Explore the program

You will be able to study abroad for one semester at a foreign University that is partner in our mobility programmes; instead, if you wish to earn a double degree you will have to  spend some additional semesters at the foreign university according to the following:

Year 1 - Semester 1

Communication and network systems [Computer network design and control]

• Network planning and management
• Routing and QoS-routing
• Cloud computing and virtualization
• Software defined networking
• Network slicing
• Traffic control algorithms and QoS support
• Congestion control
• Data distribution systems

Communication and network systems [Communication systems]

• Modern Communication Systems and their physical layer
• Wireless channel models (AWGN, multipath fading, Doppler)
• Multiplexing (TDM, FDM) and Multiple Access (TDMA, FDMA, CDMA, NOMA)
• Frame synchronization, Randomizers
• Introduction to error detection (CRC), error correction (block codes), and ARQ
• Digital modulations (PSK, QAM, APSK)
• OFDM modulation and its application
• Use cases and relative Link Budgets: space links and 5G

Signal, image and video processing and learning [Signal processing: methods and algorithms]

• Review of discrete-time signals and systems
• Introduction to non-stationary random processes
• Estimation theory
• Spectral estimation
• Time-frequency analysis
• The Kalman filter
• Detection theory

Signal, image and video processing and learning [Image and video processing and learning]

• Multidimensional filters and transforms
• Data, image and video compression
• Convolutional and deep neural networks for image analysis
• Generative adversarial networks

Machine learning for networking

• Programming in Python
• Machine Learning basics theory​
• Preprocessing, data reduction and data visualization​
• Supervised and unsupervised learning​
• Applications and labs applied to Internet measurements and cybersecurity

 Year 1 - Semester 2

Project: Software-defined communication systems

• Project management and planning
• Projects in these areas:
  • Optical communications and networking
  • Wireless systems and 5G networks
  • Satellite networks
  • Complex networks
  • Networking for multimedia and music
• Project design, implementation and validation
• Periodic project presentations

Optical fiber communications

• Optical fiber networks: scenarios of application
• Introduction to the key optoelectronic components for optical fiber communications
• Linear and nonlinear propagation effects in single-mode optical fibers
• Intensity-modulated and direct detection (IM-DD) systems: performance and scalability in short reach scenario for datacenter and Fiber-to-the-Home optical access networks
• PM-QAM coherent transmission systems: performance and scalability for long haul ultra-high bit rate fiber links
• Long-haul reconfigurable optical networks (seminar given by external experts)
• Quantum cryptography (seminar given by external experts)
• Transoceanic submarine systems (seminar given by external experts)

Information and communication theory

• Basic concepts from Information Theory
• Source coding for data compression
• Channel capacity and capacity formula for the additive Gaussian channel
• An elementary introduction to block and convolutional codes
• Channel estimation (Single Carrier and OFDM)
• Adaptive Equalization ML and MMSE (Single Carrier and OFDM)
• Iterative channel decoders (LDPC, turbo, polar)
• Carrier, Timing and Frame Synchronization

Wireless access electromagnetics

• Introduction to antenna as system components
• Antenna system parameters
• Noiseless and noise link budget
• Low and medium gain antennas for broadcasting, mobile communications, WiFi/WLAN, IoT (slot, patch, dipole)
• UWB antennas
• High-gain, reconfigurable and MIMO antennas (arrays) with beamforming
• Fixed beam, scanning beam MIMO

 Year 2 - Semester 1

Project: Applied communication systems and IoT

• Project management and planning
• Projects areas:
  • Open control of optical transport network elements
  • GNSS/GPS-related security
  • Optical sensing
  • Radar-based sensing
  • High-speed optical links for datacenter/HPC applications
  • IoT for smart applications
  • Wireless-based sensing 
• Communication system design, implementation and validation
• Periodic project presentations

Network measurement laboratory

• Configuration of hosts in Local Area Networks, IP addresses management, subnetting/supernetting
• Traffic monitoring using sniffers in LAN: TCP, UDP and HTTP
• Performance measurement for file transfers in wired and WiFi networks  
• Impact of delay and packet losses 
• Analysis of traffic traces collected from real networks
• Post-processing tools to extract information out of the raw data
• Statistical methods and data mining techniques to find correlations and solve classification problems

