Keynote Speaker

Keynote Speaker

Title: Advances in Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks for Cyber Physical Systems

Speaker: Dr. Thomas Hou, IEEE Fellow
Bradley Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA

URL: http://www.cnsr.ictas.vt.edu

Abstract: Our world is evolving into a smart planet, including smart building, intelligent manufacturing, smart transportation, to name a few. The essence in this evolution is the marriage of cyber and physical systems (or CPS). In short, CPS is a system of collaborating computational elements that makes physical entities behave intelligently. The underlying technology of CPS is a synergy of control, sensing, communications, networking, computation, among others. In this talk, I will focus on some new advances in ad hoc and sensor networks that are relevant to CPS, particular some networking problems involving complex mathematical models. Many of the existing models, although successful to address problems for a small network, are hardly useful to study problems in a complex network environment involving a large number of nodes. In these cases, new tractable models and algorithms are needed for networking research. I will describe our research efforts in developing simple and tractable models for complex network systems. I will also describe our efforts in applying these models to cross-layer optimizations that involve network, link, and physical layers. Many of these new networking problems are extremely challenging and call for interdisciplinary expertise from a number of technical domains.

Speaker Biography: Tom Hou is the Bradley Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech. He received his B.E. degree from the City College of New York in 1991, M.S. degree from Columbia University in 1993, and Ph.D. degree from New York University (NYU) Polytechnic School of Engineering in 1998. From 1997 to 2002, he was a Researcher at Fujitsu Laboratories of America, Sunnyvale, CA.
Prof. Hou's research interests are to develop innovative solutions to complex cross-layer optimization problems in wireless networks. He is particularly interested in exploring new performance limits at the network layer by exploiting advances at the physical layer. In recent years, he has been actively working on cross-layer optimization problems for cognitive radio wireless networks, cooperative communications, MIMO-based ad hoc networks and energy related problems.
Prof. Hou was named an IEEE Fellow for contributions to modeling and optimization of wireless networks. He is the Steering Committee Chair of IEEE INFOCOM conference, which is the largest and highest ranked conference on computer networking by Google Scholar. He was a recipient of an ONR Young Investigator Award (2003) and an NSF CAREER Award (2004). His publications have been cited more than 8,600+ times per Google Scholar and his h-index is 46. He has published two textbooks: Cognitive Radio Communications and Networks: Principles and Practices (Academic Press/Elsevier, 2009) and Applied Optimization Methods for Wireless Networks (Cambridge University Press, 2014). The first book has been selected as one of the Best Readings on Cognitive Radio by the IEEE Communications Society.