Research and Graduate Work

The Communications Group is one of eight research clusters in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Toronto. As one of the largest and rapidly evolving groups, it houses the research programs of seventeen faculty and several labs. We conduct research in three basic areas: communication networks, digital communications, and signal processing. Although many research projects involve multiple research areas, this categorization helps elucidate the breath and degree of impact of our program. Information on specific research thrusts is found on professorial staff webpages.

Graduate Studies

Pursuing a graduate degree in the Group provides a unique opportunity for students to learn about leading technologies in emerging communications applications. Students will have the chance to take courses spanning the breath of communications as well as conduct cutting-edge research to gain deeper understanding into one or more associated disciplines.

As a Group, we focus on a wide array of communications technologies, from fundamental signaling principles for physical layer data transmission to application-specific multimedia processing. Our graduate students and faculty publish papers proposing novel solutions, groundbreaking ideas and new insights in prestigious communications journals such as

• IEEE Transactions on Communications
• IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications
• IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking
• IEEE Transactions on Information Theory
• IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing
• IEEE Transactions on Multimedia

... among others.

Information regarding application procedures and admission policies to pursue studies in the Group may be found in the Graduate Studies Handbook.

Communications Group Seminar Series

During the fall and winter academic terms, a number of interesting talks related to the area of communications are featured weekly. Members of the UofT academic community are welcome. A schedule can be found here.

Research Internships

Master of Engineering in Telecommunications

The Master of Engineering in Telecommunications (MET) is a unique graduate degree program designed to prepare telecommunications and networking professionals to practice in the environment of competing technologies, standards, business models and network and service visions. The program leverages on the strengths of the university and its industry partners through lectures that are delivered by leading academics, industry experts, and top executives. The opportunity to network with professions as well as with other students provides a broad view of the industry.

For more information, please visit the MET program's webpage.

Nortel Institute for Telecommunications

Building on an outstanding record of achievement in collaborative research and education, in 1997 the University of Toronto and Nortel Networks created the Nortel Institute for Telecommunications (NIT) at the University. The Institute is a unit of the University of Toronto charged with a bold mission of providing leadership in advanced information technology and telecommunications research, information exchange, education and training. The Institute is supported by University, private sector, and federal and provincial government funding.

In terms of research, the Nortel Institute promotes, facilitates and conducts innovative, intensely collaborative research that is too long-range in scope for corporations to undertake and too large in scale for even the best-equipped individual university research groups. The Institute is mandated both to pursue research that is long-term and exploratory, leading to advances and continued leadership in the future, and to engage in short-term development of technology to find specific solutions to problems faced by industry.

Additional details are found at the NIT web site.