TECoSA Seminar- ARA Living Lab for Connecting the Unconnected

We aim to bring you a TECoSA Seminar on the first Thursday of each month during term-time.  All are welcome to attend and we look forward to some lively discussions. Members can accept the Outlook invitations, non-members can email tecosa-admin@kth.se to register. 

Our February seminar is with Hongwei Zhang, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Director of the Center for Wireless, Communities and Innovation (WiCI) at Iowa State University. The seminar will take place via Zoom, through this link.

Abstract: One grand societal challenge is how to provide affordable, quality broadband connectivity to rural regions today while ensuring that rural broadband does not always lag behind urban broadband as technologies and services evolve. To address the challenge, we need to nurture rural-focused broadband innovation and associated innovation communities. In this talk, I will share the design principles, hardware and software implementation, as well as the enabled wireless and applications research of the ARA living lab. I will also discuss open challenges in developing and operating such living labs, as well as the opportunities of leveraging rural industries (e.g., agriculture) for advancing the frontier of wireless systems such as Open RAN and 6G.

Bio: Hongwei Zhang is the Richardson Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Director of the Center for Wireless, Communities and Innovation (WiCI) at Iowa State University. His research investigates modeling, algorithmic, and systems issues in wireless sensing and control networks as well as their applications in connected and automated vehicles, XR, and cyber-physical-human systems in general. He has led the development of open-innovation infrastructures for precision agriculture, connected and automated transportation, cellular networks, and IoT networks which have been used by researchers worldwide. His work has been recognized by best paper awards from the IEEE International Conference on Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems (ICPS), IEEE International Conference on Network Softwarization (NetSoft), and ACM Workshop on Wireless Network Testbeds, Experimental evaluation and CHaracterization (WiNTECH), IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Magazine, and Journal of Systems Science and Complexity (Springer). More information about his work can be found from his website at http://www.ece.iastate.edu/~hongwei.