Communications

Join the IEEE Kingston ComSoc and IEEE Toronto ComSoc for the Virtual Distinguished Lecture "Intelligent Reflected Surfaces for Future Wireless Systems", presented by Dr. Shahid Mumtaz. Contact: IEEE Kingston ComSoc Abstract: As we have finalized the research for 5G, now there is a race for technologies that will conquer 6G. The 6G  technologies will achieve much better latency and computation efficiency as compared to 5G. From 1G to 5G, almost all research and standardization randomly model the wireless channel between transmitter and receiver. There is no control of humans over a wireless medium, as it is given by nature. In 6G, we will break this assumption and go from random wireless channels to controllable wireless. Thanks to Intelligent Reflected Surfaces for Future Wireless System(IRS). This talk will explain in detail the physics of metasurface and the progress of IRS till today. This talk will also present different use case, study cases, signal processing and communication techniques for IRS, standardization, Prototype and testbed, and the open research challenges. Speaker(s): Dr. Shahid Mumtaz Biography: Shahid Mumtaz is an IET Fellow, IEEE ComSoc and ACM Distinguished speaker, recipient of IEEE ComSoC Young Researcher Award (2020), IEEE Senior member, founder and EiC of IET “Journal of Quantum communication”, Vice-Chair: Europe/Africa Region- IEEE ComSoc: Green Communications & Computing society and Vice-chair for IEEE standard on P1932.1: Standard for Licensed/Unlicensed Spectrum Interoperability in Wireless Mobile Networks. He has more than 15 years of wireless industry/academic experience. He has received his Master's and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical & Electronic Engineering from Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden, and University of Aveiro, Portugal in 2006 and 2011, respectively. From 2002 to 2003, he worked for Pak Telecom as System Engineer and from 2005 to 2006 for Ericsson and Huawei at Research Labs in Sweden. He has been with Instituto de Telecomunicações since 2011 where he currently holds the position of Auxiliary Researcher and adjunct positions with several universities across the Europe-Asian Region. He is the author of 4 technical books, 12 book chapters, 250+ technical papers (170+ Journal/transaction, 90+ conference, 2 IEEE best paper award- in the area of mobile communications. He had/has supervised/co-supervising several Ph.D. and Master Students. He uses mathematical and system-level tools to model and analyze emerging wireless communication architectures, leading to innovative theoretically optimal new communication techniques. He is working closely with leading R&D groups in the industry to transition these ideas to practice. He secures the funding of around 2M Euro.

Join us on Thursday, June 24, 2021 for the IEEE VDL: Learning to Learn to Communicate, presented by Prof. Osvaldo Simeone. Contact: IEEE Kingston ComSoc Abstract: The application of supervised learning techniques for the design of the physical layer of a communication link is often impaired by the limited amount of pilot data available for each device; while the use of unsupervised learning is typically limited by the need to carry out a large number of training iterations. In this talk, meta-learning, or learning-to-learn, is introduced as a tool to alleviate these problems. The talk will consider an Internet-of-Things (IoT) scenario in which devices transmit sporadically using short packets with few pilot symbols over a fading channel. The number of pilots is generally insufficient to obtain an accurate estimate of the end-to-end channel, which includes the effects of fading and of the transmission-side distortion. To tackle this problem, pilots from previous IoT transmissions are used as meta-training data in order to train a demodulator that is able to quickly adapt to new end-to-end channel conditions from few pilots. Various state-of-the-art meta-learning schemes are adapted to the problem at hand and evaluated, including MAML, FOMAML, REPTILE, and CAVIA. Both offline and online solutions are developed. Speaker(s): Prof. Osvaldo Simeone Biography: Osvaldo Simeone is a Professor of Information Engineering with the Centre for Telecommunications Research at the Department of Engineering of King's College London, where he directs the King's Communications, Learning and Information Processing lab. He received an M.Sc. degree (with honors) and a Ph.D. degree in information engineering from Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy, in 2001 and 2005, respectively. From 2006 to 2017, he was a faculty member of the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), where he was affiliated with the Center for Wireless Information Processing (CWiP). His research interests include information theory, machine learning, wireless communications, and neuromorphic computing. Dr Simeone is a co-recipient of the 2019 IEEE Communication Society Best Tutorial Paper Award, the 2018 IEEE Signal Processing Best Paper Award, the 2017 JCN Best Paper Award, the 2015 IEEE Communication Society Best Tutorial Paper Award and of the Best Paper Awards of IEEE SPAWC 2007 and IEEE WRECOM 2007. He was awarded a Consolidator grant by the European Research Council (ERC) in 2016. His research has been supported by the U.S. NSF, the ERC, the Vienna Science and Technology Fund, as well as by a number of industrial collaborations. He currently serves in the editorial board of the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine and is the vice-chair of the Signal Processing for Communications and Networking Technical Committee of the IEEE Signal Processing Society. He was a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Information Theory Society in 2017 and 2018. Dr Simeone is a co-author of two monographs, two edited books published by Cambridge University Press, and more than one hundred research journal papers. He is a Fellow of the IET and of the IEEE.

