SPS Webinar: Seventy Years of Radar and Communications: The Road from Separation to Integration
Date: 17 November 2023
Time: 8:30 AM ET (New York Time)
Speaker(s): Dr. Fan Liu, Dr. Christos Masouros, Dr. Le Zheng, Dr. Yuanhao Cui
Abstract
Radar and communications (R&C) as key utilities of electromagnetic (EM) waves, have fundamentally shaped human society and triggered the modern information age. Although R&C have been historically progressing separately, in recent decades they have been converging towards integration, forming integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) systems, giving rise to new, highly desirable capabilities in next-generation wireless networks and future radars. To better understand the essence of ISAC, this webinar provides a systematic overview on the historical development of R&C from a signal processing (SP) perspective. We first interpret the duality between R&C as signals and systems, followed by an introduction of their fundamental principles. We then elaborate on the two main trends in their technological evolution, namely, the increase of frequencies and bandwidths, and the expansion of antenna arrays. We then show how the intertwined narratives of R&C evolved into ISAC and discuss the resultant SP framework. Finally, we overview future research directions in this field.
Biography
Dr. Fan Liu (Member, IEEE) received the Ph.D. and the B. Eng. degrees from Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT), Beijing, China, in 2018 and 2013, respectively.
He is currently an Assistant Professor of the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech). He has previously held academic positions in the University College London (UCL), first as a Visiting Researcher from 2016 to 2018, and then as a Marie Curie Research Fellow from 2018 to 2020. His research interests lie in the general area of signal processing and wireless communications, and in particular in the area of Integrated Sensing and Communications (ISAC), where he is recognized as one of the leading researchers.
Dr. Liu has 10 papers selected as IEEE ComSoc Best Readings. He is the founding Academic Chair of the IEEE ComSoc ISAC Emerging Technology Initiative (ISAC-ETI), an Associate Editor of the IEEE Open Journal of Signal Processing and the IEEE Communications Letters, and a Guest Editor of the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications and of the IEEE Wireless Communications. He has served as the organizer and Co-Chair for numerous workshops, special sessions, and tutorials in flagship IEEE/ACM conferences, including ICC, GLOBECOM, ICASSP, and MobiCom. He is a TPC Co-Chair of the 2nd and 3rd IEEE Joint Communication and Sensing (JC&S) Symposium, a Track Chair of the IEEE GLOBECOM 2023, and a Track Co-Chair for the IEEE WCNC 2024. He is a member of the IMT-2030 (6G) ISAC Task Group. He was listed in the World's Top 2% Scientists by Stanford University for citation impact in 2021. He was the recipient of the 2023 IEEE Communications Society Stephan O. Rice Prize, 2023 IEEE ICC Best Paper Award, 2022 First Prize of Science and Technology Progress of China Institute of Communications, 2021 IEEE Signal Processing Society Young Author Best Paper Award, 2019 Best Ph.D. Thesis Award of Chinese Institute of Electronics, and the 2018 EU Marie Curie Individual Fellowship.
Dr. Christos Masouros (Senior Member, IEEE) received the Diploma degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Patras, Greece, in 2004, and M. Sc. by research and Ph. D. in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Manchester, UK in 2006 and 2009 respectively.
He was a research intern at Philips Research Labs, UK, working on the LTE standards in 2008. Between 2009-2010 he was a Research Associate in the University of Manchester and between 2010-2012 a Research Fellow in Queen's University Belfast. In 2012 he joined University College London as a Lecturer. He has held a Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellowship between 2011-2016. Since 2019 he is a Full Professor of Signal Processing and Wireless Communications in the Information and Communication Engineering research group, Dept. Electrical and Electronic Engineering, and affiliated with the Institute for Communications and Connected Systems, University College London. His research interests lie in the field of wireless communications and signal processing with particular focus on Green Communications, Large Scale Antenna Systems, Integrated Sensing and Communications, interference mitigation techniques for MIMO and multicarrier communications. Between 2018-22 he was the Project Coordinator of the €4.2m EU H2020 ITN project PAINLESS, involving 12 EU partner universities and industries, towards energy-autonomous networks. Between 2024-28 he will be the Scientific Coordinator of the €2.7m EU H2020 DN project ISLANDS, involving 19 EU partner universities and industries, towards next generation vehicular networks.
Dr. Masouros is the recipient of the 2023 IEEE ComSoc Stephen O. Rice Prize, co-recipient of the 2021 IEEE SPS Young Author Best Paper Award and the recipient of the Best Paper Awards in the IEEE GlobeCom 2015 and IEEE WCNC 2019 conferences. He has been recognised as an Exemplary Editor for the IEEE Communications Letters, and as an Exemplary Reviewer for the IEEE Transactions on Communications. He is an Editor for IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, the IEEE Open Journal of Signal Processing, and Editor-at-Large for IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society. He has been an Editor for IEEE Transactions on Communications, IEEE Communications Letters, and a Guest Editor for several IEEE Journal on Selected Topics in Signal Processing and IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications issues. He is a founding member and Vice-Chair of the IEEE Emerging Technology Initiative on Integrated Sensing and Communications (SAC), Vice Chair of the IEEE Wireless Communications Technical Committee Special Interest Group on ISAC, and Chair of the IEEE Green Communications & Computing Technical Committee, Special Interest Group on Green ISAC. He is the TPC chair for the IEEE ICC 2024 Selected Areas in Communications (SAC) Track on ISAC.
Dr. Le Zhang (Senior Member, IEEE) received the B.Eng. degree from Northwestern Polytechnical University (NWPU), Xi'an, China, in 2009 and the Ph.D. from Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT), Beijing, China in 2015, respectively.
He has been a Professor with the School of Information and Electronics, BIT since July 2022. He has previously held academic positions in the Electrical Engineering Department of Columbia University, New York, U.S., first as a Visiting Researcher from 2013 to 2014, and then as a Postdoc Research Fellow from 2015 to 2017. From 2018 to 2022, he worked at Aptiv (formerly Delphi), Los Angeles, as a Principal Radar Systems Engineer, leading projects on the next-generation automotive radar products. His research interests lie in the general areas of radar, statistical signal processing, wireless communication, and high-performance hardware, particularly in the area of automotive radar and integrated sensing and communications (ISAC).
Dr. Zheng is a founding member of the IEEE ComSoc ISAC Emerging Technology Initiative (ISAC-ETI), a guest editor of the special issue on Joint Communication and Radar Sensing of the IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing, and a guest editor of the special issue on Integrated Sensing and Communications for 6G of the IEEE Wireless Communications.
Dr. Yuanhao Cui (Member, IEEE) received the B.Eng. degree (Hons.) from Henan University and the Ph.D. degree from the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT).
He is currently a Research Assistant Professor with the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China. He has been the CTO and the Co-Founder of two startup companies, where he has invested more than $3 million dollars. He holds more than 20 granted patents. His research interests include precoding and protocol designs for ISAC.
Dr Cui is a member of the IMT-2030 (6G) ISAC Task Group. He received the Best Paper Award from IWCMC 2021. He is the Founding Secretary of the IEEE ComSoc ISAC Emerging Technology Initiative (ISAC-ETI) and the CCF Science Communication Working Committee. He was the Organizer and the Co-Chair for a number of workshops and special sessions in flagship IEEE conferences, including Mobicom, ICC, ICASSP, WCNC, and VTC. He is the Lead Guest Editor for the Special Issue on Integrated Sensing and Communication for 6G of the IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society and the Guest Editor for the Special Issue on Integrated Sensing and Communications for Future Green Networks of the IEEE Transactions on Green Communications and Networking.
