ziel der Forschungspraxis ist die Ermittlung von medizintechnischen Anforderungen an die Netzwerkkommunikation hinsichtlich der Ausfallsicherheit. Dies beinhaltet eine Recherche gängiger Normen und Richtlinien, die bei der medizinischen Datenübertragung berücksichtigt werden müssen, sowie Maßnahmen, die zur Sicherstellung zuverlässiger Kommunikation getroffen werden können. Darüber hinaus sind Interviews mit Medizinern wünschenswert, um die Nutzerseite zu berücksichtigen.
Im Rahmen der Arbeit sollen folgende Punkte behandelt werden:
- Recherche zu gängigen Richtlinien und Mechanismen, die in der medizintechnischen Netzwerkkommunikation zur Ausfallsicherheit eingesetzt werden.
- Interviews mit Klinikpersonal
- Evtl. Messung mit den vorhandenen Testbeds
Diese FP wird in Kooperation mit unseren Partnern der MITI Gruppe am Krankenhaus "Rechts der Isar" durchgeführt.
Prerequisites
- Motivation
- Interesse an Medizintechnik
- Deutsch (zwingend erforderlich zwecks der Interviews)
- Grundlegende Kenntnisse über Netzwerkkonzepte