SAN FRANCISCO, CA, April 30, 2019 – The Marconi Society, dedicated to furthering scientific achievements in communications and the Internet, will honor Min-Yu Huang, a PhD candidate at Georgia Tech, with a 2019 Marconi Society Paul Baran Young Scholar Award for his work to enable future ultra-reliable low-latency communications over 5G and beyond wireless networks. Huang is the first Georgia Tech student to be honored with this prestigious award.

Huang’s research focuses on innovative system architectures that combine mathematical, physical and IC engineering approaches to overcome many inherent challenges for future communications and achieve state-of-the-art performance for emerging low-latency applications. These include commercial uses like virtual reality, augmented reality, machine-type or vehicle-to-vehicle communications and defense uses, such as fast-moving drone radar/sensing and emergency services.

“Future networks are currently being developed to handle a wide range of new use cases. They require extreme mobile broadband links and energy-efficient massive machine-type communications. In addition, one important emerging area is ultra-reliable communication with guaranteed extremely low latencies, which is well beyond what current wireless technologies can provide,” says Huang, who is a member of the Georgia Tech Electronics and Micro-System Lab (GEMS).

“We believe these applications will stimulate the next-generation wireless communication research, and we have been building the related topics as a major research theme in my groups. New ideas are leveraged from every part of our connected world, from fiber optic communications to machine learning, 5G and information theory,” says Huang’s PhD advisor, Professor Hua Wang of Georgia Tech’s School of ECE.

Beamforming, a signal processing technique used in sensor arrays for directional signal transmission or reception, is at the heart of Huang’s work. His architectures focus on dynamic beam-steering and tracking for unknown desired signals, rapid spatial notching for multiple unknown blockers, full-field of view (FoV) coverage, broadband operation, extreme data rates, instantaneous wideband image rejection, and rapid response time – simultaneously. These capabilities will enable future ultra-low-latency MIMO systems and fiber-wireless networks.

“I was most intrigued by Min-Yu’s work in R/F/mm-Wave beamforming that can accurately adapt beam pointing and pattern nulls in under 1 microsecond,” says Dr. Mary Ann Weitnauer, Professor and Senior Associate Chair at Georgia Tech’s School of ECE. “mmWave beamforming is a central feature of 5G and beyond networks, affording enormous bandwidth and ultra-low latency in wireless communication, thus enabling advances in virtual reality, augmented reality, robotics and more. The response time of Min-Yu’s system is amazingly fast and orders of magnitude faster than the existing state-of-the-art communication systems.”

“I am deeply impressed by Min-Yu’s ability to master new techniques and propose a first-ever architecture on microwave/mm-Wave IC transceiver systems. We formed a strong interdisciplinary team based on his solid-state circuits and mm-Wave system knowledge and have further broadened the research scope to integrated fiber wireless access networks. In this collaboration, I observed that Min-Yu can quickly initiate a brain-storming technical discussion to identify problems and provide solutions by actively sharing his experience and knowledge and proactively interacting with my PhD students to enhance the big picture. I also witnessed Min-Yu’s ability to foster good team chemistry when he communicates with team members,” says Dr. Gee-Kung Chang, Georgia Research Alliance and Byers Eminent Scholar Chair Professor and Director of Georgia Tech Center for Fiber-Wireless Integration and Networking.

“Min-Yu joined my GEMS research group at Georgia Tech in fall 2014. I was very impressed by his motivation and enthusiasm to pursue research on future communication circuits and systems. His Ph.D. research focuses on energy-efficient and dynamic broadband retro-directive transceiver array systems and he has won several highly prestigious IEEE student honors and best student paper awards,” says Wang.“In addition to his ground-breaking research, Min-Yu has demonstrated dedicated service and commitment to our IEEE community and beyond. He has been actively mentoring and supporting other junior graduate students and undergraduate students at Georgia Tech. He also led multiple summer research lab tours for local high school students.”

Huang’s upcoming work will focus on further enhancing mmWave link budgets with full-space autonomous beam-forming coverage, including a large-scale 2D Full-FoV transciever array. “This will enable many future applications such as high-speed mmWave communication in dynamic and crowded environments, 5G fiber-wireless networks, and Internet-of-Things (IoT) links,” Huang tells us. “This technology can potentially revolutionize next-generation mmWave communication, sensing, and optical-fiber wireless communication for 5G, as well as future 6G. The autonomous beam-forming and low-latency aspects of Min Yu’s work will be an enabling technology for the ‘Tactile Internet’ that can remotely access, perceive, manipulate, or control real or virtual objects in real time,” says Dr. Wang.

Huang received his BS degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, ranking first in his class, from National Tsing Hua University Taiwan in 2013 and is the first Taiwanese researcher to be honored with the Marconi Society Young Scholar award.

He has authored and co-authored 20+ peer-reviewed conference and journal publications, including five papers at the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference, the most prestigious conference in the field of integrated circuits and systems. He has won several research and academic awards including the 2019 IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society Pre-doctoral Achievement Award, the 2018 IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society Graduate Fellowship, the 2017 Analog Devices Inc. Outstanding Student Designer Award, and the 2016 IEEE RFIC Best Student Paper Award.

“We are seeing more and more Young Scholars working at the intersection of various disciplines to solve problems in next-generation communications,” says Dr. Vinton Cerf, Chairman of the Marconi Society. “Min-Yu’s work, combining principles from fiber optics, machine learning, 5G and information theory is a prime example of how traditional discipline barriers are coming down to build tomorrow’s networks.”

Huang says, “It is my great honor to be part of the Marconi Society and build connections with many outstanding and professional scientists and scholars. It will encourage me to pursue cutting-edge research and to work with other Young Scholars to make the world a better place. I am grateful for my advisor, Dr. Hua Wang, for his mentoring, inspiration, and unwavering support throughout my PhD, which allows me to turn our ideas into reality. Most importantly, I would like to thank my family for their unconditional love through my entire life.”

Young Scholar candidates are nominated by their academic advisors. Winners are selected by an international panel comprised of engineers from leading universities and companies and receive a $5000 prize plus expenses to attend the annual awards event. Two other Young Scholars were also selected this year.

All will receive their awards on May 17th in California, at the same event where cryptographers Taher Elgamal and Paul Kocher, key contributors to Internet security, will be honored with the $100,000 Marconi Prize.

About the Marconi Society

Established in 1974 by the daughter of Guglielmo Marconi, the Nobel Laureate who invented radio, the Marconi Society promotes awareness of key technology and policy issues in telecommunications and the Internet and recognizes significant individual achievements through the Marconi Prize and Young Scholar Awards. More information may be found at www.marconisociety.org. Follow: LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.