IEEE SSCS Oregon Chapter July Meeting and Seminar

Join us for a talk from SSCS Distinguished Lecturer Prof. Shreyas Sen from Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, on Friday, July 19th, 2024. The seminar will be held from 11:00am to 12:00pm (PST) via a Hybrid format. Please register for the meeting link and information.

Topic:

Secure and Efficient Internet of Bodies using Electro-Quasistatic Human Body Communication

Abstract:

We are living in the age of human-machine augmentation and coexistence (e.g., smartphones, AI assistants, computers, earbuds, smart watches) and steadily marching towards a new age of human-machine seamless cooperation (HMC) or even symbiosis. Radiative communication using electromagnetic (EM) fields is the state-of-the-art for connecting wearable and implantable devices enabling prime applications in the fields of connected healthcare, electroceuticals, neuroscience, augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) and human-computer interaction (HCI) and HMC, forming a subset of the Internet of Things called the Internet of Bodies (IoB). However, owing to such radiative nature of the traditional wireless communication, EM signals propagate in all directions, inadvertently allowing an eavesdropper to intercept the information. Moreover, since only a fraction of the energy is picked up by the intended device, and the need for high carrier frequency compared to information content, wireless communication tends to suffer from poor energy-efficiency (>nJ/bit). Noting that all IoB devices share a common medium, i.e. the human body, utilizing the conductivity of the human the body allows low-loss transmission, termed as human body communication (HBC) and improves energy-efficiency. Conventional HBC implementations still suffer from significant radiation compromising physical security and efficiency. Our recent work has developed Electro-Quasistatic Human Body Communication (EQS-HBC), a method for localizing signals within the body using low-frequency transmission, thereby making it extremely difficult for a nearby eavesdropper to intercept critical private data, thus producing a covert communication channel, i.e., the human body as a ‘wire’ along with reducing interference and providing 100x more efficient communication than Bluetooth.
In this talk, I will highlight recent advancements in the field of IoB enabled by the Body-as-a-Wire technology which has a strong promise to become the future of Body Area Network (BAN) along with it’s counterpart in the Brain leading to broadband communication. We will focus on the circuit model developed in recent literature explaining the fundamental behavior of Electro-Quasistatic Body and Brain Communication, leading to understanding of channel loss. We will finally show how such low-power communication is paving the way forward for Secure and Efficient IoB for seamless Human-Machine Co-operation.

Speaker Biography:

Shreyas Sen is an Elmore Associate Professor of ECE & BME, Purdue University. His current research interests span mixed-signal circuits/systems and electromagnetics for the Internet of Bodies (IoB) and Hardware Security. He has co-authored 3 book chapters, over 200 journal and conference papers and has 25 patents granted/pending. Dr. Sen serves as the Director of the Center for Internet of Bodies (C-IoB) at Purdue. Dr. Sen is the inventor of the Electro-Quasistatic Human Body Communication (EQS-HBC), or Body as a Wire technology, for which, he is the recipient of the MIT Technology Review top-10 Indian Inventor Worldwide under 35 (MIT TR35 India) Award in 2018 and Georgia Tech 40 Under 40 Award in 2022. To commercialize this invention Dr. Sen founded Ixana and serves as the Chairman and CTO and led Ixana to awards such as 2x CES Innovation Award 2024, EE Times Silicon 100, Indiana Startup of the Year Mira Award 2023, among others. His work has been covered by 250+ news releases worldwide, invited appearances on TEDx Indianapolis, NASDAQ live Trade Talks at CES 2023, Indian National Television CNBC TV18 Young Turks Program, NPR subsidiary Lakeshore Public Radio and the CyberWire podcast. Dr. Sen is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award 2020, AFOSR Young Investigator Award 2016, NSF CISE CRII Award 2017, Intel Outstanding Researcher Award 2020, Google Faculty Research Award 2017, Purdue CoE Early Career Research Award 2021, Intel Labs Quality Award 2012 for industry wide impact on USB-C type, Intel Ph.D. Fellowship 2010, IEEE Microwave Fellowship 2008, GSRC Margarida Jacome Best Research Award 2007, and nine best paper awards including IEEE CICC 2019, 2021 and in IEEE HOST 2017-2020, for four consecutive years. Dr. Sen's work was chosen as one of the top-10 papers in the Hardware Security field (TopPicks 2019). He serves/has served as an Associate Editor for IEEE Journal of Solid State Circuits (JSSC), Solid-State Circuits Letters (SSC-L), Nature Scientific Reports, Frontiers in Electronics, IEEE Design & Test, Executive Committee member of IEEE Central Indiana Section and Technical Program Committee member of TPC member of ISSCC, CICC, DAC, CCS, IMS, DATE, ISLPED, ICCAD, ITC, and VLSI Design. Dr. Sen is a Senior Member of IEEE and Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE SSCS society.

