Telediagnostic will help to bring medical expertise in every corner, even in distant rural areas. Hereby, the currently researched 6G communication standard will play a crucial role. Thus, in the scope of the 6G-life project, the aim is to investigate telediagnostic and telerobotic scenarios in detail. Furthermore, capabilities should be demonstrated in practise.

In this research internship, the goal is to develop a User Interface (GUI) for an existing telediagnostic/telerobotic testbed which is provided by our project partner MITI who are located at the hospital "Rechts der Isar" (ca. 20 min. from TUM by bus). In particular, the task is to implement a GUI based on existing UI/UX concepts in such a way a doctor can perform a telerobotic diagnosis using real robotors in the setup. For that, different video streams, medical devices and vital parameters (all already existing) shall be included and shown in the GUI. Furthermore, warnings in dangerous situations shall be shown.

Please note that this research internship is in combination with MITI. As the robotic setup is located there, working at MITI will be needed.

• Motivation.
• Interest in the medical field.
• Experience in the development of GUIs, especially with Qt/PyQt and video streaming would be nice but are not necessary.

Beginning possible from 1st August 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.

• 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.

In this topic an analysis of RRC messages in 4G and 5G should be done. There exist several different kind of these messages with different functions and level of information content. The focus should lay on messages related to the connection release. The analysis should consider privacy and security aspects. After the theoretical review and analysis the practical part should focus on an attack. An implementation of one security and privacy aspect should be done as a proof-of-concept with Open Source hard- and software.

The following things are requested to be designed, implemented, and evaluated (most likely via proof-of-concept) in this thesis:
• Security and availability analysis of specific RRC messages
• Implementation of an attack
• Practical evaluation with testing of commercial smartphones

We will offer you:
• Initial literature
  - https://doi.org/10.14722/NDSS.2016.23236
• Smart working environment
• Deep contact to supervisors and a lot of discussions and knowledge exchange

A detailed description of the topics will be formulated with you in initial meetings. For sure, the report needs to be written based on the requirements of the universities, as well as a detailed documentation and handing over the complete project with all sources. Depending on the chosen thesis type the content will be adapted in its complexity.

All applications must be submitted through our application website INTERAMT:
https://interamt.de/koop/app/stelle?id=1103974

Carefully note the information provided on the site to avoid any issues with your application.

Please include
• a short CV
• current overview of your grades
• the keyword "T3-MK-RRC" as comment
in your application.

For any questions or further details regarding this thesis and the application process, please don't hesitate
to contact:
• TUM contact: nicolai.kroeger@tum.de, serkut.ayvasik@tum.de
• Forschungreferat T3 (ZITiS), Email: t3@zitis.bund.de

Knowledge in the following fields is required:
• C/C++
Knowledge in the following fields would be an advantage:
• Mobile Communication 4G, 5G

In this topic an analysis of Broadcast messages in 4G and 5G should be done. There exist several different kind of these messages with different functions and level of information content. The analysis should consider privacy and security aspects. After the theoretical review and analysis the practical part should focus on one aspect of the findings. An implementation of one security and privacy aspect should be done as a proof-of-concept with Open Source hard- and software.

The following things are requested to be designed, implemented, and evaluated (most likely via proof-of-concept) in this thesis:
• Security and privacy analysis of Broadcast Messages
• Implementation of an attack
• Practical evaluation with testing of commercial smartphones

We will offer you:
• Initial literature
- https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3307334.3326082
• Smart working environment
• Deep contact to supervisors and a lot of discussions and knowledge exchange

A detailed description of the topics will be formulated with you in initial meetings. For sure, the report needs to be written based on the requirements of the universities, as well as a detailed documentation and handing over the complete project with all sources. Depending on the chosen thesis type the content will be adapted in its complexity.

All applications must be submitted through our application website INTERAMT:
https://interamt.de/koop/app/stelle?id=1103974

Carefully note the information provided on the site to avoid any issues with your application.

Please include
• a short CV
• current overview of your grades
• the keyword "T3-MK-BROADCAST" as comment
in your application.

For any questions or further details regarding this thesis and the application process, please don't hesitate to contact:
• TUM contact: nicolai.kroeger@tum.de, serkut.ayvasik@tum.de
• Forschungreferat T3 (ZITiS), Email: t3@zitis.bund.de

Knowledge in the following fields is required:
• C/C++
Knowledge in the following fields would be an advantage:
• Mobile Communication 4G, 5G

Beginning possible 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.

