In the new semester, two new PhD students and a PostDoctoral researcher join the WiDeS group. Yijing Zhang, a recent MS graduate from Columbia University, and Ferdous Pervej, an expert in Federated Learning who this summer received his PhD from North Carolina State University, will be working on privacy-preserving caching of video. Chin-Wei Huang, an MS graduate from National Taiwan University, will be working on robust networks that perform joint computation, communication, and caching of information. Welcome to the group.
LinkedIn, a popular professional networking application, is trying to grab the most sensitive data of users. The company has started to – seemingly arbitrarily - block users and then demand copies of driver’s licenses to make the accounts accessible again. Since drivers’ license is the most sensitive government-issued document in the US, and LinkedIn is the culprit of two of the largest data breaches in the history of the internet, sending them this information puts users at extremely high risk for identity theft – leaving them with the unpalatable option of either giving up the network they have built up over the years, or risking falling victim to identity theft.
WiDeS PostDocs Lei Chu and Ju-Hyung Lee acted as mentors in the Viterbi Summer Institute (VSI), which gives incoming freshmen from underrepresented minorities their first research experiences. Eryn Osei and Zolia Sarmiento (advised by Dr. Lee), and Naomi Cruz (advised by Dr. Chu, shown in photo) learned about fundamental research methodology and did some first machine learning projects. Naomi Cruz will continue her work with Dr. Chu as CURVE student in the upcoming semester.
The third, expanded and completely revised edition of the popular textbook "Wireless Communications" was just published by IEEE Press - Wiley. Subtitled "From Fundamentals to Beyond 5G", the text leads from the basics of wireless propagation, digital modulation, to cellular system design, to cutting-edge topics such as massive MIMO, NOMA, and the 5G standards. More details at wiley.com/go/molisch/wireless3e and here
The WiDeS group has an open position for a PostDoc and/or PhD student in the area of federated learning for wireless edge caching. The project, sponsored by NSF, aims to find ways to efficiently cache videos and other popular content at the base stations and user devices while preserving the privacy of the users' content preferences; this is to be achieved through a federated learning approach. Interested candidates should apply via email . Plese include a CV and description of relevant experience; Click here for more details
Members of the WiDeS team were presenting three papers (ranging from channel models to caching-aware routing), and two tutorials (localization and joint computation-communication-caching) at Globecom in Rio
Yang Cai defended his thesis "Efficient Delivery of Augmented Information Services over Distributed Computing Networks". Congratulations and all the best for your future career. In January, Nikhil Nataraja (who has been a group member as MS student for the past 18 months) will join as PhD student
WiDeS head Andy Molisch is again a Clarivate™ Highly Cited Researchers, which identifies those who have been most frequently cited by their peers over the last decade. As per Clarivate "In 2022, fewer than 7000, or about 0.1%, of the world's researchers, in 21 research fields and across multiple fields, have earned this exclusive distinction.
WiDeS alumnus Seun Sangodoyin was just appointed to the Sutterfield Family Early Career Chair, as Assistant Professor at Georgiatech. Seun had been a PhD student in WiDeS until 2018, when he graduated with a thesis on wireless propagation channel measurement and modeling; his papers from that time have been cited some 1000 times. WiDeS congratulates Seun and wishes him all the best for his next career stage.
During his one-year visit at USC, visiting PostDoc Minseok Choi (now Ass. Prof. at Kyung Hee University) and WiDeS head Andy Molisch, together with WiDeS alumnus Joon Kim (now Prof at Korea University) explored link scheduling and power distribution in wireless caching networks. This work has now been recognized by the IEEE ComSoc Multimedia Technical Committee with the "Best Journal Paper" award. The research paper can be found here. For our related papers, see the publications webpage.
Ruiyi Shen, an undergraduate researcher in the WiDeS group who has worked on the drone communications project, will be joining Princeton University for his Ph.D. "The relevant experiences...... greatly helped a lot in admissions", he said. Like many of our UG and MS students, Ruiyi co-authored a paper in a prestigious conference. We wish him all the best for his PhD.
WiDeS has been a pioneer and leader in the measurement and modeling of Terahertz propagation channels. At Globecom, the flagship conference of the IEEE Communications Society, WiDeS head Andy Molisch was invited to give a keynote. The slides of the presentation can be found here and the video can be watched here. For our related papers, see the publications webpage.
Nils Torbjorn Ekman, Professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, has joined WiDeS for his sabbatical, where he will be working with us on scattering from dynamic rough surfaces, including water surfaces. Welcome to the group.
WiDeS head Andy Molisch again made the list of Highly Cited Researcher from Publon/Clarivate (Thomson-Reuters) This annual award recognizes the most highly cited researchers in the world. At the same time, his h-index reached 100, i.e., 100 papers with more than 100 citations each.
