About me

I am a professor at the School of Electrical and Data Engineering, University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Sydney, Australia. I have a wide research interest in signal processing for wireless communications and sensing, and autonomous vehicular networks. See my university profile here.

Currently, I am leading the UTS Radio Sensing and Pattern Analysis (RASPA) laboratory, devoted to developing ubiquitous radio sensing and analytics technologies, by combining wireless signal processing and machine learning techniques. RASPA focuses on two major research areas: (1) Building ubiquitous radio sensing infrastructure using joint communication and radio/radar sensing techniques, such as the perceptive mobile network that revolutionizes current communication only mobile network to one with integrated communication and sensing; (2) Harvesting information from radio signals by combining wireless signal processing, pattern analysis, and machine learning techniques. The aim is to extract information from the received radio signals for detecting, identifying, and tracking objects and events in surrounding environment.

I have published more than 300 papers in leading international journals and conference proceedings and hold 5 patents. I have won 6 best paper awards, including the best paper award in ICC 2013, the prestigious IEEE Communication Society flagship conference. I am a recipient of CSIRO top award, CSIRO Chairman’s Medal, as a seminal contributor and the Australian Engineering Innovation Award in 2012 for exceptional research achievements in multi-gigabit wireless communications.

I have more than 15 years of working experience in industrial research organizations and has led and participated in numerous projects developing innovative techniques and concept-proof prototypes and commercial devices. Before joining UTS in 2016, I was a senior research scientist and team leader in Data61, CSIRO. I also worked as a researcher in NICTA, Australia and as a System and Hardware Engineer in ZTE Corp., China. 

I received the B. S. degree from Xi’an JiaoTong University, China, the M. Sc. degree from Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, China, and the Ph.D. degree from the Australian National University. 

• March 2023:  Mobile Network as a Ubiquitous Environmental Sensor - Collaborating with NSW government agencies and a local mobile operator, we launched a project developing innovative environmental sensing techniques and systems, using existing mobile communication signals only. This will demonstrate one of the killer applications of Perceptive Mobile Networks and ISAC technologies. 

• Dec. 2022: The book “Joint Communications and Sensing: From Fundamentals to Advanced Techniques” that I co-authored with Dr. Kai Wu and Prof. Y. Jay Guo, is published by IEEE Press. This is probably the first authored-book on JCAS/ISAC.

• April 2022: I am co-organizing the Special Issue "Integrated Sensing and Communications for 6G" in IEEE Wireless Communications Magazine. The deadline for submission is 01 June 2022.  Link

• March 2022: I delivered a keynote "Integration of Radar Sensing into Communications with Asynchronous Transceivers" in 2nd IEEE International Hybrid Symposium on Joint Communications & Sensing.  https://jcns-symposium.org/  

• Dec. 2021: Together with Prof. Jinhong Yuan (UNSW) and Prof. Yue Rong (Curtin Univ.), we won a premium grant for developing an undersea acoustic joint communication and sensing system.

• Nov 2021: Our 3-year ARC discovery project "Creating a Perceptive Mobile Network Using Joint Communication and Sensing: Laying the Foundation" formally starts.  A demonstrator based on mobile signals will be developed for outdoor survelliance and vehicle sensing.

• Nov. 2021: I delivered an invited talk "Perceptive Mobile Networks: Enabling Joint Communication and Radio Sensing in Mobile Networks" in IEEE ComSoc-SPS ISAC Webinar Series. The recorded video is available from  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fn8OPBNczI 

• Oct. 2021: Our survey paper "Enabling Joint Communication and Radar Sensing in Mobile Networks - A Survey" is accepted for publication in IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials (IF 23.7 2021)

• Sept. 2021: The first issue of ISAC-Focus, the newsletter of IEEE ComSoc ISAC-ETI, for which I am serving as the chief editor, is successfully published.

• Sept. 2021: I am co-organizing the Workshop on Integrated Sensing and Communications in IEEE ICC 2022 (Workshop Homepage); and the IEEE JSTSP Special Issue on Joint Communication and Radar Sensing for Emerging Applications, which I co-organized, have been successfully published with 15 accepted papers!

• June 2021: Delivered our IEEE ICC2021 tutorial with title of ENABLING JOINT COMMUNICATION AND RADIO SENSING IN MOBILE NETWORKS: A TUTORIAL (https://icc2021.ieee-icc.org/tutorials). 

• May 2021: Celebrate the founding of IEEE Comsoc Integrated Sensing and Communications - Emerging Technology Initiative (ISAC-ETI).  I am serving as the co-chair of the Publication Workgroup and will be responsible for the publication of ISAC magazine. If you are interested in joining the Editorial Board, please contact me.

• May 2021: We have developed two real-time demonstrators for WiFi sensing and tracking. Details are available from the Research page.

• Jan. 2021: I am co-organizing JSTSP Special Issue on Joint Communication and Radar Sensing for Emerging Applications