Categorie: JPL Peersoonlijk

In vervolg op de zeven succesvolle congressen An Innovative Truth I – An Innovative Truth VII vindt op 20 juni 2016 An Innovative Truth VIII – Congres over Duurzame ICT & Energie – plaats. De locatie van deze editie is het Flux-gebouw van de Technische Universiteit Eindhoven. Het thema van deze editie is “It’s all about Communication!”. 

De rol van ICT is de laatste decennia fors toegenomen. ICT zit tegenwoordig in alle haarvaten van de maatschappij. Met name de C van ICT – communicatie – is de laatste decennia geëxplodeerd. An Innovative Truth VIII – Congres over Duurzame ICT & Energie – staat dit jaar dan ook in het teken van deze maatschappelijk cruciale rol van de communicatie technologie.

De An Innovative Truth congressen zijn activerende en betrokkenheid bevorderende congressen, omtrent het thema Duurzame ICT en Energie. Dit congres verschaft u inzicht in de hedendaagse technologische ontwikkelingen, het gevoerde beleid en de maatschappelijke context. Het doel van dit congres is om de doelgroepen wetenschap, overheid, ICT-gebruikend en aanbiedend bedrijfsleven, nader met elkaar in verbinding te brengen en concrete samenwerkingstrajecten te starten of verder uit te bouwen. Het interactieve programma biedt hiervoor volop gelegenheid.

 

• Ton Backx, Directeur Institute for Integrated Photonics en hoogleraar Technische Universiteit Eindhoven
• Bernard Fortuyn, Lid Raad van Bestuur Siemens Nederland N.V.
• Peter Baltus, Directeur Centrum for Wireless Technology CWTE en Hoogleraar Technische Universiteit Eindhoven
• Frits Verheij, Director Smart Green Cities DNV GL
• René Vroom, Hoofd Innovatie Agentschap Telecom
• Peter Palensky, Hoogleraar Technische Universiteit Delft
• Peter de Bie, CEO en oprichter IPSUM Energy
• Jean-Paul Linnartz, Research Fellow Philips Research en hoogleraar Technische Universiteit Eindhoven
• Harry Stokman, Voorzitter Stichting Gelijkspanning en DC ondernemer
• Nico Baken, Senior strateeg KPN en Hoogleraar Technische Universiteit Delft
• Boudewijn Docter , CTO en oprichter EFFECT Photonics
• Hans van der Zwaag, Directeur ICT & Facilitaire Services PGGM
• Marga Blom, Directeur Energie KPN
• Ton Koonen, Hoogleraar Technische Universiteit Eindhoven
• Erik Ubels – CTO OVG Real Estate
• Leo de Vreede – Hoogleraar Technische Universiteit Delft

 

The Summer Topical Meeting in Los Angeles will provide a platform for debate about the capabilities of optical wireless communication, where their main strengths for application are, and how they can complement/substitute radio wireless techniques, e.g. in the upcoming 5G scenarios.

Jean-Paul Linnartz will give a keynote speech on Wireless Optical Communication in illumination systems. In particular the aspect of power consumption and Energy per Bit

 

There is an exploding need for wireless communication capacity, driven by the booming amounts of smart mobile devices (tablets, laptops, smart phones, …), the Internet of Things/Everything, connectivity to the Cloud, etc. etc. Radio spectrum is getting seriously congested, radio-based devices are interfering with each other, and are consuming more and more power to surmount the connectivity problems. After optical fiber to the home has solved the copper access network bottlenecks, indoor optical wireless techniques are getting ready to solve the indoor radio network bottlenecks. This Topical Meeting will address the latest research in visible light communication, where data communication is piggy-backed on the LED lighting making quick entry into our buildings, as well as in infrared communication with beam-steered connection techniques for dedicated high data rate connections.

source: Conference announcement

Project Context

Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) is an internationally renowned technical university located in the vibrant technological heart of the Netherlands with high tech companies such as Philips, ASML, NXP and DAF Trucks. The TU/e has an excellent reputation in collaboration with industry proven among other things by the fact that it is the number one university in the world with respect to joint scientific publications with industrial partners.
The TU/e Intelligent Lighting Institute (ILI) was established in 2010 to investigate novel intelligent lighting so-lutions that will become within our reach by the large-scale introduction of LED technology, with a special emphasis on how these new solutions might affect people. It is a collaboration between several departments of the TU/e and industrial partners. ILI has a long-term strategic cooperation with Philips Research Eindhoven. The vacant PhD position is part of a program of 70 PhD students supported by joint funding from the TU/e and Philips, of which 20 PhD students work on Lighting-related topics. These students, together with re-searchers from the TU/e and Philips, form a strong research community working together on scientific and industrial challenges.
The Signal Processing Systems group in the Faculty of Electrical Engineering is internationally recognized for with advanced techniques for signal- and data analysis, SPS has a strong connection to industrial partners which allowes to the group to position its research on the forefront of relevant societal challenges such as improved medical applications and energy-saving yet comfortable control lighting. Its outlook on relevant topics not only contributed to 8 start-up ventures, but also sharpened and focussed its internationally re-warded scientific ambition. The reputation, for instance by 7 awarded Fellow Grade Memberships of IEEE, AES, and OSA in signal processing, is unmatched by any other group in the Netherlands, and only by few oth-er groups in the world.
In the project the candidate will be positioned at Philips Research at the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven. As a global leader in illumination, looking for opportunities to make their lighting products more human centric. Philips Research works closely with global academic and industrial partners to meet people’s needs. By com-bining innovative forces a greater number of innovations are more effective and find a faster way to the market.
Topic
Light plays an important role in our lives. Appropriate light settings appear effective to improve our experi-ence in public spaces, in the office, at home, etc. The LED as a light source is reaching technological maturity. This paves the way for a next wave of innovation, in how we experience light and how we can dynamically adapt our environment to improve our wellbeing. LEDs allow a finer granularity of lighting control. Not only the intensity but also other parameters such as color temperature can be set and adapted during the day. Thereby LEDs can enable improvements to health and wellbeing. However, in practice it turns out to be very difficult to capture these benefits.

