Title: Printable Smart Surfaces for IoT Communication and Sensing

Time and Date: November 17, 2021, at 9:00 am ET

Presenter:  Professor  Xinyu Zhang, University of California San Diego, USA

Venue: https://auburn.zoom.us/j/9172542706?pwd=YVBYekVtR3lpTGRaclpvZm11ZDV3Zz09 (Password: 4Zn7xZ)

Abstract: Embedding sensing and communication capabilities seamlessly into ambient environment is a long-term aspiration of the Internet of Things (IoT). Smart surfaces, with conformable shape, thin form factors, and ease of fabrication, can potentially materialize the vision of intelligent and connected things. In this talk, I will present the design of passive, batteryless, chipless smart surfaces that facilitate IoT communication and sensing.  These surfaces can be fabricated through ordinary inkjet printing, PCB printing, or 3D printing.  They can help sensing the interaction between human users and everyday objects, thus enabling challenging use cases such as experience sampling and mobile VR interaction.  In addition, they can communicate with ordinary radio/radar devices, and boost the quality of existing wireless links. Realizing such capabilities involves non-trivial challenges, especially since the surfaces are fully passive and do not possess the computing/communication components in typical IoT devices.  This talk will introduce a set of solutions that span the areas of electromagnetics, wireless communications, and application-specific signal processing.  

Bio: Xinyu Zhang is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California San Diego. Prior to joining UC San Diego in 2017, he was an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Michigan in 2012. His research interest lies in wireless systems and ubiquitous computing, and more specifically in (i) designing next-generation wireless architectures and physical-layer informed protocols;  (ii) designing ubiquitous systems that leverage wireless signals to sense micro-locations and micro-activities at near-vision precision.  His research work has been regularly published in top conferences in these areas, especially ACM MobiCom, MobiSys, USENIX NSDI, and IEEE INFOCOM. He is the recipient of two ACM MobiCom Best Paper Awards (2011 and 2020), Communications of the ACM Research Highlight (2018), ACM SIGMOBILE Research Highlight (2018), NSF CAREER Award (2014), Google Research Award (2017, 2018, 2020), and Sony Research Award (2018, 2020).  He served as the TPC chair for ACM MobiCom 2019, IEEE SECON 2017, co-chair of NSF millimeter-wave research coordination network, and Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing from 2017 to 2020.