Tutorial #3 – Towards AI-enabled Air-ground Integrated Wireless Edge Networks

Instructor: Yu-Jia Chen, National Central University, Taiwan
Instructor: Ai-Chun Pang, National Taiwan University, Taiwan
Instructor: Te-Chuan Chiu, Research Center for Information Technology Innovation, Academia Sinica, Taiwan

Abstract: In this tutorial, we discuss how intelligent unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) play a key role in the next generation mobile wireless system with air-ground integrated networks. We first give an update of the 5G NR in 3GPP, including the ultrareliable low latency communication (URLLC) and the enhancement for supporting aerial UE. Then, we introduce some basic network architectures, such as multi-access edge computing (MEC), software-defined networking (SDN), as defined by 3GPP or ETSI, and present the emerging air-ground integrated wireless networks. Specifically, we use an example to illustrate the low-latency scenario required by future AIoT (AI and IoT) applications such as industry automation and autonomous driving, and present a testbed which has been deployed in a real environment and developed with the stateof- the-art technologies. Afterward, we introduce network calculus based analytical technique for achieving per-flow-based latency guarantee in the air-ground integrated wireless networks. Also, we highlight the utilization of the on-device distributed machine learning tools for making low-latency decisions at network edge, followed by three case studies using (i) reinforcement learning-based UAV-assisted mobile edge caching, (ii) multi-agent distributed/federated learning technique for UAV tracking, and (iii) deep learning techniques for UAV sensing. Finally, the tutorial concludes with potential research issues in this new field, such as security, privacy, vertical integration, business and economics for smart and connected aerial/ground vehicles.

Bio: Yu-Jia Chen received the B.S. degree and Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan, in 2010 and 2015, respectively. From 2015 to 2018, he was a postdoctoral research fellow with National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan, and he was a postdoctoral research fellow with Harvard University from 2018 to 2019. In 2019, he joined National Central University, Taiwan, where he is currently an assistant professor at the department of communication engineering. His research interests include low-latency communications, wireless sensing, and network security. Dr. Chen has published more than 30 articles in peer-reviewed journal and conference papers. He is holding three US patents and three ROC patents.
Dr. Chen has been serving as Technical Organizing Committee and Symposium Cochair for many international conferences and symposia, including Globecom, VTC, and PIMRC. He is also co-founder of the IEEE workshop SPSCS, focusing on security and privacy in smart and connected systems. Prof. Chen has experience with tutorials at academic conferences such as Globecom.

Bio: Ai-Chun Pang received the B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science and Information Engineering from National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan, in 1996, 1998 and 2002, respectively. She joined the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Taiwan University (NTU), Taiwan, in 2002, and is now a Professor and Associate Dean of the College of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, NTU. She was the director of Graduate Institute of Networking and Multimedia, NTU, in 2013-2016. Her research interests include wireless and mobile communications, software defined networking, and fog/edge computing for low-latency AI and IoT services.
Dr. Pang was the leading guest editor of IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology (TVT) special issue on “Fog/Edge Computing for Autonomous and Connected Cars”, and the guest editor of IEEE Wireless Communications special issue on “Voice over WLAN”. She is currently the editor of IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, IEEE TVT, IEEE Transactions on Green Communications and Networking, and ACM Transactions on Cyber-Physical Systems. She has served on the technical program committee of prestigious conferences, including IEEE INFOCOM, IEEE GLOBECOM, IEEE ICC, and IEEE VTC. She is also a co-author of the book “Wireless and Mobile All-IP Networks” published by John Wiley, and is an IEEE Vehicular Technology Society (VTS) Distinguished Lecturer.

Bio: Te-Chuan Chiu received his B.S. degree in Computer Science from National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan, in 2010, M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science and Information Engineering from National Taiwan University, Taiwan, in 2012, and 2018, respectively. He was a research scholar of the school of electrical, computer and energy engineering from Arizona State University, USA, in 2016-2017. He is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the Research Center for Information Technology Innovation, Academia Sinica. His research interests include 5G communications, fog/edge computing, and energy harvesting technology. Dr. Chiu was awarded the 2018 Member of the Phi Tau Phi Scholastic Honor Society of the Republic of China.