Three new PhD students, Wei-Yu Chen, Omer Serbetci, and Brian Yuning Zhang, have joined WiDeS as PhD students. They will be working on distributed massive MIMO, machine learning for channel prediction, and mm-wave channel measurements and modeling, respectively. Welcome to the group.
A tutorial paper co-authored by WiDeS, received the prestigious "Best tutorial paper" award of IEEE ComSoc 2021. The paper, which is available here, deals with the practical aspects of 5G, such as deployment and real-world propagation channels.
A WiDeS co-authored paper about the vision for 6G, and the technologies to make it a reality is published in the prestigious Proceedings of the IEEE, the flagship journal of the IEEE, and can be accessed freely here.
Like most of the world, also WiDeS is adjusting to the new reality of the Covid crisis. Under the motto “safety first”, our overarching principle is to protect the health of the team members. This means our members working on theory are working from home, while the experimental activities were halted for a while, and are now restarting with strict social distancing. We apologize to our planned international visitors that their visits had to be delayed, according to school and national policy. And our monthly group dinners had to be suspended! We are all looking forward to when the situation returns to normal, but we retain our good cheer and our scientific productivity. Fight On!
Ming-Chun Lee, member of the WiDeS group successfully defended his PhD thesis in April, and is joining the National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan as Assistant Professor. Ming-Chun, who had been a member of the WiDeS team since 2016, had been working on wireless video caching, where his explorations ranged from fundamental information theory to optimizing energy efficiency. With 5 IEEE journal papers as first author, one book chapter, and numerous conference papers, his time in WiDes has been extremely productive. Good luck in your next career step, and we are looking forward to staying in touch.
Master’s and undergraduate students are an important part of the research at WiDeS. Their contributions are not only critically important, but also fully acknowledged, as co-authors on papers in prestigious conferences and journals. Peng Luo, Akshay Ramesh collaborated with PhD student Thomas Choi, for a recently accepted paper at Asilomar, and A Hariharan, Arun Nair worked with PostDoc Naveed Abbasi on pioneering THz measurements recently presented at IEEE ICC, the flagship conference of the IEEE communication society.
Mike Neumann is joining WiDeS as a PhD student. Mike brings tremendous experience in wireless system design, having retired from Boeing in 2017 after 44 years of working on communications satellites. Epitomizing “lifelong learning”, Mike has attended almost all MS-level courses at USC, and will now bring his energy and experience to exploring machine learning for wireless applications. Welcome to WiDeS !
USC awarded one of its very competitive Undergraduate Research Associates Program grants to WiDeS's project on "Measurement of Drone-to-Ground Wireless Propagation channels". Applications from UG students are being accepted; work will mostly take place after lifting of the "safer at home" orders.
WiDeS head Andy Molisch again made the list of Highly Cited Researcher from Publon/Clarivate(Thomson-Reuters) This annual award recognizes the most highly cited researchers in the world - about 130 in all of computer science and related electrical engineering fields.
WiDeS head Andy Molisch is recognized as a Highly Cited Researcher from Publon/Clarivate(Thomson-Reuters) This annual award recognizes the most highly cited researchers in the world (~6000 in all fields of science and social science).
Daniel Neuhold, an expert on UWB-based localization at the University of Klagenfurt, Austria, will be spending a 6-month research visit at WiDeS. Main emphasis of the collaboration will be network localization with low-cost nodes. Welcome!
The WiDeS group at the University of Southern California has a position available for a PostDoc in the area of mm-wave and THz channel measurement and modeling. Experience with mm-wave/THz measurement equipment (VNA, etc.) is essential; experience in channel measurement and modeling is beneficial but not a prerequisite. Please send your application to Prof. Andy Molisch, molisch@usc.edu, and ensure that your cover letter describes in detail your measurement expertise and experience.
If it’s December, it must be Globecom time – the flagship conference of the Communications society (together with ICC). Making their way to the bustling technology hub of Singapore, 4 WiDeS members presented papers: Umit Bas two papers on mm-wave channel measurements (joint work with Samsung), Zheda Li gave a talk on hybrid transceivers (joint work with Beihang), Vishnu Ratnam presented work on reduced complexity receivers for ultrawideband (joint work with KACST), and Andy Molisch presented papers on body area network and wireless video distribution systems. He also participated in a panel discussion on the future of communications, and gave keynotes at the workshops on mm-wave systems (Monday) and massive MIMO (Friday).
The IET, the largest engineering society in the UK, announced today the following: “The IET Achievement Medal for wireless communications to Professor F. Andreas Molisch FIET, Professor and Solomon-Golomb - Andrew-and-Erna-Viterbi Chair, University of Southern California, USA. Over the last 20 years Professor Molisch has made major contributions to wireless communications, bridging industry and academia, and furthered interest in wireless communications through textbooks and tutorials. Professor Molisch is one of the world's leading experts on wireless propagation channels, having created, e.g., the "double-directional channel model" that has become the standard modeling approach for describing MIMO channels. He has also made profound contributions in wireless transceiver and system design, and some of his work will be part of the 5G standard, paving the way for future generations of wireless communication.
