Current Members
Mary Ann Weitnauer (SARL Director)
Professor
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Biosktech: Mary Ann Weitnauer (formerly Mary Ann Ingram) received the B.E.E. and Ph.D. degrees from the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) in 1983 and 1989, respectively. From 1983 to 1986, she was a Research Engineer with the Georgia Tech Research Institute in Atlanta, performing studies on radar electronic countermeasure (ECM) systems. In 1986, she became a graduate research assistant with the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech, where in 1989, she became a Faculty Member and is currently Professor. She became Senior Associate Chair for the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering in August 2016.
Dr. Weinauer’s early research areas were optical communications and radar systems. In 1997, she established the Smart Antenna Research Laboratory (SARL), which emphasizes the application of multiple antennas to wireless communication systems; this includes distributed or virtual arrays, multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) architectures, smart antennas, and adaptive arrays. The SARL performs system analysis and design, channel measurement, and prototyping relating to a wide range of wireless applications, including wireless local area networks (WLANs), ad hoc networks, sensor networks, and satellite communications, with focus on the lower three layers of the network.
Muhammad Saad Zia (PhD Student)
Muhammad Saad Zia received the B.E. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the National University of Sciences and Technology, Pakistan in 2012 in 2015, respectively. From 2013 to 2016, he was working as an Assistant Manager (Technical) in an R&D organization in Pakistan. From 2016 to 2017, he was employed as an Assistant Director (Technical) in Frequency Allocation Board, Pakistan. During his tenure as an Assistant Director, Saad was involved in the spectrum planning and management for cellular and other communication services in line with the ITU regulations. Saad started his Ph.D. at Georgia Tech in 2017 and is currently working towards his thesis on millimeter-wave HetNets. Saad’s research interests include stochastic geometry-based modeling and performance analysis of cellular networks.
Edith Ghunney (PhD Student)
Prior to Georgia Tech, Edith earned a BSc. degree in Telecommunications Engineering from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana. Her research interest lies broadly on mobile and wireless communication. Specifically, she is interested in user discovery and initial access in millimeter wave communication and exploring ML/DL for inter-technology co-existence.
Sajith Mohan Chakkedath (PhD Student)
Biosketch: Sajith Mohan received his Bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Calicut, India. Prior to starting his graduate program at Georgia Tech, he worked on DSP implementation of signal processing algorithms for sonar applications in the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO), India. He is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. His research interests include cooperative communications, consensus algorithms and cross-layer designs for network time synchronization in wireless sensor networks.
Seonwoo Lee (PhD Student)
Alumni – PhD students
Dr. Qiongjie Lin
Research Topic: Physical Layer Design and Implementation of Distributed Arrays in Packet Networks
Biosketch: Qiongjie Lin received her B.S. degree in Communications Engineering from Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunication, China, in 2012. She received her M.S. and Ph.D degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Georgia Tech, in 2015 and 2017, respectively. From 2013 to 2017, she was a graduate research assistant of Prof. Mary Ann Weitnauer in the SARL. During her doctoral study, she was working on physical layer system design and implementation of distributed arrays on Software-defined Radios for a variety of packet-based wireless systems, e.g: wireless LAN, ad-hoc, and low power wide area (LWPA) networks. She is currently a senior standards engineer at Samsung Research America Inc., Mountain View, CA
Dr. Feng Wang
Research Topic: Synchronization for Single-Carrier Concurrent Cooperative Communication
Dr. Wang was Research & Development Engineer for Optical Research Institute, Wuhan Research Institute of Postage and Telecom, Wuhan, China, from 1996 – 1999. He was Research & Development Technology Director & Project Manager of Hongxin Telecommunication Technology Co., FIBERHOME Technologies Group, Wuhan, China, from January 2000 – October 2008. He joined SARL as a Graduate Research Assistant in 2010 and obtained his Ph.D. in 2017. His thesis was entitled, “Physical layer design and performance analysis for cooperative communication for wireless multi-hop network.” From 2018 to 2019, he was a Wireless Research Engineer at Collision Communications, Inc., New Hampshire. He is currently a DSP Engineer at Federated Wireless, in New Hampshire.
Dr. Abdul Javaid
Dr. Javaid was a Graduate Research Assistant at Georgia Tech from 2011 to 2016, co-advised by Profs. Omer Inan and Mary Ann Weitnauer. While in SARL, he applied machine learning and signal processing methods to the monitoring of sleep apnea patients using Ultra-Wideband Impulse Radar.
Research Topic: Multi-Sensor Signal Processing Methods for Home Monitoring of Cardiovascular and Respiratory Diseases
Dr. Van Nguyen
Dr. Alper Akanser
Research Topic: Energy-efficient Reading of Correlated Wireless Sensors
Biosketch: Alper Akanser received the B.Sc. (with Highest Honors) and M.Sc. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2004 and 2007 respectively. His thesis research included wireless communications, wireless sensor networks, correlated data fusion, and signal estimation and detection. He was previously an instructor in Digital Communications, Computer Networks and Software Engeering at Near East University, Cyprus. He was a Fulbright – Cyprus American Scholarship Program Scholar and a Golden Medal at TUBITAK Teen Math Olympics in Turkey.
