Communications

Wireless and optical communications.

We conduct advanced research in wireless and optical communications from the network layer down to the physical layer, including highly reliable machine-to-machine wireless networks, routing and scheduling for IoT networks, massive MIMO for 5G systems, flexible wideband RF front-end architectures, advanced error correction coding, and novel modulation and transmission techniques with adaptive signal processing for coherent fiber-optic and free-space optical communications.

  • Researchers

  • Awards

    •  AWARD    MERL’s Paper on Wi-Fi Sensing Earns Top 3% Paper Recognition at ICASSP 2023, Selected as a Best Student Paper Award Finalist
      Date: June 9, 2023
      Awarded to: Cristian J. Vaca-Rubio, Pu Wang, Toshiaki Koike-Akino, Ye Wang, Petros Boufounos and Petar Popovski
      MERL Contacts: Petros T. Boufounos; Toshiaki Koike-Akino; Pu (Perry) Wang; Ye Wang
      Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Communications, Computational Sensing, Dynamical Systems, Machine Learning, Signal Processing
      Brief
      • A MERL Paper on Wi-Fi sensing was recognized as a Top 3% Paper among all 2709 accepted papers at the 2023 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP 2023). Co-authored by Cristian Vaca-Rubio and Petar Popovski from Aalborg University, Denmark, and MERL researchers Pu Wang, Toshiaki Koike-Akino, Ye Wang, and Petros Boufounos, the paper "MmWave Wi-Fi Trajectory Estimation with Continous-Time Neural Dynamic Learning" was also a Best Student Paper Award finalist.

        Performed during Cristian’s stay at MERL first as a visiting Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow and then as a full-time intern in 2022, this work capitalizes on standards-compliant Wi-Fi signals to perform indoor localization and sensing. The paper uses a neural dynamic learning framework to address technical issues such as low sampling rate and irregular sampling intervals.

        ICASSP, a flagship conference of the IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS), was hosted on the Greek island of Rhodes from June 04 to June 10, 2023. ICASSP 2023 marked the largest ICASSP in history, boasting over 4000 participants and 6128 submitted papers, out of which 2709 were accepted.
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    •  AWARD    Best Paper Award of 2022 IPSJ Transactions on Consumer Devices & Systems
      Date: March 27, 2023
      Awarded to: Yukimasa Nagai, Takenori Sumi, Jianlin Guo, Philip Orlik, Hiroshi Mineno
      MERL Contacts: Jianlin Guo; Philip V. Orlik; Kieran Parsons
      Research Areas: Communications, Signal Processing
      Brief
      • MELCO/MERL research paper “IEEE 802.19.3 Standardization for Coexistence of IEEE 802.11ah and IEEE 802.15.4g Systems in Sub-1GHz Frequency Bands” has won the Best Paper Award of the 2022 IPSJ Transactions on Consumer Devices and Systems. The Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ) award was established in 1970 and is conferred on the authors of particularly excellent papers, which are published in the IPSJ journals and transactions. Our paper was published by the IPSJ Transaction on Consumer Device and System Vol. 29 in 2021 and authors are Yukimasa Nagai, Takenori Sumi, Jianlin Guo, Philip Orlik and Hiroshi Mineno.
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    •  AWARD    MERL receives 33rd ARIB Radio Achievement Award
      Date: June 28, 2022
      Awarded to: Yukimasa Nagai, Jianlin Guo, Shoichi Kitazawa, Kazuto Yano.
      MERL Contacts: Jianlin Guo; Philip V. Orlik
      Research Areas: Communications, Electric Systems
      Brief
      • Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (Yukimasa Nagai), MERL (Jianlin Guo), Muroran Institute of Technology (Shoichi Kitazawa) and Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (Kazuto Yano) jointly won the 33rd ARIB Radio Achievement Award with "IEEE 802.19.3 Standardization and Development for Sub-1 GHz Wireless Frequency Coexistence". The ARIB is an organization similar to the FCC in the U.S. It is responsible for setting standards for all radio communications in Japan at the request of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC). In order to promote the effective use of radio waves, the "Radio Achievement Award" is given annually to an individual or organization that has made a special achievement in the effective use of radio waves. This award is the most prestigious award in the field of wireless communications in Japan.
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  • News & Events

