CISE Seminar: October 5, 2018, Alexander Wyglinski – Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI)

8 St. Mary’s Street, PHO 211
3:00pm-4:00pm – Refreshments at 2:45pm

Alexander Wyglinski
Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI)

Bumblebees and Vehicular Networking: Intelligent Connectivity on the Road 

Wireless connectivity is quickly becoming a critical element in future transportation systems, especially with respect to self-driving cars and various levels of vehicular autonomy.  Given the complex and highly time-varying environments existing on busy roadways, having each vehicle possessing real-time situational awareness is essential for performing complex functions, such as autonomous lane-changing, traffic intersection management, and platooning. Although there already exists a variety of different sensors that can gather data about the vehicular environment in order to obtain real-time situation awareness, such as LIDAR, RADAR, and vision systems, these sensors can only collect this data via line-of-sight (LOS).  On the other hand, wireless connectivity is not constrained to LOS data gathering and can greatly increase the real-time situational awareness of each vehicle on the road, enhancing its performance and increasing driver/passenger safety. As the number of vehicles on the road become connected to each other, this information sharing will evolve into a Vehicular Internet-of-Things (VIOT) environment. To support the VIOT ecosystem, adequate wireless spectrum is needed to enable this connectivity between vehicles in real-time as they are operating on the road in complex conditions.  To achieve this, Vehicular Dynamic Spectrum Access, or VDSA, can be employed, where unoccupied wireless spectrum is temporarily accessed by non-licensed users in order to support data communications during that time interval.  Compared to conventional DSA techniques, VDSA needs to be capable of handling significant spectral availability variations during a transmission.  Past research has explored the use of VDSA in television white space spectral environments as well as the implementation of VDSA algorithms using machine learning techniques.  However, recently a new approach to VDSA has been proposed where each vehicle performs VDSA using an algorithm based on bumblebee-inspired resource foraging.  In this talk, the fundamentals of how bumblebee-inspired VDSA will be presented, with several examples shown in order to demonstrate the performance of this approach.

Dr. Alexander M. Wyglinski is a Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering and a Professor of Robotics Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), as well as Director of the Wireless Innovation Laboratory (WI Lab, http://www.wireless.wpi.edu/). His research interests are in the area of wireless communications, connected vehicles, cognitive radios, autonomous/self-driving cars, and dynamic spectrum access networks. Dr. Wyglinski received his Ph.D. degree from McGill University in 2005, M.S. degree from Queens University at Kingston in 2000, and B.Eng. degree from McGill University in 1999, all in Electrical Engineering. Dr. Wyglinski is very actively involved in the research community. He currently serves on the editorial board of the IEEE Communications Magazine. He has previously served as the general co-chair of the 82th IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference (IEEE VTC 2015 Fall), co-chair of the Cognitive Radio Symposium of the 2015 IEEE International Conference on Communications (IEEE ICC 2015), and general co-chair of the 2013 IEEE Vehicular Networking Conference (IEEE VNC 2013). Dr. Wyglinski has been or is currently a technical program committee member on numerous IEEE and other international conferences in wireless communications and connected vehicles. Finally, Dr. Wyglinski is serving as the President of the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society (an IEEE VTS Board of Governors position), as well as a speaker for the IEEE VTS Distinguished Lecturer Series. In addition to authoring/co-authoring over 100 peer-reviewed journal articles and conference papers, Dr. Wyglinski is the co-author of the first textbook on cognitive radio and dynamic spectrum access, entitled Cognitive Radio Communications and Networks: Principles and Practice (Academic Press, December 2009), as well as a co-author of the first textbook on digital communication systems engineering using software-defined radio technology, entitled Digital Communication Systems Engineering Using Software Defined Radio (Artech House, January 2013). Dr. Wyglinski is currently or has been sponsored by organizations such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Raytheon, MITRE, Office of Naval Research (ONR), Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) – Space Vehicles Directorate, The MathWorks, Toyota InfoTechnology Center U.S.A., and the National Science Foundation. Dr. Wyglinski is a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), as well as a member of Sigma Xi, Eta Kappa Nu, and the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE).

Faculty Host: Janusz Konrad
Student Host:Nan Zhou