Date: Wednesday 18 June 2008, 13:00-14:00
Venue: EM1.27, Video Conference Room
Name: Professor Jie Zhang, Centre for Wireless Network Design (CWiND), University of Bedfordshire
Wireless communications technologies have experienced some of the fastest technological innovations in the last few decades. Broadband Radio Access Networks (RANs) such as 3G/4G cellular, WLAN (Wi-Fi) and WMAN (WiMAX) will be used to provide broadband communications and ubiquitous computing infrastructure and to form wireless mobile Internet. In the near future, a large portion of the access network will go wireless.
The rapid developments in Radio Access Technologies (RATs), coupled with the market deregulation and new business models require that a lot of new RANs (e.g., HSPA, LTE and WiMAX) to be deployed or expanded and that existing resources to be best utilized. Without proper planning, a RAN can neither be successfully deployed, nor be successfully expanded. While in operation, RANs undergo frequent re-optimization according to changing demands and new business models. It is vital as it can provide high levels of service for customers, while at the same time keeping expenditures on infrastructure to the minimum necessary.
Future wireless networks will be heterogeneous (i.e., different RATs will co-exist), and they will incorporate MIMO and cooperative communications technologies. Without advanced network optimisation tools, such networks will not be able to operate efficiently.
Hence, network planning and optimisation plays a vital role for the deployment and maintenance of wireless communications and ubiquitous computing infrastructure.
In this talk, Prof. Zhang will review the state-of-the-art of RAN planning and optimisation, and outline challenges ahead and future research directions in this field.
Jie Zhang is Professor of Wireless Communications and Networks at the Dept. of Computing and Information Systems, University of Bedfordshire (UoB), UK. He joined UoB as a Senior Lecturer in 2002, becoming Reader and Professor in 2005 and 2006 respectively.
He received his PhD degree from the Dept. of Automatic Control and Electronic Eng., East China Univ. of Sci. and Tech., Shanghai, China, in 1995.
From 1997 to 2002, he was a postdoctoral Research Fellow with E&E Eng., University College London (www.ee.ucl.ac.uk), Imperial College London (www.ic.ac.uk), the Dept. of Eng. Sci., Oxford University (www.eng.ox.ac.uk), and a Software Engineer with Aircom (www.aircom.co.uk).
He is the founder and Head of Centre for Wireless Network Design (www.beds.ac.uk/research/irac/cwind), one of the largest and leading research groups in radio network planning and optimisation in Europe.
As the Principal Investigator (Scientist-in-Charge), he is currently responsible for four EU FP6/FP7 projects worth over €2.2 million to CWiND. His main research interests include radio network planning and optimisation, wireless communications and High Performance Computing. He has some 50 publications in refereed journals and conferences.
He is an invited panelist at “3G Planning and Optimisation” panel session at the 49th IEEE Globecom (2006), and “3G Planning and Optimisation” Special Session at the 18th IEEE PIMRC (2007). He is an invited keynote speaker at ACM ICAIT 2008.
He is a member of the EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Science Research Council) Peer Review College, an expert evaluator for EU 6th Framework Program (FP6), and a reviewer for the Royal Society, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Nuffield Foundation.
He is an Associate Editor of Telecommunication Systems (a Springer journal) and is on the editorial board of International Journal of Mobile Network Design and Innovation. He is a guest editor for IEEE Wireless Communications special issue on 3G/4G/WLAN/WiMAX planning and optimization.