On Monday, June 28, 2021, come listen to Dr. Shiwen Mao present the IEEE ComSoc VDL: Machine Learning for Wireless Communications and Networking: Motivations, Case Studies, and Open Problems. ZOOM link will be provided to attendees. Contact: IEEE Denver ComSoc Abstract: While 5G deployment is being carried out in many places of the world, there has been great interest in the prospects of 5G beyond and the next generation. Among the various visions, a common theme is that artificial intelligence will play a key role, as evidenced by the great interest and advances in machine learning enabled wireless communications and networking. In this talk, we will discuss the motivation, potential, and challenges of incorporating machine learning in wireless communications and networking for 5G and beyond systems. We will start with two motivating examples, i.e., channel estimation and mobile edge computing, to show why machine learning could be helpful. We will share our experience of several case studies, including (i) a hybrid approach to the classical energy efficiency maximization problem, where traditional models could be used to train a deep learning model; (ii) data augmentation for convolutional neural network (CNN) based automatic modulation classification (AMC), where a conditional generative adversarial network (CGAN) is utilized to generate synthesized training data; and (iii) and an adaptive model for RFID-based 3D human skeleton tracking, which utilizes meta-learning and few-shot fine-tuning to achieve high adaptability to new environments. We will conclude this talk with a discussion of challenges and open problems. Speaker(s): Dr. Shiwen Mao Biography: Shiwen Mao received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Polytechnic University, Brooklyn, NY in 2004. He was a postdoc at Virginia Tech from 2004 to 2006, and joined Auburn University, Auburn, AL as an assistant professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2006. He held the McWane Endowed Professorship from 2012 to 2015 and the Samuel Ginn Endowed Professorship from 2015 to 2020. Currently, he is a professor and Earle C. Williams Eminent Scholar Chair, and Director of the Wireless Engineering Research and Education Center at Auburn University. His research interest includes wireless networks, multimedia communications, and smart grid. He is on the editorial board of several IEEE and ACM journals. He is a Distinguished Lecturer of IEEE Communications Society and IEEE Council of RFID, and a Distinguished Speaker of IEEE Vehicular Technology Society. He received the IEEE ComSoc TC-CSR Distinguished Technical Achievement Award in 2019 and NSF CAREER Award in 2010. He is a co-recipient of the 2021 IEEE Communications Society Outstanding Paper Award and the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society 2020 Jack Neubauer Memorial Award. Agenda: 6pm (MT) - Introductions 6:10-7:15 - VDL Presentation 7:15-7:30 - Q&A

