Some Advances in Wireless Networking for Cyber Physical Systems
Speaker: Dr. Tom Hou, IEEE Fellow
Bradley Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA
URL: http://www.cnsr.ictas.vt.edu
Abstract: Our world is evolving into a smart planet. The driving force in this evolution is the marriage of cyber and physical systems (or CPS). CPS is a synergy of technologies such as control, sensing, communications, networking, computation, among others. In this talk, I will focus on some new advances in wireless networking that are important to CPS. First, we consider throughput in multi-hop wireless networks – a fundamental problem in CPS. Given that MIMO is now pervasive, we study how to exploit MIMO’s capability in a multi-hop network environment. The key challenge here is to efficient use of MIMO’s degree-of-freedoms (DoFs) to cancel interference from other nodes in the network. Second, we consider energy problem in sensor networks – another fundamental problem in CPS. We present our research on wireless energy transfer, a new enabling technology to address energy problem in battery-powered wireless networks. Finally, I will describe some new frontiers in sharing radio spectrum and coexistence between primary and secondary networks beyond dynamic spectrum access. Most of these research advances are inter disciplinary and require a synergistic exploration of knowledge bases from multiple technical domains.
Speaker Biography: Tom Hou is the Bradley Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech, USA. He received his B.E. degree from the City College of New York, M.S. degree from Columbia University, and Ph.D. degree from New York University (NYU) Polytechnic School of Engineering. From 1997 to 2002, he was a Researcher at Fujitsu Laboratories in California.
Prof. Hou’s research interests are to develop innovative solutions to complex cross-layer optimization problems in wireless networks. He is particularly interested in exploring new limits of network performance by exploiting advances at the physical layer and other new enabling technologies. In recent years, he has been actively working on cross-layer optimization problems for cognitive radio wireless networks, cooperative communications, MIMO-based ad hoc networks and energy related problems.
Prof. Hou was named an IEEE Fellow for contributions to modeling and optimization of wireless networks. He has published two textbooks: Cognitive Radio Communications and Networks: Principles and Practices (Academic Press/Elsevier, 2009) and Applied Optimization Methods for Wireless Networks (Cambridge University Press, 2014). The first book has been selected as one of the Best Readings on Cognitive Radio by the IEEE Communications Society. Prof. Hou’s research was recognized by five best paper awards from the IEEE and two paper awards from the ACM. He holds five U.S. patents.
Prof. Hou was an Area Editor of IEEE Transaction on Wireless Communications (Wireless Networking area), and an Editor of IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications – Cognitive Radio Series, and IEEE Wireless Communications. Currently, he is an Editor of IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking and ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks. He is the Steering Committee Chair of IEEE INFOCOM conference, which is the largest and highest ranked conference on computer networking by Google Scholar.