Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

The 5G wireless communications technologies currently being developed will not fully support the emerging applications such as ultra-broadband rural/remote connectivity, holographic communications, autonomous driving, remote surgery, and precision agriculture. Therefore, research on Sixth-Generation (6G) wireless systems has already begun. The distinguishing features of 6G, which include high-frequency wireless communications, programmability of wireless channels, and machine learning-based designs, will require a holistic view for the design and development of related technologies. These will enable 6G (and beyond) to achieve extremely high data rates and reliability, minimize coverage holes and communication delay, and enhance security. 6G will advance technological breakthroughs and massive innovation that will touch almost every industry and area of our society, and it will significantly define Canada's economic landscape for 2030 and well beyond. However, to achieve intelligent, context-based (or semantic-aware), robust, and secure communication and hyper-connectivity in 6G networks, several fundamental challenges must be overcome. For example, the network capacity has to be maximized by optimizing the available resources, high levels of network reliability and resilience have to be ensured to mitigate failures and disruptions and ensure uninterrupted connectivity, and  the integrity, confidentiality and availability of the vast amounts of data transmitted over the network have to be safeguarded. The long-term objective of this research program is to make ground-breaking impact in the area of design, modeling, optimization, and control techniques for next-generation (e.g. 6G and beyond) wireless systems. This will be done by using innovative tools and insights from electromagnetics and circuit theory, wireless communications, signal processing and networking, artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML), optimization, control, game and decision theory. To achieve the long-term objective, the following short-term objectives will be pursued: (i) Develop smart/intelligent radio communications and sensing techniques, for both terrestrial and integrated terrestrial-aerial-satellite networks, based on reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS), (ii) Develop techniques for ultra-reliable, robust, and semantic-aware communication as well as hyperconnectivity based on flexible network architecture and AI/ML models, and (iii) Develop techniques for enhanced wireless system security by programming radio propagation and improving the resilience of wireless AI/ML models against adversarial attacks. In addition to novel theoretical contributions, the concepts and technologies resulting from the proposed research have the potential of making significant impact on the evolution of emerging technical standards. The research will prepare  21 highly qualified personnel with interdisciplinary knowledge to serve the needs of the IT industry in Canada.