Master student / Internship (m/f/d) in Information Technology or Physics

The DLR Institute of Communications and Navigation is dedicated to mission-oriented research in selected areas of communications and navigation. Its work ranges from the theoretical foundations to the demonstration of new procedures and systems in a real environment and is embedded in DLR's Space, Aeronautics, Transport, Security and Digitalization programmes.

What to expect

Optical free space communications are an exciting technology under intense development to provide secure high bandwidth communications to all areas of the world. In order to provide reliable light reception at the Optical Ground Station, Adaptive Optics is used to sense wave-front aberrations in the light and correct it in real-time. This requires high optical precision, high performance control systems and accurate calibration procedures.

Your tasks

In this role, you will be responsible for implementing suitable real time approaches to our adaptive optics software. Your duties will include:

• Defining the real-time requirements of the adaptive optics control loop
• Evaluating suitable solutions. E.g. Linux-based real-time solutions, such as Ubuntu with the PREEMPT_RT real-time kernel
• Introducing real-time thread scheduling, thread priorities and CPU affinity
• Evaluating memory locking, preallocation and other techniques for avoiding unpredictable delays
• Optimising communication between the camera, wavefront-processing, controller and deformable-mirror components
• Investigating the influence of network and middleware communication on control-loop timing
• Developing a reproducible configuration and deployment procedure for the real-time system

Familiarity with some of the following is desirable

• C++,
• Git
• CMake
• Linux Environment
• Python
• Docker containers
• Real time systems

We look forward to getting to know you!

If you have any questions about this position (Vacancy-ID 6412 ) please contact:

Dr. Douglas Laidlaw

Tel.: +49 (0) 8153 28 4522