He is currently with Indeed in Austin, TX.
Dr. Jian Lin
Research Topic: Medium Access Control for Cooperative Networks
Biosketch: Jian Lin received the bachelor’s degree in Information and Science Engineering from Southeast University, Nanjing, China, in 2007, and the MS degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Polytechnic Institute of New York University, NY, in 2009. He joined SARL in 2009 and became a graduate research assistant in 2010. His research interests include protocol design, cross-layer optimization and software defined radio for cooperative wireless networks.
He is currently a Member Technical Staff, IBM Security, Atlanta, GA.
Dr. Yong Jun Chang
Research Topic: Distributed Cooperative Diversity and Synchronization Techniques
Biosketch: Before he joined SARL in 2008, Yong Jun Chang worked in industry in South Korea for 7 years. He received his MS degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Georgia Tech in 2010 and he otained his Ph.D in Fall 2013. While a graduate student, his research interests were decentralized cooperative diversity techniques in energy-constrained network and Software-Defined Radio systems.
He is now CTO of Kyungwoo Systech Inc., South Korea.
Dr. Haejoon Jung
Research Topic: Experimentation and Physical Layer Modeling for Opportunistic Large Array-based Networks
Biosketch: Haejoon Jung received his B.S. degree (cum laude) from Yonsei University, South Korea, in 2008. He then came to U.S. to pursue his Ph.D. degree at Georgia Tech. Haejoon received his M.S. degree in 2010 at Georgia Tech and he joined SARL Spring 2010. While a graduate student, his research interests were on the cross layer optimization including physical, network layers and experimental study of cooperative transmission. He obtained his Ph.D in Spring 2015.
He is currently a Wireless Systems Engineer at Apple, Inc., Cupertino, CA.
Dr. Lakshmi Thanayankizil
Research Topic: Opportunistic Large Array (OLA)-Based Routing for Sensor and Adhoc Wireless Networks
Biosketch: Lakshmi Thanayankizil received her MS (2008) and BS (2004) degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology and University of Calicut respectively. Currently, she is working towards the PhD Degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering Dept. at Georgia Tech. Since 2006, she has been a Research Assistant in the Smart Antenna Research Lab at Georgia Tech, where she is working on the following projects: (1) Concurrent Cooperative Transmission-based Routing for Wireless Networks and (2) Video Transmission Over a Cooperative Route Using CCT. She has held industry positions with IBM Research Labs, and with the Indian Space Research Organization.. She was awarded the IEEE SENSORCOMM Best Paper Award in 2008 and NSF ADVANCE Fellowship for Professional Training in 2009.
Dr. Jin Woo Jung
Research Topic: Extending Lifetime of a Multi-Hop Wireless Sensor Network with Cooperative Transmission
Biosketch: Jin Woo Jung received the B.S. and M.S. degrees from the Yonsei University, South Korea, in 1999 and 2002, respectively. He joined the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), Atlanta, in 2007, and he is pursuing PhD degree since then. He is a graduate research assistant of prof. Mary Ann Weitnauer in the Smart Antenna Research Laboratory (SARL), and his research is focused on the energy-efficient communication protocols for wireless sensor networks. He has more than 4 years of industry experience for IT companies including Samsung Electronics and worked for Apple, Inc. as a summer intern in 2010.
Dr. Syed Ali Hassan
Dissertation Title: Design of Concurrent Cooperative Transmission Systems on Software-defined Radios
Biosketch: Syed Ali Hassan received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA in 2011. He received his MS Mathematics from Georgia Tech in 2011 and MS Electrical Engineering from University of Stuttgart, Germany, in 2007. He was awarded BE Electrical Engineering (highest honors) from National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), Pakistan, in 2004. His broader area of research is signal processing for communications.
Currently, he is working as an Assistant Professor at the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (SEECS), NUST, where he is heading the IPT research group, which focuses on various aspects of theoretical communications. Prior to joining SEECS, he worked as a research associate at Cisco Systems Inc., CA, USA, where he was involved with the home networking business unit in devising efficient strategies for home networking. Dr. Hassan is a member of IEEE and IEEE Communications society, author/co-author of numerous IEEE conference and journal papers and a reviewer for many IEEE journals and transactions. He has chaired several sessions in international conferences and has served as a TPC member for various conferences.
Dr. Aravind Kailas
Dissertation Title: Toward Perpetual Wireless Networks: Opportunistic Large Arrays with Transmission Thresholds and Energy Harvesting
Biosketch: Currently a Visiting Research Scientist at DOCOMO Communications Laboratories, Inc. (DOCOMO USA Labs), Aravind is exploring learning algorithms and data mining for healthcare to develop wellness-monitoring solutions for mobile handsets. His doctoral research work (as a Graduate Research Assistant in the Smart Antenna Research Laboratory (SARL), Georgia Institute of Technology) addressed the key issue of network sustainability with the design of novel, simple decentralized cooperative diversity-based protocols and intelligent exploitation of energy scavenging using hybrid energy storage systems.