On October 13th, Hao Feng defended his thesis “Joint Routing, Scheduling, and Resource Allocation in Multi-hop Networks: from Ad-hoc Networks to Distributed Computing Networks”. An expert in stochastic network optimization, Hao developed new systems and techniques ranging from information accumulation in ad-hoc networks to optimization of joint computation and communication. Results were published in prestigious venues such as the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, Infocom, and Asilomar, and he received a best-paper award at IEEE ICC, the flagship conference of the Communcations Society. Hao will join Intel research in January.
With the new semester, several new members have joined out group. Thomas Choi and Zihang Cheng have started their PhD studies at USC. Pan Tang (from Beijing University of Post and Telecommunications) will spend one year as a visiting researcher. Welcome!
It was the biggest graduation day yet for WiDeS: a total of 6 group members defended in May/June of 2018. Sundar Aditya, Umit Bas, Zheda Li, Vishnu Ratnam, Seun Sangodoyin, and Rui Wang, all presented their theses. While their topics were very different, ranging from the construction of channel sounders to analysis of hybrid beamforming techniques, what they have in common are outstanding achievements and numerous impressive publications in prestigious journals. We wish them luck in their next stages of their careers.
The fall 2018 semester starts, and new members are joining our group. Yang Cai has joined us as PhD student, having received an Annenberg Fellowship from USC. He comes from Tsinghua University, where he worked with Prof. Yuan Shen on a variety of issues in localization and networking. Xiaokang Ye has joined us since June as a guest student, coming from Tongji University, where he has been working with Prof. Yin on channel measurements and evaluations. In September, Dr. Francois Rottenberg joined us from Belgium as a PostDoctoral researcher; he will be working on various aspect of massive MIMO. Welcome to all of them !
the frequency range of interest for broadband communications inexorably increases, and now the frequency ranges between 100 and 500 GHz are becoming of interest. WiDeS has joined a consortium of universities that will investigate THz systems of the future in a large project funded by the Semiconductor Research Consortium. Expect exciting results!
several members of WiDeS attended the International Conference on Communications (ICC), the flagship conference of the IEEE Communications Society, in Kansas City, MO, USA, from May 20-24th. Umit Bas presented work on “Outdoor to Indoor Penetration Loss at 28 GHz for Fixed Wireless Access”, Ming-Chun Lee on “On the Caching Policy and Cooperation Distance Design in Base Station Assisted Wireless D2D Networks”, Vishnu Ratnam on “Reference Tone Aided Transmission for Massive MIMO: Analog Beamforming without CSI”, and Andy Molisch presented work lead-authored by Seun Sangodoyin on “Experimental Characterization of the Dependence of UWB Personal Area Networks Channels on Body Mass Index”, and also gave a tutorial on Millimeter-wave Channel Measurement and Modeling.
Dr. Han-Shin Jo, Associate Professor at Hanbat National University in Korea, has joined WiDeS for his sabbatical. His main research interests are in localization, MIMO, and spectrum sharing. Welcome !
WiDeS anticipates one or more openings for PhD students in the fall of 2019. If you are interested, please look at the information for prospective students and fill out the form here. Please note that this is in addition to the required application to USC.
WiDeS will explore the application of dimensionality reduction techniques and machine learning for novel ways of network planning. Please see here for details.
WiDeS is among the pioneers applying machine learning to propagation channels. Recent contributions include predictions of dual-band channels, estimating channel states at remote base stations, and clustering. In August, WiDeS head Molisch gave an invited talk at the ITU workshop on Machine Learning; conference presentations at Milcom and Globecom are coming up.
Prof. Joon Kim, a WiDeS PhD graduate (2014), and now Assistant Professor at Chung-An University, received the Haedong Young Scholar Award by KICS (The Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences), which is for recognizing a young Korean researcher under the age of 40 who has made outstanding scholarly contributions to communications and information sciences R&D.
Dr. Naveed Abbasi, an expert in THz propagation channels and system design, has joined WiDeS as PostDoc. He recently received his Ph.D. from Koc University, Turkey, and will be leading channel measurement and modeling activities for the ComSenTer (Communications and Sensing at Terahertz) project.
WiDeS head Andy Molisch received the 2018 Edwin H. Armstrong Award, the Technical Achievement Award of the IEEE Communications Society. Given to one researcher per year in a society with 30,000 members, the award is intended to recognize “outstanding contributions over a period of years”; Molisch received it “for pioneering contributions to wireless channel measurement and modeling and spectrally efficient wireless transmission techniques.”. It was bestowed at a ceremony at IEEE ICC in Shanghai in May.