    •  NEWS    MERL Researchers give a Tutorial Talk on Quantum Machine Learning for Sensing and Communications at IEEE VCC
      Date: November 28, 2023 - November 30, 2023
      Where: Virtual
      MERL Contacts: Toshiaki Koike-Akino; Pu (Perry) Wang
      Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Communications, Computational Sensing, Machine Learning, Signal Processing
      Brief
      • On November 28, 2023, MERL researchers Toshiaki Koike-Akino and Pu (Perry) Wang will give a 3-hour tutorial presentation at the first IEEE Virtual Conference on Communications (VCC). The talk, titled "Post-Deep Learning Era: Emerging Quantum Machine Learning for Sensing and Communications," addresses recent trends, challenges, and advances in sensing and communications. P. Wang presents use cases, industry trends, signal processing, and deep learning for Wi-Fi integrated sensing and communications (ISAC), while T. Koike-Akino discusses the future of deep learning, giving a comprehensive overview of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, natural computing, emerging quantum AI, and their diverse applications. The tutorial is conducted virtually.

        IEEE VCC is a new fully virtual conference launched from the IEEE Communications Society, gathering researchers from academia and industry who are unable to travel but wish to present their recent scientific results and engage in conducive interactive discussions with fellow researchers working in their fields. It is designed to resolve potential hardship such as pandemic restrictions, visa issues, travel problems, or financial difficulties.
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    •  NEWS    Keynote address given by Philip Orlik at 9th annual IEEE Smartcomp conference
      Date: June 26, 2023
      Where: International Conference on Smart Computing (SMARTCOMP), Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee
      MERL Contact: Philip V. Orlik
      Research Areas: Communications, Dynamical Systems, Machine Learning, Multi-Physical Modeling, Signal Processing
      Brief
      • VP & Research Director, Philip Orlik, gave a keynote titled, "Smart Technologies for Smarter Buildings" at the 9th edition of the IEEE International Conference on Smart Computing (SMARTCOMP) focusing on some of the research challenges and opportunities that arise as we seek to achieve net-zero emissions in Smart building environments.

        SMARTCOMP is the premier conference on smart computing. Smart computing is a multidisciplinary domain based on the synergistic influence of advances in sensor-based technologies, Internet of Things, cyber-physical systems, edge computing, big data analytics, machine learning, cognitive computing, and artificial intelligence.
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  • Research Highlights

  • Internships

    • ST2082: Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC)

      The Computational Sensing team at MERL is seeking a highly motivated intern to conduct fundamental research in integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) with a focus on signal processing, model-based learning, and optimization. Expertise in joint waveform/sequence optimization, integrated ISAC precoder/combiner design, model-based learning for ISAC, and downlink/uplink/active sensing under timing and frequency offsets is highly desired. Familiarity with IEEE 802.11 (ac/ax/ad/ay) standards is a plus but not required. The intern will collaborate with a small group of MERL researchers to develop novel algorithms, design experiments using MERL in-house testbed, and prepare results for publication. The expected duration of the internship is 3 months with a flexible start date.