Dr Arslan has graciously offered to continue the discussion on 5G technologies. The topic is Flexible Radio Access Beyond 5G: A Future Projection. Abstract: Today's wireless services and systems have come a long way since the rollout of the conventional voice-centric cellular systems. The demand for wireless access in voice and multi-media applications has increased tremendously. The trend on the variety and the number of mobile devices along with the mobile applications will certainly continue beyond 5G, creating a wide range of technical challenges. One of the biggest challenges is the security of the communication beyond the classical crypto based approaches which secure the information. In this talk, security aspects of the physical communication and also physical signal which is called Physical Layer Security (PHY Security) will be discussed. Latest trends, threats, and techniques to improve the security of the physical signal will be discussed. The tentative outline of the talk will be as follows: Wireless Communication trends, requirements Importance of secure communication Classification of communication security PHY security: Communication and REM PHY security: Eavesdropping, Spoofing & Jamming Anti-jamming capable communication Cross-layer security - Secure communication & other advanced radio access technologies Case- studies a- Security in URLLC (URLL & Secure communication) b- Security in vehicular network (V2V and V2I) c- Security in NOMA d- Security in LIS Speaker(s): Dr. Arslan Arslan

The IEEE Toronto Chapter (ComSoc/BTS), the IEEE Ottawa Joint Chapter of Communications Society, Consumer Technology Society, and Broadcast Technology Society (ComSoc/CTSoc/BTS), IEEE ComSoc Montreal Chapter (ComSoc), IEEE Ottawa and Toronto Women In Engineering (WIE) Chapters along with the IEEE Ottawa, Southern Alberta and Canadian Atlantic Young Professionals (YP) Chapters are thrilled to host Dr. Tom Murad, the Vice Chair, Ontario Society of Professional Engineers Board of Directors. Dr. Murad is currently the Country Lead for Engineering and Technology for Siemens Mobility. In this talk, we look forward to Dr. Murad as he shares his reflections on the fundamental engineering skills and education requirements for the digital era. Speaker(s): Dr. Tom Murad

The IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc) promotes the advancement of science, technology and applications in communications and related disciplines. It fosters presentation and exchange of information among its members and the technical community throughout the world. The Society maintains a high standard of professionalism and technical competency. The IEEE Communications Society is a professional society of the IEEE. The IEEE ComSoc New York Chapter is organizing a series of technical seminars for the New York area IEEE members and the general public. We invite researchers and professionals to share their latest work on a variety of topics in communications and related areas. This is the fifth seminar of the series. Together with our fellow IEEE ComSoc Chapters, we have the great pleasure to invite Dr. Mohammed Atiquzzaman, an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer, to talk about the interesting, exciting and yet challenging task of connecting spacecrafts to the Internet. Speaker(s): Prof. Mohammed Atiquzzaman, Agenda: 07:45 PM - 08:00 PM: Connecting to the ZOOM meeting 08:00 PM - 08:05 PM: Welcoming & IEEE ComSoc Membership Promotion 08:05 PM - 08:10 PM: Speaker Introduction 08:10 PM - 09:00 PM: Presentation (50 minutes) 09:00 PM - 09:10 PM: Questions and Answers (10 minutes) 09:10 PM - 09:15 PM: Closing Remarks Virtual: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/282376

The IEEE ComSoc New York Chapter a long with the IEEE ComSoc Toronto chapter are organizing a series of technical seminars. We invite researchers and professionals to share their latest work on a variety of topics in communications and related areas. This time, we have the great pleasure to invite Prof. Mehdi Rahmati from Cleveland State University to talk about the integration of terrestrial networks and extreme environments. Agenda: 06:45 PM - 07:00 PM Connecting to the ZOOM meeting 07:00 PM - 07:05 PM Welcoming & IEEE ComSoc Membership Promotion 07:05 PM - 07:10 PM Speaker Introduction 07:10 PM - 07:55 PM Presentation 07:55 PM - 08:10 PM Questions and Answers 08:10 PM - 08:15 PM Closing Remarks Virtual: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/308601