• 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.

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. 

·       Motivation

·       Ideally some experience in optimization problems

·       Basic networking knowledge

·       Basic programming skills

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.

·       Motivation

·       Ideally some experience in solving optimization problems

·       Basic networking knowledge

·       Basic programming skills

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.

·       Motivation

·       Ideally some experience in solving optimization problems

·       Basic networking knowledge

·       Basic programming skills

The mobile security sector has uncovered numerous vulnerabilities within link and session-establishment protocols. These vulnerabilities can be exploited using software-defined radios (SDRs) to interfere with, impersonate, or flood layer-3 (L3) messages, compromising security and privacy. These risks persist even within the latest 5G mobile network standard. With affordable SDRs and open-source cellular software stacks readily accessible, the economic and technical obstacles to practical cellular attacks are relatively minimal. In this work, we would like to investigate the resource depletion and Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks, that are well known in LTE [1], within 5G RAN. The main focus will be regarding the RRC and NAS protocol vulnerabilities that are mentioned in [1]. The expected results would be to recreate these attacks experimentally in our 5G RAN with srsRAN [2]. If time allows, further tests can be performed over campus network with commercial 5G RAN.

[1] H. Kim, J. Lee, E. Lee and Y. Kim, "Touching the Untouchables: Dynamic Security Analysis of the LTE Control Plane," 2019 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP), San Francisco, CA, USA, 2019, pp. 1153-1168, doi: 10.1109/SP.2019.00038.

[2] I. Gomez-Miguelez et al., “Srslte: An open-source platform for lte evolution and experimentation,” in Proc. of ACM WiNTECH, 2016.

- C/C++ experience

- SDR experience is a plus

- 5G knowledge is a plus

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. For this, the execution location of these applications should be changed dynamically according to the available networking resources.

 In this thesis, the task is therefore to develop and evaluate an approach to optimize the migration of medical applications, i.e., modular application functions (MAFs), when executed in the network. The challenge of this migration lies in the connection quality during the migration and the migration of stateful applications, i.e., using memory.

 The result will be an evaluated placement approach for applications in the medical environment considering the availability.

·       Motivation

·       Ideally some experience in solving optimization problems

·       Basic networking knowledge

·       Basic programming skills

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.

·       Motivation

·       Ideally some experience in solving optimization problems

·       Basic networking knowledge

·       Basic programming skills

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.

·       Motivation

·       Ideally some experience in solving optimization problems

·       Basic networking knowledge

·       Basic programming skills

Implementation of a Medical Communication Library in C++ to improve the performance.

In this FP, our existing communication protocol in the medical context is extended.

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.

• Motivation
• Interesse an Medizintechnik
• Deutsch (zwingend erforderlich zwecks der Interviews)
• Grundlegende Kenntnisse über Netzwerkkonzepte

The next generation of communication networks, namely 6G, will enable a huge variety of medical applications. In the current phase, our research focuses on optimizing the interaction between network and medical application developing. For this, we joined forces with the Minimally Invasive Interdisciplinary Therapeutical Intervention (MITI) group, sitting at the hospital "Rechts der Isar".

This research internship focuses on one certain use case, the mobile patient monitoring of patiens in the operation room. In particular, the vital parameters of the patient are continously measured and sent to a server. The task of the research internship is to develop and implement the communication protocol between the sensors and the processing server. Hereby, a basic implementation is already given. However, key components are still missing, which should be implemented and evaluated within the scope of this research internship.

Please note, that the real setup is located at MITI. You may have to work there.

• Motivation
• Knowledge about Python and Linux
• Basic communication (protocol) principles

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.

Most important:

• Motivation and willingness to learn unknown things.
• Ability to work with various partners (teamwork ability).

Of advantage:

• C/C++ and knowledge about how other programming languages work (Python, etc.)
• Knowledge about communication networks (exspecially the RAN), 5G concepts, the P4 language, SDN, Linux.
• Initiative to bring in own ideas and solutions.

Please note: It is not necessary to know about every topic aforementioned, much more it is important to be willing to read oneself in.