The NESTOR project provides a world-class training programme for 10+2 Fellows (10 funded by the EU and 2 additional UK-funded Aston Fellows). The programme aims to enhance the flexibility, capacity, and cost-effectiveness of access/metro networks, bridging academic innovation and industrial expertise.
NESTOR is organised into three technical Work Packages (WPs), each focusing on a critical area of next-generation optical networks:
Work Package 1:
Advanced DSP and transmission strategies for metro/access networks
Doctoral Candidates (DC) Topics involved:
- DC1: Advanced Coded Modulation Schemes for High-Performance Metro-Access Optical Transponders
- DC2: Low-complexity DSP techniques for beyond 5G X-haul
- DC3: Experimental Comparison of novel and legacy technologies for metro access
- DC12: Low-complexity DSP techniques for metro-access networks
Work Package 2:
Digital-twin and real-time control of physical layer
Doctoral Candidates (DC) Topics involved:
- DC4: Digital twin of physical layer for short-reach scenarios in metro/access/DCI networks
- DC5: : Cross-layer data-driven techniques for next generation access / metro networks
- DC6: AI-based power saving and distributed sensing/failure prevention from optical telemetry
- DC10: Control of disaggregated networks
Work Package 3:
Green network architecture and techno-economics
Doctoral Candidates (DC) Topics involved:
- DC7: Optical communications and architecture for 5G/6G metro-edge
- DC8: Network modelling for access and metro aggregation networks
- DC9: Multi-objective optimization for next-generation coherent metro-aggregation networks
- DC11: Advanced network architectures and optimization techniques for flexible converged metro networks