The Communications Group at the University of Toronto, in collaboration with the IEEE Communications Society, Toronto Chapter are happy to host the seminar titled "Conceiving Noise: Transformation from Disturbing Sounds to Informational Errors, 1900-1955" given by Prof. Chen-Pang Yeang, from the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto. In this talk, Prof. Yeang examine the historical origin of the attempts to understand, control, and use noise at modern times.  Today, the concept of noise is employed to characterize random fluctuations in general.  Before the twentieth century, however, noise only meant disturbing sounds.  In the 1900s-50s, noise underwent a conceptual transformation from unwanted sounds that needed to be domesticated into a synonym for errors and deviations on all kinds of signals and information. Prof. Yeang argue that this transformation proceeded in four stages.  The rise of sound reproduction technologies—phonograph, telephone, and radio—in the 1900s-20s prompted engineers to tackle unwanted sounds as physical effects of media through quantitative representations and measurements.  Around the same time, physicists developed a theory of Brownian motions for random fluctuations and applied it to electronic noise in thermionic tubes of telecommunication systems.  These technological and scientific backgrounds led to three distinct theoretical treatments of noise in the 1920s-30s: statistical physicists’ studies of Brownian fluctuations’ temporal evolution, radio engineers’ spectral analysis of atmospheric disturbances, and mathematicians’ measure-theoretic formulation.  Finally, during and after World War II, researchers working on the military projects of radar, gunfire control, and secret communications converted the interwar theoretical studies of noise into tools for statistical detection, estimation, prediction, and information transmission.  In so doing, they turned noise into an informational concept.  Since the grappling of noise involved multiple disciplines, its history sheds light on the interactions between physics, mathematics, mechanical technology, electrical engineering, and information and data sciences in the twentieth century. Speaker(s): Prof. Chen-Pang Yeang Register: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/313075 Biography: Prof. Chen-Pang Yeang is an associate professor at the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto.  Trained both in electrical engineering and the history of science and technology, he does research and teaching in the history of physics, electrical engineering, information and computer science and technology in the 20th and 21st centuries.  He published Probing the Sky with Radio Waves: From Wireless Technology to the Development of Atmospheric Science (University of Chicago Press, 2013).  He is completing a book on the history of noise.  In addition, he is undertaking a research project that uses the material replication of Heinrich Hertz’s radio-wave experiment as a means of historical inquiry, and another project on the grassroots innovation in information and computing technology in the US and China.

The IEEE Toronto Chapter is delighted to host Dr. Behrooz Makki, a Senior Researcher with Ericsson Research, Gothenburg, Sweden. In his work, Dr. Behroooz studies the potentials and the challenges of hybrid free-space optics (FSO)/ terahertz (THz) based communications as a potential tool for high-rate reliable backhauling in 6G. He studies the effect of different data transmission models and parameters such as atmospheric turbulence and pointing error impairments on the performance of FSO/THz systems, and compares the results with those obtained in the cases with only the FSO or the THz links. The presented results indicate that, with a proper switching method, the joint implementation of the FSO/THz links improves the rate/reliability of the backhaul links with limited switching overhead. Speaker(s): Behrooz Makki, Virtual: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/316378

