TUD Dresden University of Technology, as a University of Excellence, is one of the leading and most dynamic research institutions in the country. Founded in 1828, today it is a globally oriented, regionally anchored top university as it focuses on the grand challenges of the 21st century. It develops innovative solutions for the world's most pressing issues. TUD has established the Research Training Group "AirMetro - Technological & Operational Integration of Highly Automated Air Transport in Urban Areas" (RTG 2947), funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). This interdisciplinary group, involving five faculties and the German Aerospace Centre (DLR), will conduct research on 11 research topics. The goal is to address the technical and social challenges of Innovative Air Mobility (IAM), considering ecological, economic, technological, and sociological factors. The RTG's structured PhD program aims to train young researchers in highly automated, networked mobility, featuring international collaboration with mentors from the USA, Asia, and Europe. TUD and the RTG embody a university culture that is characterized by cosmopolitanism, mutual appreciation, thriving innovation and active participation. For TUD diversity is an essential feature and a quality criterion of an excellent university. Accordingly, we welcome all applicants who would like to commit themselves, their achievements and productivity to the success of the whole institution.

The Research Training Group RTG 2947 "AirMetro", funded by the DFG, offers a position, as
Research Associate / PhD Student (m/f/x)

(subject to personal qualification employees are remunerated according to salary group E 13 TV-L)

starting May 1, 2026. The position is limited until April 30, 2029. The period of employment is governed by the Fixed Term Research Contracts Act (Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz - WissZeitVG). The position aims at obtaining further academic qualification (usually PhD).
Job ID: RTG2947-T9/2
Title: Communication on Flying Devices: Cooperative SLAM and AD-hoc Mesh-Networks for Disaster Management
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Frank Fitzek, Deutsche Telekom Chair of Communication Networks and co-supervised by at least one additional professor plus an international tutor of the RTG

Description of the PhD topic:
This PhD project focuses on developing robust and adaptive communication and computing frameworks for multi-UAV operations in Innovative Air Mobility (IAM) scenarios. The goal is to enable autonomous UAVs to perform mission-critical tasks even under adverse conditions, including GNSS unavailability, signal jamming, or degraded radio environments.
The central aim of the thesis is to extend communication concepts from single UAVs to coordinated multi-UAV systems. By deploying multiple UAVs that are centrally supervised and dispatched, swarm-like mechanisms can be exploited to efficiently handle mission-specific, spatially and temporally clustered data. This approach improves data transfer efficiency and supports innovative navigation concepts, including enhanced map quality and reduced map-building time. Both single- and multi-agent SLAM require a careful split of computation between local (onboard) and remote (edge or cloud) instances, which in turn imposes new requirements on communication. The research will therefore develop novel communication solutions in the context of emerging 6G standards and wireless mesh networks.
The project combines resilient ad-hoc networking, edge-assisted computation, and cooperative simultaneous localization and mapping (C-SLAM) to support dense, multi-agent UAV operations. Visual and map data are efficiently compressed, fused, and synchronized to sustain robust operation in dynamic urban or disaster-management scenarios. By integrating autonomous UAVs as active agents within a distributed digital twin, the project links communication resilience directly to navigation performance, safety, and mission-critical decision-making. Obje...