IEEE ComSoc TCCN Seminar by Prof. Zhu Han

Speaker: Zhu Han, ECE Department and CS Department, University of Houston

Abstract: Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) stands out as a novel approach to improve the communication and sensing in the future wireless networks. It is capable to actively shape the uncontrollable wireless environments into a desirable form via flexible phase shift reconfiguration without extra hardware or power costs. To better exploit the potential of such a technique, it is essential to develop distributed configuration, to design new protocols, to explore and implement suitable application scenarios, as well as to perform intelligent control and orchestration. First we provide a general introduction of the intelligent meta-surface along with the state-of-the-art research in different areas. Then we introduce the unique features of intelligent meta-surface which enlighten its broad applications to communication and sensing, in a comprehensive way. Related design, analysis, optimization, and signal processing techniques will be presented. Finally, we explore typical meta-surface applications and discuss implementation issues with an emphasis on high-resolution smart RF sensing. Formalized analysis of several up-to-date challenges and technical details on system design will be provided for different applications.

Bio: Zhu Han received the B.S. degree in electronic engineering from Tsinghua University, in 1997, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park, in 1999 and 2003, respectively. From 2000 to 2002, he was an R&D Engineer of JDSU, Germantown, Maryland. From 2003 to 2006, he was a Research Associate at the University of Maryland. From 2006 to 2008, he was an assistant professor in Boise State University, Idaho. Currently, he is a John and Rebecca Moores Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering Department as well as Computer Science Department at University of Houston, Texas. His research interests include security, wireless resource allocation and management, wireless communication and networking, game theory, and wireless multimedia. Dr. Han is an NSF CAREER award recipient 2010. Dr. Han has several IEEE conference best paper awards, and winner of 2011 IEEE Fred W. Ellersick Prize, 2015 EURASIP Best Paper Award for the Journal on Advances in Signal Processing and 2016 IEEE Leonard G. Abraham Prize in the field of Communication Systems (Best Paper Award for IEEE Journal on Selected Areas on Communications). Dr. Han is the winner 2021 IEEE Kiyo Tomiyasu Award. He has been IEEE fellow since 2014, AAAS fellow since 2020 and IEEE Distinguished Lecturer from 2015 to 2018. Dr. Han is 1% highly cited researcher according to Web of Science since 2017.