Signal processing and optical transmission lab

• Signal Processing laboratory: 
  • DSP implementation of linear filters and their application to lossless audio compression
  • Program templates and input/output interfaces 
  • Basic FIR and IIR filtering structures 
  • Real-time filtering of audio signals
  • Lossless coding based on FIR predictors
  • Real-time lossless coding of audio signals, validation and testing
• Optical Communications laboratory 
  • Spectral measures of laser sources and their wavelength and power characterizations
  • Experimental procedure for the joint of optical fibers and corresponding measurement of the joint attenuation 
  • Experimental characterization of passive optical devices 
  • Realization of an optical amplifier and corresponding experimental characterization 
  • Spectral characterization of optical sources through optical spectrum analyzers and high resolution methods

Signal processing and wireless transmission lab

• Signal digital processing laboratory
  • Introduction to digital signals, DSP architecture and programming
  • Introduction to CCS environment for running code on the DSP
  • Entry-level C/C++ coding
  • Implementation of digital FIR and IIR filters
  • Porting from floating point to fixed point precision
  • Live signal processing via double buffering
  • Lossless coding, predictive error coding and Rice encoding
  • Validation and testing
• Wireless transmissions laboratory
  • Physical layer of broadband fixed and mobile radio-communication standards
  • Structure and main functions of conventional and software defined digital radio transceivers
  • Software defined radio (SDR) platforms Lab
  • Implementation on SDR platform (Ettus B210 and National Instruments USRP-2901) of some common transceiver blocks suitable for most wireless communication standards (WiFi, LTE, DVB)
  • Test and measurements of the performance of some implemented receiver algorithms

Open optical networks

• State-of-the art transceivers for optical communications
• Foundations of optical fiber propagation and modeling its impairments
• Amplifiers and passive components
• WDM spectral use and standards
• ROADMs and node structure in general
• YANG, Netconfig, GMPLS, OTN
• Emulation of optical layer in photonic networks
• Routing spectral and wavelength assignment
• Multilayer orchestration
• Physical-layer-aware network analysis, design and optimization

5G and next-generation mobile computing

• 5G and beyond cellular connectivity
• Network architecture
• Radio Access Networks
• Edge computing
• Mobile service virtualisation
• Virtual resource allocation
• Hands-on approach to mobile services
• Service orchestration

Advanced wireless communications and coding

• Multiuser uplink channels: orthogonal techniques and multiuser detection
• Multiple-antenna systems: receiver combining techniques, MIMO channel capacity, antenna arrays, beamforming
• Multiuser broadcast channels: degraded channel, NOMA, dirty-paper coding, linear precoding optimization
• Advanced coding and detection techniques for the wireless receiver

Satellite navigation systems

• Localisation and positioning techniques, radionavigation principles
• Uncertainty causes and error sources
• Basics of reference systems and satellite orbits
• Signal processing for radio-navigation
• System architecture of GPS and Galileo systems
• GNSS receivers architectures
• GNSS applications

Year 2 - Semester 2

Applied information security and cryptography

• Security concepts: confidentiality, integrity, non-repudiation
• Security models: types of attack, perfect security, computational security
• Symmetric-key cryptography: stream ciphers, block ciphers, authenticated encryption
• Public-key cryptography: key exchange/encapsulation, digital signatures, post-quantum cryptography
• Key distribution: certificates, public-key infrastructure, quantum key distribution
• Security applications: authentication, wireless security, transport layer security

Operational research

• How to build a mathematical optimization model
• Computational complexity
• Elements of network flows
• Local search heuristics
• Meta-heuristics (tabu search, simulated annealing, genetic algorithms, etc)
• Applications to optical networks (logical topology design, routing and wavelength assignment)
• Applications to green networking

Cloud computing and data center design lab

• Cloud computing e virtualization
• Data center topologies: leaf-spine, multilayer, Google Jupiter, hybrid optical/electronic switching
• Routing and traffic engineering in data centers: BGP protocol
• Architectures for advanced computing: hardware accelerators for Artificial Intelligence (AI)