About me

portrait

Background

From a young age, I was fascinated by electromagnetic fields and its magical ability to transport information and cause effects over distances using... nothing. This passion led me to studying Electrical Engineering & Information Technology at ETH Zürich, from which I received a BSc ETH EEIT in 2015 and a MSc ETH EEIT in 2018. In 2018, I had the opportunity to spend a great time working in Lab11 at the University of California in Berkeley, headed by Prof. Prabal Dutta. I have pursued a PhD in the Computer Engineering Group at ETH Zürich, headed by Prof. Lothar Thiele, from 2019 to 2023. From 2014 to 2023, I have been a member of the Swiss Study Foundation.

Interests

My research focused on the fields of embedded systems, fault tolerance and wireless sensor networks. I am interested in connecting sensors and actuators over wireless networks and investigating how we can optimize their interactions: make them more power-efficient, adaptive, and reliable. Those properties are key requirements for driving the Internet of Things to the consumer market and making it a ubiquitous part of our future.

Research

Publications:

Doctoral thesis

Andreas Biri (Examiner: Lothar Thiele; Co-examiners: Carlo Alberto Boano, Laurent Vanbever; Second adviser: Marco Zimmerling). "Seeking Autonomy for Low-Power Wireless Networks." In ETH Research Collection. ETH Zürich, 2023. Slides upon request.

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

Selected projects during my studies at ETH:

TotTernary: A wearable platform for social interaction tracking

MSc thesis

TotTernary provides a mobile, accurate, responsive, and reliable platform for ranging measurements which allows users to gather both distance and position information with decimeter accuracy. Measuring only 61 mm x 35 mm and weighing 7.7 g, it integrates two radios to achieve both low-power neighbour discovery and direct user interactions using Bluetooth Low Energy as well as precise ultrawideband ranging measurements. The system leverages a novel energy-efficient ranging protocol with linear message complexity to achieve lifetimes of up to 39 days. Leveraging both antenna as well as frequency diversity, we demonstrate that the median ranging error can be reduced by up to 86% and that our system is capable of highly reliable and consistent measurements with as little as 14.8 cm of ranging error in the 99th percentile and a 90% confidence interval of 11.3 cm.

Unleashing the potential of Real-time Internet of Things

Semester thesis

Real-time scheduling conficts arise as the resource separation of the applications in software is diffcult to manage. To achieve independence, we propose a platform consisting of dedicated application and communication processors which are completely decoupled in terms of resource access, clock speeds and power management using BOLT. Leveraging this hardware separation, we then use the Distributed Real-time Protocol (DRP) to provably provide end-to-end real-time guarantees for the communication between distributed applications over a multi-hop wireless network. By establishing a set of contracts at run-time, DRP ensures that all messages reaching their destination meet their hard deadline.

Localizing mobile nodes in a relative coordinate system

Semester thesis

This thesis presents an infrastructure-less, scalable, real-time positioning system for mobile entities. The system is designed based on multidimensional scaling (MDS) and multilateration. One of the key features is that there is no need for fixed anchor nodes. We achieve this by leveraging multidimensional scaling to generate a relative 3D coordinate system, after which all nodes can be mobile. The system can support real-time position estimation of multiple mobile nodes with high accuracy.

Banabird

Group project

Start-up with fellow students from ETH Zürich and the University of St. Gallen. We developed a solution for interactive reading and writing with individual paths for a more personalized experience, both accessible over a custom webpage and as an Android app. The project was invited to the "Swiss Startup Awards" as one of the most promising startups of Switzerland. We designed and implemented the website, where my main contribution was the entire backend using REST and Hibernate for the database access, and programmed an Android app for mobile interaction.

Summaries

You can find most of my self-made summaries here:

Do not use this material at exams where you are bound to use your own!

Furthermore, please note that the provided summaries are meant to be extended by handwritten personal notes and must not necessarily be self-sufficient.

Teaching

Materials for courses I assisted as a teaching assistant:

EFUW PVK

Summer 2015, Prof. Novotny

Here you can find all the necessary material for the PVK in the summer of 2015.

Digitaltechnik PVK

Summer 2014, Prof. Tröster

Here, you can find all the necessary material for the PVK in the summer of 2014.

EFUW Assistenz

Spring semester 2015, Prof. Novotny

Here, you can find material which is helpful for the "Elektromagnetische Felder & Wellen" lecture given by Prof. Novotny.

Digitaltechnik Assistenz

Autumn semester 2013, Prof. Tröster

Some extra exercises I created to prepare for the various small tests during the semester as well as other extra material helpful for the "Digitaltechnik" lecture given by Prof. Tröster.

Contact me

If you could not find the information you were looking for, just write me a mail and I will be happy to reply as soon as I am back from my adventures.