Professor in wireless engineering wins Best Paper runner-up by IEEE Internet of Things Journal

Published: Sep 26, 2022 1:15 PM

By Virginia Speirs

Xiaowen Gong, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, along with four collaborators, received a Best Paper Runner-up Award from the IEEE Internet of Things Journal.

The IoT Journal is ranked No. 6 among all journals in Telecommunications by the impact factor. The paper is titled “When Deep Reinforcement Learning Meets Federated Learning: Intelligent Multitimescale Resource Management for Multiaccess Edge Computing in 5G Ultradense Network.”

Multi-access edge computing is a key technology that enables 5G and the Internet of Things, which have a wide range of applications such as connected autonomous vehicles, collaborative robots, smart manufacturing and smart agriculture, according to Gong. By providing substantial computing capabilities at the edge of wireless cellular networks, MEC can greatly reduce service latency as well as network traffic. To fully realize the potential of MEC in 5G networks, the  paper proposed a novel approach that blends deep reinforcement learning with federated learning, to perform efficient edge resource allocation and computation offloading jointly in a real-time manner for MEC.

“It’s great honor and pleasure for us to receive this award,” Gong said. “It’s recognition of our work on cutting-edge wireless research at Auburn’s Wireless Engineering Research and Education Center, in collaboration with researchers at Sun Yat-Sen University in China. It’s also great inspiration for my future work.”

Contributors to the paper include four professors from Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China. Shuai Yu, postdoctoral research fellow with the School of Data and Computer Science; Xu Chen, full professor and the vice director of the National and Local Joint Engineering Laboratory of Digital Home Interactive Applications; Zhi Zhou, associate professor with the School of Data and Computer Science; and Di Wu, professor and the Associate Dean of the School of Data and Computer Science.

This award will be presented during the Awards Ceremony at IEEE SENSORS 2022 in Dallas, Texas, on Wednesday, November 2. 

Gong’s general research interests are wireless networks and their applications. One of his major research directions is machine learning and artificial intelligence in wireless networks.

“This work is a great example of how machine learning and artificial intelligence can be applied to improve wireless networks and their applications,” Gong said. “The research findings in this paper have the potential to better support many emerging computation-intensive and delay-sensitive applications of wireless/mobile devices, by making wireless networks more intelligent, which can hopefully improve people’s lives.”

Gong is no stranger to major awards. He was presented with the National Science Foundation Early Faculty Career Development (CAREER) Award in May for his project, “Towards Efficient and Fast Hierarchical Federated Learning in Heterogenous Wireless Edge Networks.” It is the NSF’s most prestigious prize and was only the second-such award presented to an Auburn electrical and computer engineering faculty member in history.

Media Contact: Joe McAdory, jem0040@auburn.edu, 334.844.3447

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