Auburn Engineering research duo win Best Paper Award for work on data freshness

Published: Apr 20, 2021 4:55 PM

By Chris Anthony

An Auburn Engineering faculty member and a recent graduate have been awarded the 2021 Best Paper Award from the Journal of Communications and Networks.

Yin Sun, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, and Benjamin Cyr, ’17 electrical engineering, received the award for their paper titled “Sampling for Data Freshness Optimization: Non-linear Age Functions.”

In the paper, the authors study how to take samples at a data source for improving the freshness of received data samples at a remote receiver. The two researchers use non-linear functions of the age of information to measure data freshness.

“Yin and his research group are leading scholars in data freshness and the Age of Information concept,” said Mark Nelms, chair of electrical and computer engineering. “We are proud of their work in this rapidly evolving area of research and the credit their scholarship has brought to Auburn University. This award is a testament to their outstanding work in this area.”

An Auburn Engineering faculty member since 2017, Sun has research interests that include Age of Information, networking, robotic control, information theory and machine learning. He recently co-authored a book titled “Age of Information: A New Metric for Information Freshness" with a research group from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

After graduating from Auburn, Cyr began his graduate studies at the University of Michigan, where he is currently pursuing a doctorate in computer science and researching the security of sensors in cyber-physical systems.

The Journal of Communications and Networks is a publication of the Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences that is co-sponsored by the IEEE Communications Society. The journal is committed to publishing high-quality papers that advance the state-of-the-art and practical applications of communications and information networks.

Media Contact: Chris Anthony, chris.anthony@auburn.edu, 334.844.3447
Yin Sun (left) and Benjamin Cyr

Yin Sun (left) and Benjamin Cyr

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