This programme provides graduates and working professionals with a broad training in signal processing and communications. It is suitable for recent graduates who wish to develop the specialist knowledge and skills relevant to this industry and is also suitable as advanced study in preparation for research work in an academic or industrial environment or in a specialist consultancy organisation.
Engineers or other professionals wishing to participate in the MSc programme may do so on a part-time basis.
Our students gain a thorough understanding of theoretical foundations as well as advanced topics at the cutting edge of research in signal processing and communications, including compressive sensing, deep neural networks, wireless communication theory, and numerical Bayesian methods.
The MSc project provides a good opportunity for students to work on state-of-the-art research problems in signal processing and communications.
This programme is run over 12 months, with two semesters of taught courses followed by a research project leading to a masters thesis.
Semester 1 courses
Semester 2 courses
With our excellent employability record and internationally respected reputation, the University of Edinburgh is a reliable choice for developing your engineering career.
This programme will appeal to graduates who wish to pursue a career in an industry such as communications, radar, medical imaging or anywhere else signal processing is applied.
Digital signal processing (DSP) is at the core of the communications revolution. Research is constantly being carried out to develop new DSP algorithms, allowing mobile broadband services, ‘Internet of Things’ applications and other technologies to be delivered to a growing number of users.
This programme will give you a thorough understanding of different aspects of DSP and as it relates to the communications landscape, as well as specialist knowledge from your choice of optional modules.
Our DSP lab will give you hands-on experience using the DSP technology that can be found in computers, cellular phones, GPS and other technologies, and you’ll learn from expert researchers at the forefront of their fields.
You’ll also benefit from specialist industrial lectures, allowing you to relate the theoretical and design aspects of communications and signal processing to practical problems and real-world constraints.
School Facilities
Our School is an exciting and stimulating environment where you’ll learn from leading researchers in specialist facilities. These include our Keysight Technologies wireless communications lab, as well as labs for embedded systems, power electronics and drives, ultrasound and bioelectronics.
There’s also a Terahertz photonics lab, class 100 semiconductor cleanroom, traffic generators and analysers, FPGA development tools, sensor network test beds. We have facilities for electron-beam lithography and ceramic circuit fabrication – and a III-V semiconductor molecular beam epitaxy facility. The Faculty is also home to the £4.3 million EPSRC National Facility for Innovative Robotic Systems, set to make us a world leader in robot design and construction.
Throughout the year you’ll study a set of core modules that give you an in-depth understanding of DSP, wireless communications, different optical communications networks and the complex issues around network security. If you don’t have any experience of c-programming you’ll also take a module that develops these skills; alternatively, you can choose between this module and another on software development.
You’ll also select optional modules that are tailored to your own interests or career plans – you could focus on embedded microprocessor systems, high-speed internet architecture or other topics. To build your understanding of the global electronics industry, you’ll also complete a dissertation. This could take the form of a business, manufacturing or outsourcing plan, a proposal for research funding or an essay on a specific aspect of the industry.
Over the summer months you’ll also work on your research project. This gives you the chance to work as an integral part of one of our active research groups, focusing on a specialist topic in computer science and selecting the appropriate research methods.
Want to find out more about your modules?
Take a look at the Communications and Signal Processing module descriptions for more detail on what you will study.
Compulsory modules
Optional modules
Our groundbreaking research feeds directly into teaching, and you’ll have regular contact with staff who are at the forefront of their disciplines. You’ll have regular contact with them through lectures, seminars, tutorials, small group work and project meetings. Independent study is also important to the programme, as you develop your problem-solving and research skills as well as your subject knowledge.
You’ll be assessed using a range of techniques including case studies, technical reports, presentations, in-class tests, assignments and exams. Optional modules may also use alternative assessment methods.
The research project is one of the most satisfying elements of this course. It allows you to apply what you’ve learned to a piece of research focusing on a real-world problem, and it can be used to explore and develop your specific interests.
Recent projects on the MSc in Communications and Signal Processing include:
On completing this course, you will have obtained the skills that will lead to employment in any area of the communications/signal processing industry including optical networking, DSP design and implementation, cellular mobile, RF planning, broadband systems and general communications research and development.
Graduates from our School have gone on to work for organisations such as the National Grid, Ericsson Telecommunications, Cisco Systems, AECOM, Deep Sea Electronics, Huawei, Intel Corp., the Technology and Strategy Board and many more.
This course is also an excellent base from which to pursue a PhD and possibly an academic career.