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  • Recent Publications

    •  Fujihashi, T., Kato, S., Koike-Akino, T., "Implicit Neural Representation for Low-Overhead Graph-Based Holographic-Type Communications", IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP), April 2024.
      BibTeX TR2024-022 PDF
      • @inproceedings{Fujihashi2024apr,
      • author = {Fujihashi, Takuya and Kato, Sorachi and Koike-Akino, Toshiaki},
      • title = {Implicit Neural Representation for Low-Overhead Graph-Based Holographic-Type Communications},
      • booktitle = {IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP)},
      • year = 2024,
      • month = apr,
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2024-022}
      • }
    •  Kato, S., Wang, P., Koike-Akino, T., Fujihashi, T., Mansour, H., Boufounos, P.T., "Object Trajectory Estimation with Multi-Band Wi-Fi Neural Dynamic Fusion", IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP), March 2024.
      BibTeX TR2024-019 PDF
      • @inproceedings{Kato2024mar,
      • author = {Kato, Sorachi and Wang, Pu and Koike-Akino, Toshiaki and Fujihashi, Takuya and Mansour, Hassan and Boufounos, Petros T.},
      • title = {Object Trajectory Estimation with Multi-Band Wi-Fi Neural Dynamic Fusion},
      • booktitle = {IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP)},
      • year = 2024,
      • month = mar,
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2024-019}
      • }
    •  Wang, P., Boufounos, P.T., "Monostatic DMG Passive Sensing with Hypothesis Testing", IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP), March 2024.
      BibTeX TR2024-020 PDF
      • @inproceedings{Wang2024mar,
      • author = {Wang, Pu and Boufounos, Petros T.},
      • title = {Monostatic DMG Passive Sensing with Hypothesis Testing},
      • booktitle = {IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP)},
      • year = 2024,
      • month = mar,
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2024-020}
      • }
    •  Fujihashi, T., Koike-Akino, T., "Graph-Based EEG Signal Compression for Human-Machine Interaction", IEEE Access, March 2024.
      BibTeX TR2024-015 PDF
      • @article{Fujihashi2024mar,
      • author = {Fujihashi, Takuya and Koike-Akino, Toshiaki},
      • title = {Graph-Based EEG Signal Compression for Human-Machine Interaction},
      • journal = {IEEE Access},
      • year = 2024,
      • month = mar,
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2024-015}
      • }
    •  Kuwabara, A., Osako Yutaro, , Kato, S., Fujihashi, T., Koike-Akino, T., Watanabe, T., "Implicit Neural Representation-based Hybrid Digital-Analog Image Delivery", IEEE International Conference on Computing, Networking and Communications (ICNC), February 2024.
      BibTeX TR2024-007 PDF
      • @inproceedings{Kuwabara2024feb,
      • author = {Kuwabara,Akihiro and Osako Yutaro and Kato, Sorachi and Fujihashi, Takuya and Koike-Akino, Toshiaki and Watanabe, Takashi},
      • title = {Implicit Neural Representation-based Hybrid Digital-Analog Image Delivery},
      • booktitle = {IEEE International Conference on Computing, Networking and Communications (ICNC)},
      • year = 2024,
      • month = feb,
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2024-007}
      • }
    •  Nuti, P., Kim, K.J., Wang, P., Koike-Akino, T., Parsons, K., "RIS-Assisted Joint Preamble Detection and Localization", IEEE International Workshop on Computational Advances in Multi-Sensor Adaptive Processing (CAMSAP), DOI: 10.1109/​CAMSAP58249.2023.10403493, December 2023.
      BibTeX TR2023-142 PDF
      • @inproceedings{Nuti2023dec,
      • author = {Nuti, Pooja and Kim, Kyeong Jin and Wang, Pu and Koike-Akino, Toshiaki and Parsons, Kieran},
      • title = {RIS-Assisted Joint Preamble Detection and Localization},
      • booktitle = {IEEE International Workshop on Computational Advances in Multi-Sensor Adaptive Processing (CAMSAP)},
      • year = 2023,
      • month = dec,
      • doi = {10.1109/CAMSAP58249.2023.10403493},
      • isbn = {979-8-3503-4453-0},
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2023-142}
      • }
    •  Fujihashi, T., Koike-Akino, T., Watanabe, T., "Rateless Deep Graph Joint Source Channel Coding for Holographic-Type Communication", IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM), December 2023.
      BibTeX TR2023-139 PDF
      • @inproceedings{Fujihashi2023dec,
      • author = {Fujihashi, Takuya and Koike-Akino, Toshiaki and Watanabe, Takashi},
      • title = {Rateless Deep Graph Joint Source Channel Coding for Holographic-Type Communication},
      • booktitle = {IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM)},
      • year = 2023,
      • month = dec,
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2023-139}
      • }
    •  Guo, J., Sumi, T., Kawashima, Y., Parsons, K., Nagai, Y., Orlik, P.V., "Minimizing Route Overlap for Priority Data Delivery in Next Generation IoT Networks", IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM), December 2023.
      BibTeX TR2023-140 PDF
      • @inproceedings{Guo2023dec,
      • author = {Guo, Jianlin and Sumi, Takenori and Kawashima, Yuki and Parsons, Kieran and Nagai, Yukimasa and Orlik, Philip V.},
      • title = {Minimizing Route Overlap for Priority Data Delivery in Next Generation IoT Networks},
      • booktitle = {IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM)},
      • year = 2023,
      • month = dec,
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2023-140}
      • }
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