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Newsboard [Student News | Paper News | Instructor News]
Newsboard [Student News | Paper News | Instructor News]
Our magazine paper "Learning with Dynamics: Autonomous Regulation of UAV Based Communication Networks with Dynamic UAV Crew" has been accepted by IEEE Communications Magazine. Congratulations to our students Bowei and Liyuan!
-- June 25th, 2025
Undergraduates from SmartNet Lab, Chandra Siddhartha Geddam and Mohammad Hason successfully presented their Spring research work in the Undergraduate Research Conference (URC) hosted by the Office of Undergraduate Research (OUR) . The work focus on prototyping and realistic simulation of distributed multi-drone platform with onboard intelligence.
-- April 17th, 2025
Our students' Journal paper "When Learning Meets Dynamics: Distributed User Connectivity Maximization in UAV-Based Communication Networks," has been accepted by IEEE Transactions on Cognitive Communications and Networking . Congratulations!
-- Mar. 22nd, 2025
Our students' paper "Maximizing User Connectivity in AI-Enabled Multi-UAV Networks: A Distributed Strategy Generalized to Arbitrary User Distributions," has been accepted by IEEE ICC 2025. Congratulations!
-- Jan. 17th, 2025
Dr. Ran Zhang is recognized as the 2024 Exemplary Editor of IEEE Open Journal of the Communication Society (OJCOMS).
-- Dec. 20th, 2024
Our paper "Spatial Crowdsourcing-based Task Allocation for UAV-AssistedMaritime Data Collection" has been accepted by IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology (TVT).
-- Oct. 4th, 2024
Undergraduates from SmartNet Lab, Chandra Siddhartha Geddam and Mohammad Hason successfully presented their summer research work in the Summer Research Symposium hosted by the Office of Undergraduate Research (OUR) . The work focuses on distributed multi-drone platform with onboard intelligence.
-- August 2nd, 2024
Dr. Ran Zhang with fellow researchers @ IEEE International Conference on Communications (IEEE ICC) 2024.
-- June 2024
Dr. Ran Zhang with 3 undergraduate researchers, Davy Hallihan, Chandra Siddhartha Geddam, and Robert Thomas at Undergraduate Research Conference (URC) @ Pop Martin Student Center, presenting their recent project on autonomous multi-drone platform.
-- April 12th, 2024
Our paper "Spatio-temporal Coordinated Mobile Electric Vehicle Charging in Integrated Transportation and Distribution Systems" has been accepted by IEEE VTC 2024 Spring .
-- Mar. 4th, 2024
Dr. Ran Zhang has been awarded with the Faculty Research Grant of University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 2024-2025. The grant will be used to support algorithm design and hardware prototyping for distributed drone swarm management.
-- Jan. 17th, 2024
Dr. Ran Zhang attended IEEE GLOBECOM 2023, Kuala Lumper, Malaysia and had photos with his Ph.D. supervisor - Professor Xuemin (Sherman) Shen, the research fellows in the IEEE Communication Society (IEEE ComSoc), and his former master student - Saugat Tripathi.
-- December 4th-7th, 2023
Congratulations to our former alumni of SmartNet Lab, Saugat Tripathi, on receiving the Student Travel Grant of IEEE GLOBECOM 2023, which will be held in Kuala Lumper, Malaysia, Decemember 4th-8th, 2023.
-- November 2023
Starting from August 2023, Dr. Ran Zhang has formally joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNCC), as an assistant professor.
-- August 21st, 2023
Our paper "Distributed User Connectivity Maximization in UAV-Based Communication Networks " has been accepted by IEEE Globecom 2023.
-- Aug 4th, 2023
Congratulations to our graduate student Saugat Tripathi on successfully passing the Master Thesis Defense Exam! Saugat's thesis is entitled "Distributed Design on User Connectivity Maximization in UAV Based Communication Networks". His research mainly focuses on how to design distributed strategies on UAV trajectories to maximize the user connectivity under the multi-agent reinforcement learning (MA-RL) framework. The studies investigated the impact of different information sharing levels among UAVs on the learning convergence and how game theory can be involved in MA-RL to consider agents' individual benefits.
Wish Saugat a bright career ahead!