In this talk, we focus on the recent developments toward integrated sensing and communications (ISAC). We consider a broad definition of coexistence, which covers ISAC, collaborative communications, and sensing with interference. Toward fully realizing the coexistence of the two systems, optimization of resources for both new/futuristic sensing and wireless communications modalities is crucial. These synergistic approaches that exploit the interplay between state sensing and communications are both driving factors and opportunities for many current signal processing and information-theoretic techniques. In addition, a large body of prior works considers colocated ISAC systems, while distributed systems remain relatively unexamined. Building on the existing approaches, the tutorial highlights emerging scenarios in collaborative and distributed ISAC, particularly at mm-Wave and THz frequencies, highly dynamic vehicular/automotive environments that would benefit from information exchange between the two systems. It presents the architectures and possible methodologies for mutually beneficial distributed co-existence and co-design, including sensor fusion and heterogeneously distributed radar and communications. The tutorial also considers recent developments such as deploying intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRS) in ISAC, 5G systems, passive internet-of-things, and ISAC secrecy rate optimization. This tutorial aims to draw the attention of the radar, communications, and signal processing communities toward an emerging area, which can benefit from the cross-fertilization of ideas in distributed systems.

Biography

Kumar Vijay Mishra (S’08-M’15-SM’18) obtained a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and an M.S. in mathematics from The University of Iowa in 2015, and an M.S. in electrical engineering from Colorado State University in 2012, while working on NASA’s Global Precipitation Mission Ground Validation (GPM-GV) weather radars. He received his B. Tech. summa cum laude (Gold Medal, Honors) in electronics and communication engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Hamirpur (NITH), India, in 2003. He is currently a Research Scientist at the Institute for Systems Research, The University of Maryland, College Park, under the ARL-ArtIAMAS program; Technical Adviser to Singapore-based automotive radar startup Hertzwell and Boston-based imaging radar startup Aura Intelligent Systems; and honorary Research Fellow at SnT - Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability, and Trust, University of Luxembourg.

Previously, he had research appointments at the United States Army Research Laboratory (ARL), Adelphi; Electronics and Radar Development Establishment (LRDE), Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) Bengaluru; IIHR - Hydroscience & Engineering, Iowa City, IA; Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs, Cambridge, MA; Qualcomm, San Jose; and Technion - Israel Institute of Technology. Dr. Mishra is the Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Communications Society (2023-2024), IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society (AESS) (2023-2024), IEEE Vehicular Technology Society (2023-2024), IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (2024-2025), and IEEE Future Networks Initiative (2022). He is the recipient of the IET Premium Best Paper Prize (2021), IEEE T-AES Outstanding Editor (2021), U.S. National Academies Harry Diamond Distinguished Fellowship (2018-2021), American Geophysical Union Editors' Citation for Excellence (2019), Royal Meteorological Society Quarterly Journal Editor's Prize (2017), Viterbi Postdoctoral Fellowship (2015, 2016), Lady Davis Postdoctoral Fellowship (2017), DRDO LRDE Scientist of the Year Award (2006), NITH Director’s Gold Medal (2003), and NITH Best Student Award (2003). He has received Best Paper Awards at IEEE MLSP 2019 and IEEE ACES Symposium 2019.

Dr. Mishra is Chair (2023-present) of the Synthetic Apertures Technical Working Group of the IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS) and Vice-Chair (2021-present) of the IEEE Synthetic Aperture Standards Committee, which is the first SPS standards committee. He is the Chair (2023-2026) of the International Union of Radio Science (URSI) Commission C. He has been an elected member of three technical committees of IEEE SPS: SPCOM, SAM, and ASPS, and IEEE AESS Radar Systems Panel. He has been Senior Area Editor of IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing (2024-), Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems (2020-), and IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation (2023-). He has been a lead/guest editor of several special issues in journals such as IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, and IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing. He is the lead co-editor of three books on radar: Signal Processing for Joint Radar-Communications (Wiley-IEEE Press, 2024), Next-Generation Cognitive Radar Systems (IET Press Radar, Electromagnetics & Signal Processing Technologies Series, 2024), and Advances in Weather Radar Volumes 1, 2 & 3 (IET Press Radar, Electromagnetics & Signal Processing Technologies Series, 2024). His research interests include radar systems, signal processing, remote sensing, and electromagnetics.

