Guest Lectures Bring Together Leading UoG and UESTC Professors
Published: 21 November 2022
Online talks on 'Wireless Consensus/Blockchain Networks and their Applications in 6G and Automation' and 'Flexible Broadband RF IC Design and Smart Front-End Systems'.
The UESTC-UoG lecture series is a unique opportunity to find synergies between UESTC and UoG and to promote research partnerships between our two institutions. Anyone from either university is welcome to attend, with the aim to reach as wide an audience as possible.
The latest event in the series brought to our attention fascinating developments in electronic engineering and communications. Dr Julien Le Kernec, Senior Lecturer at James Watt School of Engineering, hosted Professors Lei Zhang (UoG) and Yang Wang (UESTC), who shared work on future applications and uses of flexible broadband in 6G networks, and blockchains in smart front-end systems. Aftewards, there followed a lively Q&A session and discussion, which you can watch here:
Title: Wireless Consensus/blockchain Networks and its Applications in 6G and Automation
Abstract: Originally proposed as the backbone technology of Bitcoin cryptocurrency, blockchain has become a revolutionary decentralised data management framework that can transform the way in which we share information. It offers immutable, transparent, secure and auditable ledger in a trust-less distributed environment, to verify the integrity and traceability of information/assets during their life cycle. Moreover, without a central authority’s involvement, blockchain-enabled smart contracts can significantly reduce manual interventions and thus improve efficiency.
In this talk, wireless consensus/blockchain network (WCN), with different network topology and communication protocols, for various commonly used blockchains will be introduced. We will also discover the challenges of WCN, and the relationship between the communication (in terms of spectrum and power provision), and the wireless consensus/blockchain network performance (in terms of scalability, throughput and latency, and security). We will try to answer one important question, how much communication resource is needed to run a wireless blockchain network. The talk will present three exemplary use cases we are recently developed: 1), how to use blockchain to achieve privacy-preserving contact tracing APP for COVID-19; 2) how to use blockchain for 5G and beyond spectrum (and computing, power) resource management and sharing; 3), how to use distributed blockchain protocols to achieve high reliable consensus for missing critical industrial IoT and automation.
Bio: Lei Zhang is a Professor of Trustworthy Systems at the University of Glasgow. He has academia and industry combined research experience on wireless communications and networks, and distributed systems for IoT, blockchain, autonomous systems. His 20 patents are granted/filed in 30+ countries/regions. He published 3 books, and 150+ papers in peer-reviewed journals, conferences and edited books. Prof. Zhang is an associate editor of IoT Journal, IEEE Wireless Communications Letters and Digital Communications and Networks, and a guest editor of IEEE JSAC. He received the IEEE Internet of Things Journal Best Paper Award 2022, IEEE ComSoc TAOS Technical Committee Best Paper Award 2019 and IEEE ICEICT’21 Best Paper Award. Dr. Zhang is the founding Chair of IEEE Special Interest Group on Wireless Blockchain Networks in IEEE Cognitive Networks Technical Committee (TCCN). He delivered tutorials in IEEE ICC’20, IEEE PIMRC’20, IEEE Globecom’21, IEEE VTC’21 Fall, IEEE ICBC’21 and EUSIPCO’21. Dr Zhang’s research was widely covered by media including BBC.
Title : Flexible Broadband RF IC Design and Smart Front-End Systems
Abstract : Multi-band or ultra-wideband transceivers are vital for radar sensing, instrumentation, next-generation radios, etc. As a rule of thumb, bandwidth, power efficiency, noise figures, etc., of a RF circuit limit each other.The talk will focus on some recent progress of flexible broadband RF front-end IC designs. Some designs examples will be shared, which would provide possibilities on breaking through such limitations. Besides, examples of machine learning to empower RF systems will be introduced at the end of the talk.
Bio : Yong Wang received B.Eng from Harbin Institute of Technology, China, in 2010; M.Eng and Ph.D from Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, in 2012 and 2015 respectively. From 2012 to 2017, he was with Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, where he worked as a Research Associate. From 2012 to 2015, he was a joint researcher at Institute of Microelectronics (IME), A*STAR, Singapore. From 2017 to 2018, he was with Circuit Design Department at IHP, Frankfurt (Oder), where he worked as Scientist and Project Leader. He is currently a Full Professor at University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC), and a adjunct Professor at Nanhu Laboratory, Jiaxing, China. He is the Principal Investigator for research grants of over 17 million CNY. He has published more than 50 papers in conferences and journals, including ISSCC, VLSI Symp., RFIC, ESSCIRC, TMTT, TCASI, MWCL, TVLSI, etc. His current research interest includes millimeter-wave synthesizers and transceivers; broadband RFIC and MMIC components; RF machine learning and smart cognitive RF systems, etc.
First published: 21 November 2022