Communications and connectivity have become the critical foundational technology that supports Singapore’s economy. Singapore has invested close to S$70 million through the launch of Singapore’s first national Future Communications Research and Development Programme (FCP), to jumpstart cutting-edge communications and connectivity research. This grows local capability, to translate into innovative products, services and companies. The programme is hosted by the Singapore University of Technology and Design. FCP encourages collaboration between industry and research ecosystem. It will provide easy access to testbeds to facilitate development of 5G and future communication technologies. FCP seeks to collaborate with R&D partners both domestically and internationally to explore different opportunities to advance capabilities in future communications. Speaker(s): Tony Quek , Room: BA 1180, Bldg: Bahen Centre, 40 St George St, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Title: Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces: Communications, sensing, and their integration Abstract: The advent of the connected things paradigm within 5G wireless communications enabled various sophisticated applications, whose evolution paves the way for the notion of the connected intelligence of everything in 6G networks. Recent speculations for this upcoming new generation push the 5G performance indicators to unprecedented levels, envisioning THz frequency bands, devices with embedded sensing capabilities, and native AI. All these are expected to become a reality around 2030 and with a strong green footprint. In this talk, we will elaborate around the emerging technology of Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RISs) which is provisioned as the enabler of smart wireless environments, offering a highly scalable, low-cost, hardware-efficient, and almost energy-neutral solution for the dynamic control of the propagation of electromagnetic signals. We will discuss their evolution from programmable reflecting metamaterials to connected computational- and power-autonomous hybrid metasurfaces, emphasizing on the state-of-the-art approaches for RIS-empowered communications, localization, and sensing. Short Biography: George C. Alexandropoulos received the Engineering Diploma, M.A.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Engineering and Informatics from the School of Engineering, University of Patras, Greece in 2003, 2005, and 2010, respectively. He has held research positions at various Greek universities and research institutes, as well as at the Mathematical and Algorithmic Sciences Lab, Paris Research Center, Huawei Technologies France, and he is currently an Assistant Professor with the Department of Informatics and Telecommunications, School of Sciences, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA), Greece. He also serves as a Principal Researcher for the Technology Innovation Institute, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. His research interests span the general areas of algorithmic design and performance analysis for wireless networks with emphasis on multi-antenna transceiver hardware architectures, active and passive Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RISs), integrated communications and sensing, millimeter wave and THz communications, as well as distributed machine learning algorithms. He currently serves as an Editor for IEEE Transactions on Communications, IEEE Wireless Communications Letters, ELSEVIER Computer Networks, Frontiers in Communications and Networks, and the ITU Journal on Future and Evolving Technologies. In the past, he has held various fixed-term and guest editorial positions for IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications and IEEE Communications Letters, as well as for various special issues at IEEE journals. Prof. Alexandropoulos is a Senior Member of the IEEE Communications, Signal Processing, and Information Theory Societies, the vice-chair of the (https://eurasip.org/technical-area-committees/), as well as a registered Professional Engineer of the Technical Chamber of Greece. He is also a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Communications Society. He has participated and/or technically managed more than 15 European Union (EU), international, and Greek research, innovation, and development projects. He is currently NKUA's principal investigator for the EU H2020 RISE‑6G and the SNS JU TERRAMETA projects dealing with RIS-empowered smart wireless environments and THz RISs, respectively. For the former project he also serves as the dissemination manager, whereas for the latter, he also serves as the project’s technical manager. Prof. Alexandropoulos has received the best Ph.D. thesis award 2010, the IEEE Communications Society Best Young Professional in Industry Award 2018, the EURASIP Best Paper Award of the Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking 2021, the IEEE Marconi Prize Paper Award in Wireless Communications 2021, and a Best Paper Award from the IEEE GLOBECOM 2021. More information is available at www.alexandropoulos.info. Co-sponsored by: Tamseel Mahmood - syed.tamseel@ieee.org Speaker(s): Dr. Alexandropoulos, Virtual: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/333747

5G networks are being designed and deployed considering a dense deployment of small cells in order to simultaneously serve more users with higher throughput and lower delay. However, building from scratch a completely new infrastructure is costly and takes time. Deploying access and backhaul as wireless links, a.k.a. integrated access and backhaul (IAB), is envisioned as a viable approach to enable flexible and dense networks. Even further, mobile IAB (mIAB) is a candidate solution to enhance the connectivity of users moving together. Motivated by this, in this talk, we firstly present the basic architecture of IAB. Then, we provide the main use cases of mIAB. After that, an extensive performance analysis is presented. Passengers and pedestrians quality of service is evaluated. Moreover, results related to the wireless backhaul are also presented. The mIAB scenario is compared to two benchmark solutions, i.e., a scenario with only macro gNBs and a scenario with macro and pico gNBs fiber-connected to the core network. Finally, we summarize the lessons learned and list some open issues and future directions. Speaker(s): Victor Monteiro, Francisco Rafael Lima Virtual: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/337093