LKC FES academic awarded IEEE VTS 2023 OJVT Best Paper Award

UTAR Lee Kong Chian Faculty of Engineering and Science (LKC FES) academic Dr Lee Ying Loong and his team won the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Vehicular Technology Society 2023 Open Journal of Vehicular Technology (IEEE VTS 2023 OJVT) Best Paper Award for their paper titled “6G Massive radio access networks: Key applications, requirements and challenges”. The award-presentation ceremony will be held by IEEE VTS on 12 October 2023 at the 2023 IEEE 98th Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC2023-Fall) in Hong Kong.

The paper was authored by Dr Lee, Prof Qin Donghong from Guangxi University for Nationalities, China, Prof Wang Li-Chun from National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, and Dr Sim Gek Hong from Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany. They will be jointly awarded certificates and USD1,000 for their academic excellence in the field of network development.

Regarding the unexpected nomination of the award, Dr Lee said, “It was a surprise that the research paper has won the OJVT Best Paper Award. Our paper was initially rejected by several journals within a year. However, my co-authors and I did not give up and kept on improving the paper based on the reasons for rejections given by those journals. Finally, our persistence and hard work paid off and the paper was accepted into the IEEE OJVT in 2020.”

He added, “I never thought this paper would be the award winner of the journal because it was formerly rejected by others multiple times. In fact, it is my first-ever best journal paper award. I am now more motivated with my current career and will continue to strive for betterment.”

Dr Lee and his team’s paper aims to enhance the radio access network (RAN) techniques to support the highly diverse requirements and massive connectivity of the upcoming sixth-generation (6G) networks. The paper presents the key driving applications for 6G, including smart cities and factories, unmanned aerial vehicles, and multi-dimensional sensing services, which showcase the necessity for the transformation of the existing RAN techniques to achieve the key performance indicators required for 6G networks.

In line with Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 9: Industry, innovation and infrastructure, the paper investigated the flexibility, massive interconnectivity, and energy efficiency aspects of 6G RANs and provided an in-depth discussion on the potential key enabling technologies. Moreover, the team also presented a network architecture assisted by artificial intelligence (AI) for flexible 6G massive RANs with energy harvesting.

Dr Lee mentioned that intensive research for 6G wireless communications is needed to prepare for the unprecedented demands of ubiquitous high-speed connectivity in ultra-dense future networks. He stated that the critical aspects of 6G RANs such as flexibility, massive interconnectivity, and energy efficiency are vital to the design of future 6G ultra-dense massive RANs. Yet, they are not well-explored. Hence, it motivated the team to study the aspects.