A paper co-authored by WiDeS PhD students Thomas Choi and Zihang Cheng, and Prof. Molisch, received a best-paper award at the European Conference on Antennas and Propagation. The paper "System Distortion Model for the Cross-Validation of Millimeter-Wave Channel Sounders" was a collaborative effort of the members of the NIST channel modeling alliance and showed how sounders from different organizations could be compared.
Daoud Burghal successfully defended his thesis on "Exploiting Side Information For Link Setup and Maintenance In Next Generation Wireless Networks" on March 4th. After joining WiDeS, Daoud first performed pioneering research on channel estimation and neighbor association in device-to-device communications. He recently turned his interested to machine learning, in particular the question of how to predict the best frequency band in which to operate, based on various types of input data and neural network structures. Congratulations from all at WiDeS.
Minseok Choi finished his Ph.D. at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology under the guidance of Prof. Jaekyun Moon. He has been with Prof. Joon Kim (who is himself a WiDeS alumnus) as a post-doctoral research associate since he graduated. Dr. Choi is an expert on video caching-based distribution schemes, in particular femto-caching, and will strengthen the cluster of researchers at WiDeS working on this topic.
It was 10 years ago, January 2009, that the Wireless Devices and Systems (WiDeS) group was founded by Prof. Andy Molisch when he joined USC. Since then, the group has been on a remarkably successful trajectory. A few key statistics: more than 100 journal papers published in IEEE journals (plus many conference papers), multiple patents filed; results from the group successfully submitted to international standards; 10 PhD students graduated; and numerous prestigious awards collected by WiDeS members. The group has also established itself as an international meeting place: 10 PostDocs and visiting professors, and 10 visiting PhD students have been hosted. Looking forward to successful next 10 years!
As every year, WiDeS was represented at Globecom, traditionally the largest of the conferences in the communications area. This year, four papers were presented, covering the range from mm-wave channel measurements to machine learning to reduced-complexity MIMO receivers: "28 GHz Foliage Propagation Channel Measurements" (with the recently graduated Umit Bas as lead author), "Measurement Based Directional Modeling of Dynamic Human Body Shadowing at 28 GHz" (Thomas Choi lead author), "Multi-antenna FSR Receivers: Low Complexity, Non-coherent, Massive Antenna Receivers" (recently graduated Vishnu Ratnam as lead), and "Inferring Remote Channel State Information: Cramér-Rao Lower Bound and Deep Learning Implementation", a collaboration with Tsinghua University, with former visiting student (and now Tsinghua PostDoc) Zhiyuan Jiang as lead author.
The IEEE Communications Society bestowed the Leonard G. Abraham Prize on the paper "Wireless Device-to-Device Caching Networks: Basic Principles and System Performance", IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, Vol. 34, Issue: 1, pp. 176-189, January 2016. The paper, authored by Mingyue Ji (previously USC, now Assistant Professor at the University of Utah) and his joint advisors Giuseppe Caire (previously USC, now at TU Berlin) and Andy Molisch from WiDeS, was selected based on the criteria of quality, originality, utility, timeliness, and clarity of presentation.
Prof. Kyoung-Jae Lee from Hanbat National University in Korea has joined WiDeS in February 2020 for his one-year sabbatical. Prof. Lee is a prolific expert in the area of MIMO, hetnets, and relays, and will particularly explore heterogeneous vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure systems.
Two new PhD students joined WiDeS in August 2019. Guillermo Castro received his degree from the Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María in Chile; he will be working on mm-wave channel sounding. Bassel Abou Ali Modad graduated from the American University Beirut; his main emphasis will be channel modeling, with an emphasis on high-resolution parameter estimation and clustering.
Prof. Molisch from WiDeS was a co-organizer of the 2020 Workshop on Future Wireless Research Challenges. Together with professors from UCI, UCLA, and NSF, he helped to arrange an exciting program of academic and industry panelists that discussed the future of wireless research. The meeting in Irvine, CA, attracted more than 100 researchers for the Feb. 3/4 meeting.
WiDeS again presented a number of papers at the IEEE International Conference on Communications, one of the two flagship conferences of the IEEE Communications Society. Papers on “Sparsity in the Delay-Doppler Domain for Measured 60 GHz Vehicle-to-Infrastructure Communication Channels”, “Design of caching content replacement in base station assisted wireless d2d caching networks”, “Angular information-based NLOS/LOS identification for vehicle to vehicle MIMO system”, “System Performance Assessment in Dual-Band Device-to-Device MIMO Channels”, were presented by different members of the team, and Prof. Molisch, in collaboration with Prof. Zhang from BUPT, presented a tutorial on “Channel measurement and modeling for fifth-generation (5G) system”.