Image and signal processing affect our daily lives in an ever-increasing way. Participate in designing this fascinating technology and shape IT‘s future function in business and society. Today‘s networked devices for image and signal generation provide a historically unmatched volume of raw data for automated decision making and control systems. The demands are high: How can we design new tools and software in order to best distil useful information? A lot of interesting research and development projects in the private and the public sectors are calling for your expertise. Alternatively, this degree will open career tracks in universities and research labs.
The international Joint Degree Master Programme„Applied Image and Signal Processing“ is conducted in English. The standard period of study is four semesters. The full program is worth a total of 120 points according to the ECTS (European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System). The academic degree of „Master of Science in Engineering“ (MSc) will be awarded upon successful completion of the programme.
From Theory to Practice (Curriculum)
The first semester is devoted to a concise study of the theoretical basis, the mathematical models and the algorithms used in image and signal processing. The second semester additionally focuses on geometric modelling, audio processing and digital media formats. Starting with the third semester, specific application scenarios are discussed and corresponding technologies are investigated in a number of elective courses.
Choose your Elective Courses
The elective courses comprise medical imaging, platform specific signal processing, data science, biometric systems, media security, computational geometry and machine learning.
Apply your Scientific Knowledge
In the third semester, students also start research on their master thesis and acquire profound IT-project management skills. The fourth semester is dedicated to the completion of the master thesis. An accompanying master seminar provides a forum for presenting and defending one‘s approach to a solution and the results obtained, i.e., for scientific discourse with faculty and peers.
Modules & Competences
This Joint Degree Master Programme is designed to provide students with an in-depth professional and scientific training. Based on appropriate prior bachelor studies, this programme offers a thorough technical training in conjunction with research-driven teaching. It will make the participants familiar with introductory and advanced-level topics in the fields of image and signal processing, their formal and methodical basics, and with diverse fields of application. The sound knowledge and skills acquired in this programme qualify the alumni for diverse practical challenges in their professional work and empower them to contribute to future innovations in image and signal processing. A master thesis serves as a documentary proof of the student‘s ability to tackle scientific problems successfully on his or her own and to come up with a result that is correct with regards to contents and methodology. Furthermore the publication of Master Thesis is intended. Thus, this programme also paves the road to subsequent work in science and technology.
This programme is structured around topics in systems and signal processing, with specialisms in control and systems theory, image processing and machine learning. Skills developed are sought after by industry (biotech, financial services, systems engineering, medical imaging, etc) and the academic research community. The modules have a high mathematical content and much of the material is computationally based, developing strong transferable skills in algorithmic development and programming.
Semester one: Signal Processing; Control System Design; Machine Learning; Computer Vision.
Semester two: Advanced Systems and Signal Processing; Digital Control System Design; Applied Control Systems; Biological Inspired Robotics; Advanced Computer Vision; Image Processing; Advanced Machine Learning; Computational Finance; Computational Biology; Biometrics.
Plus three-month independent research project culminating in a dissertation.
The Institute for Digital Communications (IDCOM) is the UK's leading research institute in signal processing and communications and is home to the Li-Fi research and development centre. We have three major centres of activity; signal processing, communications systems and tomographic imaging. Our programme of research delivers world leading research in signal and image processing and communications from fundamental theoretical and algorithmic work through to its translation to specific audio, imaging, radar/sonar, and communications applications.
The Institute has excellent research facilities, including state-of-the-art computing systems and laboratories for agile tomography, and audio signal processing, as well as the Li-Fi research and development centre for visible light communications. Internationally recognised for our research on communications systems and signal processing, we offer research topics including: green radio; visible light communications; cognitive radio; compressive sensing; distributed sensor signal processing; and agile tomography.
IDCOM holds the only UK Research Council platform award in sensor signal processing, in collaboration with the joint research institute in signal and image processing and Heriot-Watt University, recognising our world leading research status.
The development of transferable skills is a vital part of postgraduate training and a vibrant, interdisciplinary training programme is offered to all research students by the University’s Institute for Academic Development (IAD). The programme concentrates on the professional development of postgraduates, providing courses directly linked to postgraduate study.
Courses run by the IAD are free and have been designed to be as flexible as possible so that you can tailor the content and timing to your own requirements.
Our researchers are strongly encouraged to present their research at conferences and in journal during the course of their PhD.
Every year, the Graduate School organises a Postgraduate Research Conference to showcase the research carried out by students across the Research Institutes
Our researchers are also encouraged and supported to attend transferable skills courses provided by organisations such as the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).
The Institute has excellent research facilities, including state-of-the-art computing systems and laboratories for usability engineering, audio signal processing and visible light communications.
