Title: Location Awareness in Next Generation Networks

Abstract: Real-time high-accuracy location awareness is essential for numerous networked applications, particularly those involving Internet-of-Things and the beyond 5G (B5G) ecosystem such as factories of the future, autonomous vehicles, UAV fleet, and augmented reality. The coming years will see the emergence of network localization and navigation in challenging environments with sub-meter accuracy and minimal infrastructure requirements. This will call for the Localization-of-Things (LoT), a new paradigm referring to locating, tracking, and navigating collaborative and non-collaborative nodes (e.g., sensors, vehicles, and objects). This talk will give an overview of LoT, examining some recent research results in this exciting new field, from the perspectives of theoretical framework, cooperative algorithms, network operations, and network experimentation.

Bio: Victor B. Lawrence is Senior Research Scientist and Director of the Center for Intelligent Networked Systems (iNetS), and former Associate Dean and Batchelor Chair Professor at Stevens Institute of Technology.

He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2016. He is a Member of the US National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the IEEE, Fellow of AT&T Bell Labs, and Charter Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.  Dr. Lawrence is the co-author of five books. He holds 53 U.S. and international patents and has published over 100 papers in referenced journals and conference proceedings.

Before joining Stevens Institute of Technology, Dr. Lawrence worked for Bell Laboratories for many years, retiring as Vice President, Advanced Communications Technology – AT&T Bell Laboratories and Lucent Technologies.  He led the development of technologies for worldwide communications networks and managed an R&D staff of over 500 scientists/engineers and a budget of about $100M annually. During his career, his personal research activities provided major contributions to gigabit photonic and wireless networking, signal processing, modem technology, digital techniques, ATM and IP switching and protocols, HDTV, DSL, speech and audio coding, among other areas. Dr. Lawrence was the champion in bringing Fiber Optic Connectivity to Africa.

Dr. Lawrence co-funded four successful venture companies: Globespan Semiconductors Inc., Elemedia the Lucent’s Internet software business, Lucent Digital Video, and Lucent Digital Radio, iBiquity.

He has received many awards including a 1997 Primetime Emmy Award for HDTV Grand Alliance Standard, a 2016 IEEE Simon Ramo Medal for technical innovation and leadership in the systems engineering of worldwide data communications networks, and a 2004 IEEE Field Award in International Communications.

He also served as Chairman of the IEEE Awards Board and Editor-in-chief of the IEEE Transactions on communications.

He received a B.Sc. in 1968 from University of London, United Kingdom, a D.I.C. in 1969 from Imperial College, and a Ph.D. in 1973 Electrical Engineering from University of London, Imperial College in the United Kingdom.