IEEE Oregon July Excom

IEEE Women in Engineering Oregon Section and Hawaii Section Affinity Group are teaming up to host a dynamic panel discussion a panel discussion titled,  "Fostering Inclusive Workplaces: Building a Culture of Diversity and Equality in Engineering through Advocacy and Allyship ," to celebrate the 2024 IEEE WIE Day.

We, IEEE Women in Engineering Oregon Section and Hawaii Section AG, are dedicated to promoting diversity and inclusion within the engineering community. We believe that creating inclusive workplaces is essential for fostering a thriving and innovative industry through the advancement of AI and 4IR technologies. 

The panel discussion will explore various strategies for promoting diversity and equality in engineering for the advancement of AI and 4IR technologies, with a focus on advocacy and allyship. 

Let’s encourage each other to support the advancement of women in STEM across the globe!

Our speaker this month will be Micah Rolfe of PdM Specialists. He will be talking about maintaining and improving lab machinery for accuracy, reliability and longevity. Both EMC and Product Safety use large equipment for performing tests, and knowing how and why equipment performance degrades over time can greatly impact how we budget for and approach equipment maintenance, as well as a framework on what to plan for future installations of new equipment. 

Title: Advancing Network Sustainability - Challenges and Solution Approaches

Reducing humankind’s carbon footprint and greenhouse gas emissions to slow climate change is one of humanity’s Grand Challenges. Communication networks play a key role in addressing that challenge, enabling applications that reduce the need for physical travel as well as solutions that optimize efficiency of resource and energy usage. Examples range from teleworking to remote operations, from smarter agriculture to more energy-efficient factory floors. However, for all their benefits, networks also have a significant environmental footprint themselves that collectively rivals that of entire countries. It is thus becoming important to make networks themselves "greener" and devise solutions that allow networks to be operated in ways that make them more sustainable while continuing to meet increasing traffic demands and service requirements.
Many of today’s network sustainability improvements relate to general advances in energy efficiency of computing hardware as well as in transmission technology (antennas, lasers). While this is where arguably the biggest opportunities lie, the question arises regarding the role that other layers in the networking stack can play in advancing network sustainability. For example, can data planes be designed in ways that make them inherently more energy-efficient? What protocol advances might enable greener networking solutions? How can networks be optimized not just for QoS or utilization but for carbon and what novel tools are needed to operate networks more sustainably? How can we even properly account for energy usage and other sustainability parameters to be optimized? In which ways can network programmability, faster control loops, and AI- or intent-based networking help?
This presentation will provide a brief introduction into network sustainability and discuss some of the key challenges that solutions need to address. A number of solution approaches will be presented and opportunities for further research and engagement on this topic pointed out. The presentation will draw on some of the activities that are currently taking place in the IETF and the Internet Architecture Board's E-Impact program.


Bio: Dr. Alexander Clemm is a recognized expert in network management technology and networking software in which he has been involved throughout his career. His most recent activities have been in the areas of sustainable networking, future networking services, intent-based networking, service assurance, and telemetry. After 7+ years as a Distinguished Engineer at Futurewei and prior to that 18 years at Cisco, he recently decided to pursue an academic sabbatical and embark on new adventures. Alex has for many years been regularly serving on the committees of IEEE conferences, including NOMS/IM and NetSoft as a member of the steering committee and on several occasions as general co-chair or TPC co-chair. He is the recipient of the 2020 Salah Aidarous Award given by IEEE CNOM and IFIP TC6.6 to "an individual who has provided unremitting service and dedication to the IT and Telecommunications Network Operations and Management community." Alex has an extensive publication record including 70+ papers, 70+ patents, and 15 RFCs. He holds an M.S. degree from Stanford University and a Ph.D. from the University of Munich, Germany, both in Computer Science.