-- June 27th, 2023
Our paper "Joint Beamforming and Deployment Optimization for UAV-Assisted Maritime Monitoring Networks" has received the Best Paper Award in International Conference on Wireless Algorithms, Systems, and Applications (WASA 2022).
-- May 11th, 2023
Congratulations to our Senior Design Team Tanmay Bhatkar, Jie Feng, and Rui Yang on winning the 3rd place in the Senior Design Expo of Dept. of ECE. Their project, Building an Autonomous Multi-Drone Platform Using RoboMaster TT Drones, features an autonomous and distributed multi-drone platform where individual drones make independent yet coordinated decisions for their own movements based on the local observations from the on-board sensors and the exchanged information with other drones. The platform is also powered with functionalities of direct inter-drone communication, target recognition, obstacle avoidance, and global indoor positioning.
-- May 4th, 2023
Congratulations to our graduate students Saugat Tripathi and Mahfizur Khan on being awarded with the Graduate Summer Research Fellowship for Summer 2023.
-- March 27th, 2023
Congratulations to our team Tanmay Bhatkar, Jie Feng, Rui Yang, and Gowtham Raj (graduate student advisor) on receiving the Undergraduate Research Award (URA) on the project "Building an Autonomous Multi-Drone Platform with RoboMaster TT Drones". They will be devoted to building a distributed yet coordinated multi-drone prototype to perform group tasks such as coordinated target searching, maximum ground point coverage, bird flock imitation, etc.
-- January 20th, 2023
Dr. Ran Zhang was awarded with the Research, Scholarship, and Artistry (RSA) Grant, Miami University, on a project entitled "Towards a Distributed and Coordinated Multi-Drone Network: Algorithm Design and Prototyping". The grant aims to provide support to advance a single research project to enable high-quality research, scholarship, and artistry.
-- December 8th, 2022
Group photos of SmartNet Lab taken by DJI Mavic Air 2 from the air!! Good luck to everyone on the final exams and projects!
-- December 1st, 2022
Dr. Ran Zhang attended the IEEE Cincinnati Section meeting and gave a presentation on "UAV Communication Networks".
-- October 27th, 2022
Our paper entitled "Sum Rate Maximization in IRS-Assisted Wireless Powered Multiuser MIMO Networks with Practical Phase Shift" has been accepted by IEEE Internet of Things Journal.
-- October 9th, 2022
Our paper entitled "Deploying a Human Robot Interaction Model for Dementia Care in Federated Learning" has been accepted by the International Conference on Connected Health: Applications, Systems and Engineering Technologies (CHASE 2022).
-- September 9th, 2022
Our paper entitled "Domain Selective Two-Stage Beamforming in 3D Massive MIMO" has been accepted by the Journal of Digital Signal Processing.
-- August 25th, 2022
Dr. Ran Zhang attended the "Mini-Workshop on Intelligent Computing for Future Networks" held in BBCR lab, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, and gave a talk on "Autonomous Self-Regulation of UAV Communication Networks with Dynamic UAV Crew".
-- August 2nd, 2022
ECE undergraduate student Tanmay Bhatkar has been awarded the Internship and Research Grants from Center for Career Exploration and Success, Miami University. This grant help students offset personal costs affiliated with internship or summer research completion. Congratulations!
-- June 24th, 2022
ECE graduate student Saugat Tripathi has won the Gold Award in the student poster presentations at STLE Annual Meeting & Exhibition. Congratulations and well deserved! This is a close collaboration between SmartNet Lab (ECE) and Ye Group (MME). In the presented work, Saugat applies deep learning techniques to predict the corrosion behaviors of metal surfaces. The work achieves accurate predictions of the pitting voltages as a hyper non-linear function of the grain orientations, surface fluctuations and the pitting currents. [Miami CEC News]
-- May 16th, 2022
Our paper entitled "A Simulated Experiment to Explore Robotic Dialogue Strategies for People with Dementia" has been accepted by Journal of Rehabilitation and Assistive Technologies Engineering (JRATE).
-- May 3rd, 2022
ECE graduate student Saugat Tripathi has been awarded the Graduate Summer Research Fellowship by the Graduate School, Miami University. Congratulations!
