DC1 – Abid Afridi

Abid Afridi received the B.E. degree in Electrical Engineering (Telecommunication) from the University of Science and Technology Bannu, Pakistan, in 2020 and the M.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Ulsan, South Korea. During his master’s studies, he was a recipient of the Brain Korea 21+ (BK21+) Scholarship. From 2022 to 2025, he was a research assistant with the Department of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering, University of Ulsan. He joined the Department of Information and Communications Engineering, Aalto University, Finland, where he is currently a Marie Curie Doctoral Fellow.

DC1 – Project research

Network Slicing and AI-based Resource Allocation for Optical Multi-Layered NTN

The research as Doctoral Candidate 1 (DC1) focuses on the development of AI/ML-driven solutions for resource allocation and network slicing in multi-layered Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTNs). This work targets the optimization of service provisioning across a heterogeneous network of optical satellite and aerial nodes, particularly in non-geostationary orbit (NGSO). The aim to define target use cases and key performance indicators (KPIs) for non-human-centric satellite applications, such as IoT and mission-critical services, and explore scalable, intelligent methods to manage network capacity, link reliability, and latency.

The core objectives include:

• Analysing the performance of different NGSO satellite constellations for diverse kinds of services.
• Developing AI/ML-based algorithms for resource management in optical inter-satellite and feeder links.
• Investigating network slicing strategies to dynamically allocate communication resources in the optical free space optical (FSO) links of the NTN based on varying application demands.

The expected results are a set of simulation-based insights and models supporting reliable and resilient connectivity for future 6G wireless infrastructures, with a special focus on integrating optical wireless technologies into NTN architectures.

This research is carried out at AALTO University, with planned secondments at ICEYE, NOKIA-DK, and contributes to WP2 under the FOCAL project.