Dr. Brett Walkenhorst
Dissertation Title: Achieving Near-optimal MIMO Capacity in a Rank-Deficient LOS Environment
Biosketch: Dr. Walkenhorst obtained his Ph.D. while working as a Senior and later Principal Research Engineer at Georgia Tech Research Institute, working in the fields of signal processing and wireless communications. His doctoral thesis focused on MIMO in line-of-sight environments, and methods to improve capacity of such channels. He is currently Founder and CEO of Creydos Research and Senior Staff Engineer at NSI-MI Technologies in Atlanta, Georgia. Brett is a Senior Member of IEEE.
Dr. Sudhanshu Gaur
Dissertation Title: Interference Management in MIMO Networks
Biosketch: Sudhanshu Gaur joined SARL in 2003 – his doctoral thesis focused on interference management in MIMO networks. He received his BS degree from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in 2000. He then briefly held a position with Sasken Communications and later joined Virginia Tech. for his MS degree in 2001.
He is currently a Senior Researcher at Hitachi America R&D, where he leads Hitachi’s LTE-Advanced standardization effort. His current research includes work on MIMO-DPC signal processing, interference alignment, and resource management. He is a Guest Editor for Journal of Communications (JCM).
Dr. Lu Dong
Dissertation Title: MIMO Selection and Modeling Evaluations for Indoor Wireless Environment
Biosketch: From May 2007 to May 2010, Lu was a senior electrical engineer in Linkquest Inc, San Diego, doing embeded system design and algorithm developement for the acoustic doppler current profile.
Currently, he is a senior design engineer in EdgeOne LLC, doing system design for next generation high speed underwater acoustic Modems.
Contact: ldong@ore.com
Dr. Ho Yang
Dissertation Title: Partially Adaptive Space-Time Processing
Biosketch: Ho Yang received the Ph.D. degree specializing in statistical array signal processing in December 1998. Before Georgia Tech, he received his BS and MS degrees in Electrical Engineering from Yonsei University in 1987 and 1989, respectively, and worked for ETRI until 1992. He worked for Nixxo technology, a startup company developing the GSM modem chip, until he joined Samsung in 2001.
He is currently a principal research engineer leading the design activities of the software baseband platform consisting of baseband software, processors and modem architecture design.
Contact: hoyang@samsung.com
Dr. Fatih Demirkol
Dissertation Title: Resource Allocations for Interfering MIMO Links
Biosketch: Mehmet Fatih Demirkol joined the University of Hawaii in 2003. He moved to Istanbul in 2007 and worked for the cellphone operator Turkcell. He also teaches occasionally at Istanbul Technical University. In February 2010, he began working for Avea, another a cellphone operator, doing radio network planning.
Alumni – Master’s Students
Anurag Sethi
Biosketch: Anurag Sethi received his Bachelor of Technology degree in Electronics and Communications from Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India in 2016. He obtained his MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology in 2018. He joined SARL in May 2017 as Graduate Research Assistant to Prof. Mary Ann Weitnauer and worked on Cooperative Transmission based wireless communication protocols. His research focused on programming of Software Defined Radios for development and implementation of time synchronization algorithms and scheduling of data transmission in Opportunistic Large Arrays. Anurage is a Wireless Software Engineer at Qualcomm (2019).
Vivek Agate
Research Topic: Telemetry Network (TeNt) for the Software Defined Radio testbed
Biosketch: Vivek was with SARL during the 2009 calendar year. He is currently a Software Engineer at Garmin International, Inc.
Steve William
Research Topic: OLA-based network programming for the Software Defined Radio testbed
Biosketch: Steve was with SARL during the 2009 calendar year. He is currently a graduate student at Georgia Tech.
Past Visiting Scholars
XIA Nan (Visiting Scholar)
Research Topic: Distributed Space-Frequency Coding and Particle Filters for Cooperative Transmission
Biosketch: Mr. XIA Nan is a full-time doctoral student in the School of Electronic and Information Engineering at Dalian University of Technology of China. He was a Visiting Scholar at SARL from October 2009 to October 2010.
GAO Zhen (Visiting Scholar)
Research Topic: Pre-synchronization Techniques for OFDM Cooperative Transmission
Biosketch:Zhen GAO was a Visiting Scholar in SARL from 2008 to 2010. He received his BS and MS degree in Electrical and Information Engineering from Tianjin University in 2005 and 2007, respectively. In 2007, he worked as a research assistant in the Digital Television Technology R&D Center of Tsinghai University. Now he is a PhD student joint supervised by Tianjin University and Georgia Institute of Technology. His research interests are design and implementation of synchronization algorithms for OFDM systems and OFDM-based cooperative transmission.
Last revised on February 23, 2018.