Murat Yuksel

University of Central Florida

Abstract

Recent proliferation of wireless technologies and choices available to user applications have triggered a tremendous wireless demand, and the wireless nodes are expected to dominate the Internet for the foreseeable future. Accommodating this exploding wireless demand with the legacy cellular capacity does not seem possible in the long run. As the sub-6GHz radio frequency (RF) spectrum is getting scarcer and saturated by recent innovations in attaining high spectral efficiency gains, we urgently need innovations that will enable leveraging of new wireless spectrums and substrates to respond to the exploding mobile wireless traffic demand. Further, the capacity gap between RF wireless and optical fiber backbone speeds will remain huge because of the limited availability of RF spectrum. This gap in the “last mile” of the Internet is getting more troublesome as smart Internet-of-Things (IoT) is becoming a reality and more things around us need wireless connectivity. Enabling super-6GHz (millimeter-wave, optical, and terahertz) spectrum in wireless communications is the needed revolution for high-speed mobile networks of the future.

In this talk, I will present our work on exploring the potential for directional super-6GHz in the context of mobile ad-hoc and opportunistic networking. For free-space optical (FSO), a.k.a. optical wireless, bands, we introduce autonomous building blocks and prototypes for multi-hop FSO-based mobile networking. 3D spherical structures covered with inexpensive FSO transceivers (e.g., LED and photo-detector pairs) solve issues relevant to mobility and beam alignment via availability of several transceivers per node. Such structures facilitate software-defined electronic beam tracking methods instead of traditional mechanical steering techniques used in FSO communications. Using these multi-element modules in the visible optical band, we solve optimization problems to maximize download throughput for mobile devices via lighting fixtures. I will also present our work on the use of machine learning algorithms to perform real-time directional millimeter-wave beamforming from high-level programming languages. This research enables directional super-6GHz wireless communications in ad hoc or low-altitude airborne settings as well as mesh networks at high altitudes. Our work shows the potential of using software capabilities and algorithmic methods along with hardware innovations in realizing autonomous FSO and millimeter-wave IoT systems for emerging 5G-and-beyond applications such as underwater, vehicular, and drone communications.

Bio

Murat Yuksel is a Professor at the ECE Department of the University of Central Florida (UCF), Orlando, FL. He served as the Interim Chair of ECE at UCF. Prior UCF, he was a faculty member at the CSE Department of the University of Nevada – Reno, Reno, NV. He received Ph.D. degree in computer science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2002, and B.S. degree in computer engineering from Ege University, Izmir, Turkey in 1996. He worked as a software engineer at Pepperdata, Sunnyvale, CA and a visiting researcher at AT&T Labs and Los Alamos National Lab. His research interests are in the areas of networked, wireless, and computer systems with a recent focus on optical wireless, wireless systems, spectrum sharing, and network economics and architectures. He has been on the editorial boards of Computer Networks, IEEE Transactions on Machine Learning in Communications and Networking, and IEEE Networking Letters. He has published more than 200 papers at peer-reviewed journals and conferences, and is a co-recipient of three Best Paper, one Best Paper Runner-up, and one Best Demo Awards. He is a senior member of IEEE, and a senior and life member of ACM.

Chao Zhang

School of Aerospace Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

Abstract

As the independent physical resource in Electro-Magnetic (EM) wave, Orbital Angular Momentum (OAM) can provide the new dimension for wireless transmissions, which serves as one of the potential key technologies for future wireless communications, e.g. 6G mobile communications. With the exhaustion of frequency resources, the revolutionary multiplexing scheme with higher spectrum efficiency based on OAM is expected. To be specific, the definitions of OAM with regard to the quantum OAM vortex EM wave and statistical OAM vortex beam are quite different, which belongs to the intrinsic and extrinsic OAMs, respectively. Consequently, the extrinsic OAM in the statistical OAM vortex beam is strongly coupled to the space domain of the electric field strength, which is the fundamental reason for the statistical OAM vortex beam transmission not exceeding the capacity bound of the conventional MIMO transmissions. In contrast, the intrinsic OAM in the quantum OAM transmission system is physically independent of the electric field strength and decoupled from the macroscopic space domain, constituting the new independent dimension of wireless transmissions. Therefore, the quantum OAM vortex EM wave with intrinsic OAM is a future direction for developing new resources of EM waves, as well as the potential key technology in the corresponding wireless communication systems. The quantum OAM transmission with the vortex microwave photons has the potential to surpass the traditional MIMO capacity bound with multiple antennas. Recently, Communications Engineering, the academic journal issued by Nature Publication Group, has published the article on the experiment of the quantum OAM wireless transmission, which demonstrates the potential of new dimension with OAM. In this keynote, the concept of OAM, the latest research progress of OAM, and the potential applications of OAM will be highlighted and discussed.

Bio

Chao Zhang is the tenured professor in School of Aerospace Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. Prof. Zhang works as the Director of Lab of Avionics, and serves as the IET fellow. He has dedicated to the basic research and key technologies on the frontier of the wireless transmission and signal detection in space. In the research of 6G, he serves as the leader of the OAM Task Group in IMT-2030 (6G) Work Group of Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in China. Moreover, he was the main pioneer and founder of the OAM transmission workshop at the IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), and was the chair of the workshop from 2019 until now. In the experiment, he and his research team have conducted the longest distance wireless OAM transmission in 2018 and the first quantum OAM wireless transmission in room temperature in 2021. He was also the senior member of IEEE and IEICE.

Prof. Rafael Pérez-Jiménez

University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain

Abstract

Ubiquitously present Cameras can have a dual use as image sensors and OCC technologies receivers for IoT. This unique characteristic opens a new frame for several applications where, obviously, privacy and data protection must be a central aspect in the design of those solution. It can be applied to environments such as nursing homes or civic centers, hospitals, shopping centers, open shopping areas or even any residential area with peripheral delimitation. OCC networks makes possible to combine the use of systems based on visible or infrared light, maintaining their advantages with the use of low-cost receivers, which allow their integration in a mobile communications device as a regular App. From a holistic point of view, IoT should be considered as a part of the integration, communication, location and sensing strategies to obtain a portrait of the behavior of the user, in some specific scenarios as could be museums or hotels following the SoLoMo paradigm for tourism destinations.

Bio

Born in Madrid in 1965. BSc & MEng (UPM, 1991), PhD in Engineering (ULPGC, 1991) and in History (ULL, 2020). Full Professor since 2003. Director of the IDeTIC University Institute of the ULPGC (2010-2020). He has directed or participated in 12 transnational research projects, 26 official national projects in competitive calls and more than 30 relevant contracts with companies and administrations. He has published more than 100 indexed journal papers, and more than 200 communications to international peer-reviewed conferences. He has advised 14 doctoral theses that have obtained 4 awards from the official associations of Spanish Engineers and Telecommunication Technical Engineers. His main research area corresponds to the development of optical wireless communication systems, especially for sensor networks and medium/low speed links, both in the vehicular and domestic environment, and to the characterization of optical channels indoors and in mobile systems. Although he is also participating in research projects on applications of sensor networks and the Internet of things. It also develops its activity in the planning of Smart Cities, especially dedicated to the tourism sector (Smart Destinations). He is currently coordinator in the areas of Communications Technology, Microelectronics, Nanomaterials & Photonics of the Spanish Research Agency (from 2020).