Edward Knightly, Sheafor-Lindsay Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rice University, has won the Best Paper Award at the 2021 IEEE INFOCOM. IEEE INFOCOM is a leading conference on networking and closely related areas. Covering both theoretical and systems research, attendees present and exchange significant and innovative contributions and ideas in the field.
The paper submitted was titled 'Uplink Multi-User Beamforming on Single RF Chain mmWave WLANs' and was written in conjunction with Keerthi Priya Dasala and Josep M. Jornet, highlighting the partnership between researchers at Rice University and Northeastern University in Boston.
Focused on uplink multi-user beamforming on single RF chain AP (UMBRA), their research looked at a novel framework for supporting multistream multi-user uplink transmissions via a single RF chain. The team found that UMBRA achieved more than 1.45× improvement in aggregate rate regardless of the choice of the user group, geometric separation, and receiver beamwidth in comparison to single-user transmissions.
Prof. Knightly has received the Best Paper Award from ACM MobiCom, ACM MobiHoc, IEEE Communications and Network Security (CNS), IEEE SECON, and the IEEE Workshop on Cognitive Radio Architectures for Broadband. Although this is his first Best Paper Award from IEEE INFOCOM, he has previously served as the conference's general chair or technical chair.
After submitting this latest paper, Knightly continues to lead the Rice Networks Group, where students focus on the deployment, operation, and management of a large-scale urban wireless network in a Houston under-resourced community.