Project
The lighting infrastructure provides opportunities to support a wide range of applications and services, includ-ing building management and support of the work flows that are used by the organization in the building. Big data is seen as a next revolution in the digital age. This project aims at the use of data from practical installa-tions, the extraction of useful features from sensor measurements, and the analysis of these features in re-lation to relevant building performance indicators. These can include user comfort preferences, wellbeing or efficiency and effectiveness criteria that are relevant to the facility manager.
The project will use data from a fully connected lighting system from which data is gathered in every luminaire in the ceiling. In this project, we approach the problem as much as possible as a characterization and parameter estimation problem wherever adequate models exist (exploiting prior insights and quantified model in a white box approach), and exploit these in model-based data analytics and machine learning methods. We are interested comparing the merits of analysis of Building data for instance by searching for (non-) linear relations, activity estimation by Hidden Markov Chains, preference elicitation algorithms, machine learning, and Context Tree Weighting.

Job qualifications
Candidates should:
• have a strong MSc in Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, Statistics, Computer Science, Physics, or a related discipline
• have a strong interest in data science and signal processing or control systems research
• be highly motivated, be rigorous and disciplined when developing algorithms and software according to high quality standards
• be a fast learner, autonomous and creative, show dedication and be hard working
• possess good communication capabilities and be an efficient team worker
• be fluent in English, both spoken and written
PhD students are expected to:
• perform scientific research in the domain described
• collaborate with other researchers in this project
• present results at (international) conferences
• publish results in scientific journals
• participate in activities of the group and department, at both sites
• assist in teaching undergraduate/graduate courses
• participate in EIT doctoral training on entrepreneurship and related topics
• be willing to work at two locations (TU/e campus and Philips High Tech Campus)
Appointment and salary
PhD students will be officially appointed at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering. Prof. J.P. Linnartz will act as prime PhD supervisor. The project runs in cooperation with the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Sci-ences and with Philips Research.
We offer:
• a full-time temporary appointment for a period of 4 years, with an intermediate evaluation after 9 months
• a gross salary of € 2,083 per month in the first year increasing up to € 2,664 per month in the fourth year
• a holiday allowance of 8% and an end-of-year bonus of 8.3% (annually)
• assistance in finding accommodation (for foreign employees)
• the opportunity to perform research in a large-scale joint project from a leading technical university and a leading high-tech company
• support for your personal development and career planning including participation in the EIT doctoral training, courses, summer schools, conference visits, research visits to other institutes (both aca-demic and industrial), etc.
• a broad package of fringe benefits (including excellent technical infrastructure, child day care, savings schemes and excellent sport facilities).

The Dutch funding agency STW has approved the ILI project proposal Optilight. This project will strengthen the cooperation between various Lighting-oriented groups at TU/e. At the moment the project is searching PhD candidates who are interesting in mathematical optimization for human centric lighting.

From experiments to theory to algorithms

The project aims to make lighting control systems more centered towards the human user. This requires not only better insights in how humans experience light but also demands quantified models and optimization algorithms that are executed by automated lighting control systems. Despite the growing scientific understanding of the impact of light on, for instance, wellbeing, performance, circadian rhythms and sleep, benefits of this understanding cannot (yet) easily be harvested in practical systems. We lack scalable algorithms that can be used in automated systems and that can be deployed in different environments without extensive tuning by experienced lighting experts. Scalability towards broad deployment is a key sub goal of this project.

Humans want to experience light as a natural given. Having to adjust the light setting regularly is not attractive. Moreover, people are usually not aware of the longer-term effects of light so they don’t not necessarily select the optimal light setting. On the other hand, automatic controls often fail to offer a comfortable and unobtrusive natural experience and even tend to irritate people. Hence, there exists a huge gap between results obtained in controlled environments and practical deployment.

Capturing human perception in mathematical models

Although control theory and optimizations using statistical signal processing are well established areas, to date they not widely used for lighting control. Yet, in audio and video processing and in gaming, models on human factors are successfully being used by automated systems. Hence the team is confident that better models human on experience and perception can improve automatic control systems. However, it is not straightforward to capture human experience in equations. We believe that an important step is to better quantify the reliability of such expressions and to take this into account in probabilistic algorithms.

Cooperation

This project will bring together experts from Electrical Engineering, Architecture and Human Technology Interaction. Prof. Jean-Paul Linnartz of the Signal Processing and Systems group at EE will lead the overall project. PhD student in his team will apply proposed models of human experience to allow automated optimizations. Prof. Alexander Rosemann and his team studying the Built Environment (Architecture) will analyze data collected in real environments and compare this to data from fully controlled situations. Prof. Yvonne de Kort and Dr. Ingrid Vogels bring in expertise on the impact of light on human functioning and visual experience and comfort. Dr. Tanir Ozcelebi of System Architecture and Networking group in Computer Sciences brings in his expertise on programming intelligent and learning behaviour of smart space applications.

 

Contact: Prof. Jean-Paul Linnartz

j.p.linnartz (at) tue.nl