Title: Bumblebee-Inspired Connected Vehicles: What’s All The Buzz About

Abstract: Wireless connectivity is quickly becoming a critical element in future transportation systems, especially with respect to self-driving cars and various levels of vehicular autonomy.  Given the complex and highly time-varying environments existing on busy roadways, having each vehicle possessing real-time situational awareness is essential for performing complex functions, such as autonomous lane-changing, traffic intersection management, and platooning. Although there already exists a variety of different sensors that can gather data about the vehicular environment in order to obtain real-time situation awareness, such as LIDAR, RADAR, and vision systems, these sensors can only collect this data via line-of-sight (LOS).  On the other hand, wireless connectivity is not constrained to LOS data gathering and can greatly increase the real-time situational awareness of each vehicle on the road, enhancing its performance and increasing driver/passenger safety. As the number of vehicles on the road become connected to each other, this information sharing will evolve into a Vehicular Internet-of-Things (VIOT) environment. To support the VIOT ecosystem, adequate wireless spectrum is needed to enable this connectivity between vehicles in real-time as they are operating on the road in complex conditions.  To achieve this, Vehicular Dynamic Spectrum Access, or VDSA, can be employed, where unoccupied wireless spectrum is temporarily accessed by non-licensed users in order to support data communications during that time interval.  Compared to conventional DSA techniques, VDSA needs to be capable of handling significant spectral availability variations during a transmission.  Past research has explored the use of VDSA in television white space spectral environments as well as the implementation of VDSA algorithms using machine learning techniques.  However, recently a new approach to VDSA has been proposed where each vehicle performs VDSA using an algorithm based on bumblebee-inspired resource foraging.  In this talk, the fundamentals of how bumblebee-inspired VDSA will be presented, with several examples shown in order to demonstrate the performance of this approach.

Biography: Dr. Alexander M. Wyglinski is an internationally recognized expert in wireless communications, cognitive radio, 5G, connected vehicles, software-defined radio, dynamic spectrum access, electromagnetic security, vehicular technology, wireless system optimization and adaptation, autonomous vehicles, and cyber-physical systems. Dr. Wyglinski is a Full Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and a Full Professor of Robotics Engineering (courtesy appointment) at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA, USA, as well as the Director of the Wireless Innovation Laboratory (WI Lab).  Dr. Wyglinski is very active in the technical community, serving on the organizing committees of numerous technical conferences and several journal editorial boards. These activities include serving as the General Co-Chair for the 82nd IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference in Fall 2015. Dr. Wyglinski’s editorial board commitments include the IEEE Communications Magazine, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, and IEEE Transactions on Communications. From January 2018 to December 2019, Dr. Wyglinski served as the President of the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society, an applications-oriented society of approximately 5100 members that focuses on the theoretical, experimental, and operational aspects of electrical and electronics engineering in mobile radio, motor vehicles, and land transportation.  Throughout his academic career, Dr. Wyglinski has published approximately 45 journal papers, over 90 conference papers, nine book chapters, and three textbooks. He is currently being or has been sponsored by organizations such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Naval Research Laboratory, MITRE Corporation, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, the Office of Naval Research, the Air Force Research Laboratory Space Vehicles Directorate, The MathWorks, Toyota InfoTechnology Center U.S.A., and the National Science Foundation. Dr. Wyglinski is a Senior Member of the IEEE, as well as a member of Sigma Xi, Eta Kappa Nu, and the ASEE.