Cyrille Duquet Graduate Scholarships MSc Program in Telecom @ INRS-EMT

About the Wireless Lab, the EMT
Centre, and INRS

The Wireless Lab, located at the heart of downtown Montreal, is part of the Centre Énergie Matériaux et Télécommunications (EMT) of the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS), a top-tier graduate-level university in Canada and one of the best in all its areas of specialty. A truly hidden gem! That is according to consistant ranking (always 1st or 2nd, year over year) in terms of all normalized metrics that assess each university's research performance, impact and training at the graduate levels as well as the scope of its collaborative R&D with industry.

Fellowships Program Objective

Support students who demonstrate a high standard of achievement in undergraduate and early graduate studies to pursue their master's program at the EMT Centre of INRS.

Start Date

Flexible: Winter 2021 (preferably), Summer 2021, or even Fall 2021 Session; or otherwise as early as the upcoming Fall 2020 session (still feasible as long as the applicant is available and ready to start in September 2020).

Eligibility

Be a citizen or a permanent resident of Canada. Students already accepted at or enrolled to a full-time master’s program in telecommunications are not eligible.

How to Apply
  • Cover/motivation letter;
  • Curriculum vitae;
  • Undergraduate and Bachelor’s degree transcripts;
  • Research proposal (1 page);
  • Reference letter from an external referee; and
  • Support letter from the designated supervisor at INRS.

Selection Criteria
  • Academic excellence (academic record, undergrad studies duration and progress, scholarships and awards held);
  • Research ability or potential (relevant experience, publications and communications, reference/support letters); and
  • Significance, feasibility, and merit of proposed research and its adequacy with the fields of expertise of the proposed supervisor.

Funding Duration

Scholarship support is limited to a lifetime maximum of two years. Two scholarships are granted annually.

Scholarship Value

CAD 22,000 per year
⚠️Please consider that the value of the Canada Graduate Scholarships-Master's (CGS-M) Program of NSERC (i.e.,at federal level across Canada) is just CAD 17,500, for one year only non-renewable. And that the value of the 2nd Cycle Scholarships Program of FRQNT (i.e., at provincial level in Québec) is also just CAD 17,500, for two years. By applying to this Cyrille Duquet Fellowships Program, you can first of all increase you chances of being awarded a scholarship at the MSc level, yet keep your NSERC or FRQNT fellowship should you be granted one, then still have it topped up to the amount of 22,000 per year over two years (cf. Scholarships Accumulation section below).

Application Deadline

Monday 17 August 2020 (*)

Submit your application - after coordination with the Team Leader of the Wireless Lab (*) - to Mrs. Carolyne Hebert at the Postdoctoral & Graduate Studies Office (PGSO) of INRS.

Selection Process

The selection committee, composed of professors involved in the telecom program at INRS, recommend scholarships for the applicants with the best qualifications according to the selection criteria described in the above section.

Scholarships Accumulation

Award holders are a priori ineligible to receive any scholarship support from other granting agencies or from INRS. However, Cyrille Duquet will top up any graduate-level scholarship received from other funding agencies up to - without exceeding in total - CAD 22,000 per year.

Skills and Qualifications

  • Holds an engineering diploma or a bachelor degree in:
    • Electrical Engineering;
    • Computer Science;
    • Mechanics (i.e., Robotics, Mechatronics, Haptics, Control);
    • Mathematics;
    • Physics; or
    • Any other related field or discipline not listed above;
  • Possesses a competitive academic record;
  • Eager to exploring new frontiers and to advancing know-how in science and technology;
  • Innovative and creative;
  • Self-motivated; and
  • Team player.

Language of Work

English or French

Mandate

Address at the Wireless Lab of the EMT Centre of INRS a timely R&D project (cf. research topics below) on wireless techs & apps in collaboration with industry. Publish in/attend top-tier international journals/conferences. Interact with/report to all team members and industrial & academic partners.

Research Topics

Topics of interest at the Wireless Lab include, but are not limited to the following:

  • Antenna-Array Processing;
  • Beamforming, Smart Antennas & MIMO;
  • CDMA, OFDM, UWB, Multi-Carrier, FDD & TDD;
  • Channel Identification;
  • Channel Sounding, Characterization & Modeling;
  • Cognitive Radio & Wireless Cloud;
  • Cooperative & Relayed Communications;
  • Distributed Computing;
  • Embedded Systems, Software-Defined Radio (SDR) & Prototyping;
  • Energy Harvesting (EH);
  • Indoor Radio Positioning, Mapping & Navigation;
  • Information-Theoretic Performance Analysis;
  • Interference Mitigation Techniques;
  • Internet of Things (IoT) & Industry 4.0;
  • IS95, 3G, WCDMA, CDMA 2000, 4G, LTE, 5G, 5G+ & 6G;
  • Machine Learning (ML) & Artificial Intelligence (AI);
  • MANET (Mobile Ad hoc Networks), VANET (i.e., Vehicular) & FANET (i.e., Flying);
  • Multiuser Detection;
  • Parameter Estimation & Detection;
  • PHY Layer;
  • PHY-Layer Security;
  • Radio Interface/Access Technologies;
  • Radio Transceiver Designs;
  • Remote Sensing, RADAR, SONAR & LIDAR;
  • RF, mmWave, THz, Free-Space Optical (FSO), Optical Wireless (OW) & Visible Light Communications (VLC);
  • Signal Processing;
  • Simultaneous Wireless Information & Power Transfer (SWIPT);
  • Space-Time Processing;
  • Standard-Compliant Link-/System-Level Simulations;
  • Statistical Signal Processing;
  • Synchronization;
  • Target Detection, Localization & Tracking;
  • Wireless Access Virtualization;
  • Wireless Communications;
  • Wireless Sensor Networks.

