The KU 6G Center Wins First Place in MIT-organized International Challenge
Hearty congratulations to the 6G Center for securing the coveted top spot at the IEEE
International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing 2024 (ICASSP) Grand
Challenge, organized by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The global
competition sought inventive approaches to Data-Driven Signal Separation in the Radio
Spectrum, a crucial element in advancing Wireless Communication technologies.
ICASSP is the world’s largest technical conference focused on signal
processing and related applications. It offers a technical program presenting all
the latest development in research and technology in the industry that attracts thousands of
professionals annually.
This year, the victorious team was a joint collaboration between Khalifa University and TII,
comprising Postdoctoral Fellow Dr. Abubakar Sani Ali and PhD student Abdullah Quran from
KU, who work under the supervision of Prof. Sami Muhaidat and Prof. Merouane Debbah, along
with Dr. Ahmed Alhammadi, Lead Researcher, and Dr. Yu Tian, Researcher from TII.
The renowned competition also drew the participation of other prestigious institutions like the
Technical University of Berlin (TUB) and IDLab at Ghent University – IMEC, emphasizing the
highly competitive nature of the challenge.
The winning team took a unique approach by developing an innovative deep neural network
model rooted in Wave-net architecture. Notably, this new model has the capability to
autonomously learn and optimize the receptive field size for denoising the signal. Additionally,
the team’s strategy involved using test data for validation – creating ingenious data
augmentation techniques to enhance the robustness of the trained model.
The team’s triumph showcases the expertise of the KU-TII alliance while underscoring the
growing influence of the UAE in the next-generation 6G ecosystem. Such efforts are a
testament to the UAE’s dedication to strengthening its knowledge-based economy and
maintaining a leading position in advanced wireless communication research.
