Zeng earns NSF CAREER AWARD

headshot of Huacheng Zeng

Dr. Huacheng Zeng has earned a prestigious NSF CAREER award for his project “MIMO-based Blind Interference Cancellation for Wireless Networking.”

According to the NSF.gov website, the Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program is a Foundation-wide activity that offers the National Science Foundation’s most prestigious awards in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization. Activities pursued by early-career faculty should build a firm foundation for a lifetime of leadership in integrating education and research.

“This is an outstanding achievement, and one of only a handful of NSF CAREER awards ever received by Speed School faculty,” said Dr. Bruce Alphenaar, chair of the department of electrical and computer engineering.

Zeng’s research aims to advance wireless communications by expanding a network’s ability to tame interference. Although many techniques have been proposed to handle interference for wireless networks, most of them are limited in scope. His work focuses on creating a novel yet practical solution that can mitigate unknown interference using multi-antenna technology. In addition to theoretical exploration and algorithmic design, his research will include system implementation and real-world validation. The results from this project will allow heterogeneous networks such as Wi-Fi and cellular to share the same spectrum. The outcomes of this project will also enable reliable wireless communications in harsh environments such as on battlefields. This project’s success will significantly advance the frontier of scientific knowledge by offering a new paradigm of interference management for wireless systems. It also will generate profound societal impacts by integrating the results into commercial 5G systems.