Eugene Chai

UAV 5G Connectivity Infrastructure

I started and led this initiative at NEC to develop unmanned aerial vehicles that have the potential to transform that way we build rapidly deployable, self-configurable, and highly-resilient networking infrastructure. My research in this space enables new capabilities in LTE communications infrastructure provided by a multi-UAV network, and in collaborative UAV sensing applications built upon this platform. I developed a multi-UAV demonstrator with mmWave UAV-to-UAV mesh network, along with UAV-mounted LTE eNodeBs and Evolved Packet Core (EPC) controllers to highlight the true capabilities of this new UAV infrastructure.

Innovations in mobile computing, autonomous flight control, miniturization of LTE radio and control planes are all necessary to realize this prototype. This initiative has strong interest from the industry and goverments of U.S. and Japan.

Selected Publications

SkyHaul: An Autonomous Gigabit Network Fabric in the Sky. Ramanujan Sheshadri, Eugene Chai, Karthikeyan Sundaresan and Sampath Rangarajan, ACM MobiHoc 2021.

ARES: Accurate, Autonomous, Near Real-time 3D Reconstruction using Drones. Fawad Ahmad, Christina Shin, Eugene Chai, Karthik Sundaresan, Ramesh Govindan, arXiv preprint arXiv:2104.08634, 2021

SkyHaul: An Autonomous Gigabit Network Fabric in the Sky. Ramanujan Sheshadri, Eugene Chai, Karthikeyan Sundaresan and Sampath Rangarajan, arXiv preprint arXiv:2006.11307, 2020.

*Best Paper Award* SkyCore: Moving Core to the Edge for Untethered and Reliable UAV-based LTE Networks. Mehrdad Moradi, Karthikeyan Sundaresan, Eugene Chai, Sampath Rangarajan, and Z. Morley Mao. ACM MobiCom 2018.

SkyRAN: A self-organizing LTE RAN in the sky. Ayon Chakraborty, Eugene Chai, Karthikeyan Sundaresan, Amir Khojastepour, and Sampath Rangarajan. ACM CoNEXT 2018.

SkyLiTE: End-to-End Design of Low-Altitude UAV Networks for Providing LTE Connectivity. Karthikeyan Sundaresan, Eugene Chai, Ayon Chakraborty, Sampath Rangarajan, arXiv preprint arXiv:1802.06042, 2018

5G Sensing and Applications

Low-power, low cost, embedded sensors offer an approach for privacy-focused, invisible, ubiquitous sensing of the environment.. My research in this space reveals opportunities for uniquely designed RF tags, along with commodity RF and LiDAR sensors to understand our physical space and improve the performance of 5G communications networks.

Selected Publications

SpaceBeam: Lidar-driven one-shot mmwave beam management. Timothy Woodford, Xinyu Zhang, Eugene Chai, Karthikeyan Sundaresan, and Mohammad A Khojastepour. ACM MobiSys 2021

Redefining passive in backscattering with commodity devices. Mohammad Rostami, Karthik Sundaresan, Eugene Chai, Sampath Rangarajan, and Deepak Ganesan. ACM MobiCom 2020.

RFGo: A seamless self-checkout system for apparel stores using RFID. Carlos Bocanegra, Mohammad A. (Amir) Khojastepour, Mustafa Y. Arslan, Eugene Chai, Sampath Rangarajan, and Kaushik R. Chowdhury. ACM MobiCom 2020.

RIO: A Pervasive RFID-based Touch Gesture Interface. Swadhin Pradhan, Eugene Chai, Karthikeyan Sundaresan, Lili Qiu, Mohammad A. Khojastepour, and Sampath Rangarajan. ACM MobiCom 2017.

Konark: A RFID based System for Enhancing In-store Shopping Experience. Swadhin Pradhan, Eugene Chai, Karthik Sundaresan, Sampath Rangarajan, and Lili Qiu. ACM Workshop on Physical Analytics 2017.

5G Radio Access Networks

Radio Access Networks (RAN) are the most critical, and expensive, component of 4G/5G network infrastructure. My RAN research focuses on increasing efficiency of high-density network performance, and co-existence of 4G/5G infrastructure with a myriad of next-generation wireless services operating over the same communication channels.

Selected Publications

ELI: Empowering LTE with Interference Awareness in Unlicensed Spectrum. Ramanujan K. Sheshadri, Karthikeyan Sundaresan, Eugene Chai and Dimitrios Koutsonikolas, IEEE ICNP 2018.

BLU: Blue-printing Interference for Robust LTE Access in Unlicensed Spectrum. Ramanujan K. Sheshadri, Karthikeyan Sundaresan, Eugene Chai, Amir Khojastepour, Sampath Rangarajan, and Dimitrios Koutsonikolas. ACM CoNEXT 2017.

LTE in unlicensed spectrum: are we there yet? Eugene Chai, Karthik Sundaresan, Mohammad A. Khojastepour, and Sampath Rangarajan. ACM MobiCom 2016.

Hekaton: Efficient and Practical Large-Scale MIMO. Xiufeng Xie, Eugene Chai, Xinyu Zhang, Karthikeyan Sundaresan, Amir Khojastepour, and Sampath Rangarajan. ACM MobiCom 2015.

Full-duplex without strings: Enabling full-duplex with half-duplex clients. Karthikeyan Sundaresan, Mohammad Khojastepour, Eugene Chai, and Sampath Rangarajan. ACM MobiCom 2014.