Channel Map for Intelligent 6G Networks: A Scatterer-based Modeling and Reconstruction Framework

Professor Rui Zhang
National University of Singapore, Singapore

Description

WILLIAM MONG DISTINGUISHED LECTURES: RPG SHARING SERIES:

The forthcoming sixth-generation (6G) wireless networks are expected to support unprecedented levels of efficiency and intelligence, motivating a fundamental shift from environment-unaware to environment-aware network operation. In this talk, we present a novel scatterer-based framework for channel map modeling, which exploits the physical structure of wireless propagation to represent high-dimensional channel information using a small set of physically meaningful scatterer parameters. The complete channel map is reconstructed by estimating these parameters from channel measurements collected at selected locations. To improve scalability, we further introduce the concept of virtual scatterers, which flexibly merge or split physical scatterers to balance reconstruction accuracy and computational complexity. Using channel gain maps as a case study, ray tracing simulations show that the proposed approach significantly outperforms existing model-based and model-free methods in reconstruction accuracy under the same channel measurement overhead.

About the Speaker

Professor Rui Zhang is a Provost’s Chair Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of National University of Singapore. He has published over 600 papers that are truly impactful, as evident from the more than 128,000 total citations with H-index of 163 (Google Scholar). Professor Zhang has been listed as a Highly Cited Researcher by Thomson Reuters/Clarivate Analytics since 2015. He is a Fellow of IEEE and Academy of Engineering Singapore, and was an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer. His work received 18 IEEE Best Journal Paper Awards, including the IEEE Marconi Prize Paper Award in Wireless Communications (twice), the IEEE Communications Society Heinrich Hertz Prize Paper Award (thrice), the IEEE Communications Society Stephen O. Rice Prize, the IEEE Signal Processing Society Best Paper Award, etc. He was the recipient of the 2020 IEEE Wireless Communications Technical Committee Recognition Award, the 2021 IEEE Signal Processing and Computing for Communications Technical Recognition Award, the 2023 IEEE ComSoc Technical Committee on Cognitive Networks Recognition Award, and the 2025 IEEE James Evans Avant Garde Award. He served as an Editor for several IEEE journals, including TWC/TCOM/JSAC/TSP and as TPC co-chair/organizing committee member for 30+ international conferences..