(*) Should you opt for joining the Wireless Lab, you have to - prior to submitting your application to the PGSO (cf. above) - contact ASAP the Team Leader, prof. Sofiène Affes, to seek his endorsement and coordinate with him ahead of the deadline. Please do so no later than Monday 17 August 2020 at 12:00 PM.

More About the Wireless Lab

The Wireless Lab has established itself as a leading research lab dedicated to the application of signal processing in the global field of wireless communication technologies and applications. By offering a platform to pursue innovative research programs, it has created a significant archive of critical knowledge to benefit students, researchers, and industrials. It has also distinguished itself by its pioneering collaborative projects that aim to consolidate the idea of university-industry collaboration. Forged in a period of passionate discussions and studies, the Wireless Lab has been constantly broadening and deepening those considerations by making significant contributions in the best scientific journals and conferences in the field.

As a dynamic team, our goal is to continue seeking, in strong partnerships with industry and academia, both innovation in cutting-edge research and excellence in advanced graduate training for the development of future wireless technologies and applications.

System-Integration-Oriented Research Approach

One of the prime objectives of the Wireless Lab is to showcase with demos the new wireless transceiver technologies developed by its team members to significantly strengthen the scope of their research achievements and increase the potential of their technology transfer. The Wireless Lab has been, indeed, an advocate of a challenging "system integration-oriented approach" in algorithmic research on signal processing for wireless communications that jointly tackles most of physical-layer issues; takes into account interaction between subsystem components, any source of imperfection such as estimation and modeling errors, implementation feasibility and costs, etc.; and that integrates standardized link- and system-level simulations, prototyping, and evaluation in real-world conditions in the assessment methodology, thereby providing tremendous added values in terms of scientific impact and industrial relevance. An inspiring experience that allowed the Wireless Lab to shape the scope and vision of the NSERC CREATE Research Training Programme on Pervasive and Smart Wireless Applications for the Digital Economies (PERSWADE) it has spearheaded since 2013, the first of its kind in Canada with focus on wireless techs & apps.

Collaborative Research with Industry

Over more than a decade, the Wireless Lab has already been able to gain the strong support of a relatively large number of industrial partners among wireless equipment manufacturers, service providers, SMEs, start-ups or governmental agencies, through major and successful partnership projects on the development of advanced wireless transceiver designs.

Research Training

The Wireless Lab offers a very stimulating environment for training. This environment could indeed help students learn to give up oversimplified analytical approaches for sophisticated system-level simulators that far-better grasp the complexity of today's radio access technologies and provide more realistic and reliable results and insights. It could help them better understand standards when, very often ignored, could challenge work assumptions and value. It could help students understand technology evolution challenges from an idea to a potential real-world application product. These tremendous added-value semi-technical/soft skills are highly appreciated by the telecom and wireless industries since they significantly improve trainees' job readiness. Through its wide network of industrial and university collaborators, locally, nationally, and internationally, the Wireless Lab also provides students with precious opportunities for mobility, nationally or internationally, in the framework of internships or postdoctoral stays at world class venues in industry or academia.

A Tradition of International Outreach Prowesses

The Wireless Lab has been so far able to organize, almost entirely through the involvement of its team members and students, three major international events in Montreal:

  • The 15th edition of the IEEE International Conference on Ubiquitous Wireless Broadband (IEEE ICUWB'2015), formerly known as International Conference on Ultra Wide-Band, a top-tier conference technically and financially co-sponsored by the IEEE MTT-S Society;
  • The 28th Annual IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (IEEE PIMRC 2017), one of the flagship conference of the IEEE ComSoc Society; and
  • The 28th edition of the IEEE 5G Summit series in Montreal (IEEE 5G Summit Montreal), a major platform of IEEE ComSoc for leaders, innovators, and researchers from industry and academia to collaborate and exchange ideas in the emerging 5G technology.

Mandated by Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED) Canada, it has also been able to represent Canada within the Canadian Evaluation Group (CEG) at the United Nations' International Telecommunication Union (ITU) for the evaluation of two sets of candidates, previously to 4G standards about ten years ago, and now to new 5G standards since 2018.