PhD Position in Functional Safety of Automotive Architectures for Autonomous DrivingUniversity of Technology (TU/e, https://www.tue.nl/en/) is one of Europe's top technological universities, situated at the heart of a most innovative high-tech region, with a wealth of collaborations with industry and academic institutes. In 2017, TU/e was ranked 15th in Europe in the Times Higher Educational World University ranking for Engineering and Technology. TU/e has around 3,000 employees and 2,300 PhD students (half of which international, representing about 70 nationalities).

Electronic Systems group at the TU/e
The Electronic Systems (ES) group consists of seven full professors, one associate professor, eight assistant professors, several postdocs, about 30 PDEng and PhD candidates and support staff. The ES group is world-renowned for its design automation and embedded systems research. It is our ambition to provide a scientific basis for design trajectories of electronic systems, ranging from digital circuits to cyber-physical systems. The group is strongly involved in the electrical engineering bachelor and master programs of the TU/e, as well as in the automotive bachelor program and the embedded systems master program. The group has excellent infrastructure that includes individual computers, computer servers, state-of-the-art FPGA and GPU farms, sensor- and ad-hoc networking equipment, a cyber-physical systems lab, an electronics lab and a comprehensive range of electronic-design software. ES has strong collaborations with industry, research institutes and other universities. Eleven of its staff members have a second affiliation besides their TUE-ES affiliation. The ES group has been very successful in attracting funding for its research through national and international projects and collaborations (EU programs: H2020, ITEA, CATRENE, ECSEL, Artemis, Marie Curie; national programs: NWO, RVO, contract research), for a total budget of around 2M euro per year. The ES group is a multicultural team, with staff members of eight different nationalities and students from all over the world.

Project description
The research is part of the recently granted PENTA project HiPer, an international consortium with the participation of TUE, Bosch, Audi, NXP, and others.

Autonomous Driving requires safe high-performance vehicle computers (HPVC) to perform the multitude of complex functions, such as comprehensive vision processing, object recognition, intelligent traffic system and task dispatch between different ECUs in the car. The HPVC system must be capable of always safely handling all driving situations autonomously. Currently, major semiconductor manufacturers are putting strong emphasis on developing such automotive grade HPVC modules and systems. For this, essential technological obstacles need to be overcome before the solutions can qualify as regular products at affordable prices. In particular the reliability and functional safety of the HPVC system in the harsh automotive environment must be guaranteed. This includes analyzing the functional safety (e.g. ASIL) of computation and communication components/architectures as well as their system-level composition.

The Electronic Systems group of the Electrical Engineering faculty will investigate the functional safety of the automotive system as a whole, particularly looking at computation (high-performance many core signal processors / GPUs, high-reliability real-time control & safety processors, general purpose processors, etc.) and communication (e.g. reliable automotive Ethernet, Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN)). This includes analyzing the functional safety (e.g. ASIL) of computation and communication components/architectures as well as their system-level interactions (ASIL decompositions, replicas, redundancy, etc.). The results include both safe communication & computation components (e.g. multi-processor ECUs and Ethernet switches) and a generic design flow to analyse and design safe automotive systems (e.g. ECU & Ethernet topologies).

This research is in strong collaboration with NXP Netherlands (in Eindhoven), continuing a long-standing collaboration involving multiple PhDs and Master students. We will integrate with ongoing joint research on functional safety and use NXP automotive platforms as case studies. The PhD may spend part of her or his time at NXP Eindhoven.

The position is supervised by Prof.dr. Kees Goossens.

We are looking for highly motivated candidates with good English proficiency. Candidates need to have obtained a relevant master degree (Computer Engineering, Informatics or Computer Sciences, Electrical Engineering, or Automotive Engineering - ideally with focus on Embedded Systems or Cyber Physical Systems) with excellent grades. The PhD candidate must have strong analytical skills, including performance analysis of embedded systems. Good programming skills in C or C++. Linux experience. Knowledge of networking (protocol stacks, etc.). Experience with embedded systems and/or automotive architectures, and design and simulation flows is an advantage.

We offer a challenging job in a dynamic and ambitious university through a fixed-term appointment for a period of 4 years. The research must be concluded with the attainment of a Ph.D. degree. As an employee of the university you will receive a competitive salary as well as excellent employment conditions. The salary starts at € 2325.-per month (gross) in the first year, increasing up to € 2972.- per month (gross) in the last year. Moreover, an 8% holiday allowance and 8,3% end-of-year allowance is provided annually. Assistance for finding accommodation can be given. The university offers an attractive package of fringe benefits such as excellent technical infrastructure, child care, savings schemes, and excellent sports facilities.

TU/e also offers you the opportunity for personal development by developing your social and communication skills. We do this by offering every PhD student a series of courses in the PROOF program as an excellent addition to your scientific education.