-- April 29, 2022
ECE undergraduate capstone design team Zhihao Lin, Bowen Liu, and Yang Xu have successfully presented their project "Building a Coordinated and Distributed Multi-Drone Platform" in the Capstone Design Expo held by the College of Engineering and Computing. Congratulations.
-- April 28, 2022
Our paper entitled "Digital-Twin Enabled Range Modulation Strategy for V2V Safety Messaging Considering Human Reaction Time" has been accepted by the Workshop in VTC-2022 Spring.
-- April 27, 2022
Dr. Ran Zhang has been awarded with the NSF Engineering Research Initiative (ERI) Grant as the Principal Investigator (Grant period: 2022 - 2024), for the project "ERI: Distributed Learning in Regulation of UAV Communication Networks with Dynamic UAV Lineup". [Miami News]
-- March 29, 2022
ECE student Tanmay Bhatkar has been awarded with the Undergraduate Summer Scholar (USS), Miami University for Summer 2022. Congratulations! Tanmay will work with Dr. Ran Zhang on a project "Building A Multi-UAV Hardware Platform With Distributed and Coordinated Autonomy Intelligence".
-- March 16, 2022
Dr. Ran Zhang has been elevated to IEEE Senior Member grade.
-- March 4, 2022
Our paper entitled “A Deep Reinforcement Learning based Approach for NOMA-based Random Access Network with Truncated Channel Inversion Power Control” has been accepted to ICC 2022!
-- Jan. 18, 2022
Our paper entitled "Multi-Armed Bandits Learning for Task Offloading in Maritime Edge Intelligence Networks" has been accepted for publication in the journal of IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology.
-- Dec. 6, 2021
Our paper entitled "Responsive Regulation of Dynamic UAV Communication Networks Based on Deep Reinforcement Learning" has been accepted as a book chapter in Broadband Communications, Computing and Control for Ubiquitous Intelligence, Wireless Network Book Series, Springer.
-- Oct. 30, 2021
Our paper entitled "Learning-Based Strategy Design for Robot-Assisted Reminiscence Therapy Based on a Developed Model for People with Dementia" which has been accepted in the 13th International Conference on Social Robotics (ICSR 2021), has been nominated as finalist for the Best Student Award.
-- Oct. 21, 2021
Dr. Ran Zhang has been awarded with the Faculty Enhancement Fund of Miami University as the Principal Investigator.
-- Sept. 24, 2021
Dr. Ran Zhang has received the Regionally Aligned Priorities in Delivering Skills (RAPIDS) Grant from Ohio Department of Higher Education (ODHE), as a key personnel, for the project "Post-Secondary Workforce Development for Increased Use of Robotics, Additive Manufacturing, and Augmented/Virtual Reality in the Healthcare and Advanced Manufacturing Industries".
-- Aug. 18, 2021
Our paper entitled "Performance Study of Cybertwin-Assisted Random Access NOMA" has been accepted for publication in the IEEE Internet of Things Journal.
-- July 14, 2021
CSE student Aaron Nguyen has been awarded with the Undergraduate Summer Scholar (USS), Miami University for Summer 2021. Congratulations! Aaron will work with Dr. Ran Zhang on a project "Joint Trajectory and charging control for sustainable UAV-based Communication Networks".
-- April 12, 2021
Our paper entitled "Learning to be Proactive: Self-Regulation of UAV Based Networks with UAV and User Dynamics" has been accepted for publication in the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.
-- Feb. 8, 2021
Our paper entitled "Performance Study of Random Access NOMA with Truncated Channel Inversion Power Control" has been accepted for presentation in ICC 2021.
-- Jan. 24, 2021
Dr. Ran Zhang has received the CFR Faculty Research Grant Award of Miami University (Award period: 2021 - 2022) as the Principal Investigator, for the project "Distributed Self-Regulation of UAV-Based Communication Networks with Dynamic UAV Lineup".
-- Dec. 11, 2020
Our paper entitled "SREC: Proactive Self-Remedy of Energy-Constrained UAV-Based Networks via Deep Reinforcement Learning" has been accepted for presentation in IEEE GLOBECOM 2020.
-- Aug. 16, 2020
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