Professor Restuccia and team awarded two research grants from the National Science Foundation
At Northeastern’s Institute for the Wireless Internet of Things, Assistant Professor Francesco Restuccia and his team aim to radically improve existing Internet of Things (IoT) and fifth generation (5G) networks. Their research is bringing us closer to ultra-high-speed 6G networks, next-generation Wi-Fi systems, and other critical wireless technologies.
Through the Roux Institute, Restuccia is establishing new collaborations with institute partners and universities in Portland and throughout Maine. He envisions sharing his lab’s progress with Maine’s entrepreneurs, helping to spin off companies that will bolster the Maine economy.
Restuccia and his team recently received two grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), both within the foundation’s Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) research area. The first grant was awarded as part of the CISE Community Research Infrastructure (CCRI) program, with the goal of creating RFDataFactory—a software infrastructure that will allow the generation of large-scale AI datasets for the US wireless research community. The project is expected to significantly advance state of the art technologies in autonomous statistical analysis of radio frequency spectrum activity, as well as accelerate interdisciplinary research at the intersection of AI and the wireless domain. Additionally, the datasets collected with RFDataFactory could help advance rural connectivity in Maine.
The second NSF grant was awarded as part of the CISE Computer and Network Systems (CNS) Core program, and will address the design and experimental evaluation of fundamentally novel techniques for semantic-based wireless communications in the context of resource-limited mobile systems. This work will further our understanding of how sophisticated AI techniques can be used to improve the performance of complex unmanned systems, such as self-driving vehicles and drones.
This will create a myriad of exciting business opportunities for Maine-based companies in the near future, which will further foster collaboration between my group and industrial partners.
PROFESSOR FRANCESCO RESTUCCIA
Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering
“I see collaboration with Roux Institute partners as an integral part of my research endeavor. I think that the Internet of Things, 5G-and-beyond connectivity, and AI-empowered systems are technologies that will become more and more important and pervasive in our daily lives,” Restuccia says. “This will create a myriad of exciting business opportunities for Maine-based companies in the near future, which will further foster collaboration between my group and industrial partners.”
The support from these projects will also be leveraged to support underrepresented students in research and outreach activities, as well as to develop unique expertise at the crossroads of machine learning, embedded systems, and wireless networks.
“The sheer scale of the IoT, coupled with the fast-paced evolution of 5G-and-beyond technologies, will create unprecedented challenges in sectors like security, telecommunications, and agriculture,” observes Restuccia. “Our research at the Roux Institute aims to meet that challenge.”