News

July 2020

• 

  Professor Tareq Al-Naffouri Talk on On Optimal Regularization in Estimation, Detection, and Classification

  1 min read · Tue, Jul 28 2020

  News

  linear systems computational theory Convex Gaussian Min-max theorem

  On April 30th 2020, Professor Tareq Al-Naffouri delivered a talk on Optimal Regularization in Estimation, Detection, and Classification. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the talk was delivered online via Zoom. To find the abstract of the talk, press here.
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  ISL Welcome 13 New Interns

  1 min read · Tue, Jul 28 2020

  News

  This year, the ISL department has welcomed 13 new interns from across the globe. These students are working with Professor Tareq Al-Naffouri on projects and research. Due to COVID-19, many interns are working remotely which is a unique experience for everyone involved.
• 

  MS Defense of Lama Niyazi

  1 min read · Tue, Jul 28 2020

  News

  Title: Asymptotic Performance Analysis of the Randomly-Projected RLDA Ensemble Classifier Date: June 24th, 2019 Thesis topic : An asymptotic study of a particular classifier using random matrix theory tools in order to derive an approximation for its error rate.
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  MS Defense of Ahmed Magbool

  1 min read · Tue, Jul 28 2020

  News

  Title: Blind Estimation of Central Blood Pressure Waveforms from Peripheral Pressure Signals Date: July 5, 2020. Thesis brief: The central aortic blood pressure signal is an important source of information that contains cues about the cardiovascular system condition. Measuring this pulse wave clinically is burdensome as it can be only measured invasively with a catheter. As a result, many mathematical tools have been proposed in the past few decades to reconstruct the aortic pressure signal from the peripheral pressure signals that are usually easier to obtain noninvasively. At the distal
• 

  ISL Team Nominated for IEEE Walter R. Fried Memorial Award

  1 min read · Tue, Jul 28 2020

  News

  GNSS localization

  This year, the ISL team attended the 2020 IEEE/ION Position, Location and Navigation Symposium. A team of Professor Tareq Al-Naffouri, Xing Lui and Tarig Ballal co-authored the Conference Publication titled GNSS Attitude Determination Using a Constrained Wrapped Least Squares Approach. The publication focused on GNSS Attitude Determination. The publication's excellence was recognized as it was shortlisted for the Walter R. Fried Memorial Award. While the publication did not ultimately win the award, the superior technical quality of the work was recognized.
• 

  Mohammed Al-Sharif Does Internship at California Institute of Technology

  1 min read · Tue, Jul 28 2020

  News

  Indoor localization

  Since February 2020, ISL student Mohammed Al-Sharif has been participating in an internship at the California Institute of Technology. He was working with renowned Professor Babak Hassibi at Caltech's Electrical Engineering department. The topic they are working on is indoor localization based on Riemannian optimization.
• 

  Hybrid Acoustic-Pptical strategies for Marine Exploration Sensing

  1 min read · Tue, Jul 28 2020

  News

  Underwater Optical Wireless Communications and Networking underwater optical communications

  ISL scientists have developed a hybrid sensor network that overcomes the shortcomings of acoustic and optical waves. Acoustic and optical waves are two of the most commonly used underwater wireless communication systems. The new hybrid sensor network can transmit acoustic and optimal signals simultaneously. This feature alongside other developments makes the sensor network a potential solution for the increased demand in high quality underwater communications. Mohammed Slim-Alouni, a Professor of Electrical Engineering at KAUST believes that using a combination of acoustic and optical waves
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  To Boldly Go Where No Sensor Has Gone Before: The Movement to Place IoT in Radical New Spaces

  1 min read · Mon, Jul 27 2020

  News

  IoT electrical engineering

  The rapid growth of the world’s population demands more natural resources, food, and space. World renowned physicist Stephan Hawking has argued that soon we will require another world to live on because we are running out of space and natural resources. This ever-increasing demand for resources and space needs novel technologies to explore natural resources, produce more crops, and explore outer space. Internet of X-things (X-IoT) is an enabling technology to overcome all of the above issues. The framework of X-IoT consists of three major categories as shown in Figure 1. The first one is the

June 2020

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  A clique away from more efficient networks

  1 min read · Sun, Jun 14 2020

  News

  networks connectivity applied mathematics electrical engineering

  An old branch of mathematics finds a fertile new field of application.

March 2020

• 

  CEMSE Dean’s Distinguished Lecture – Prof. Moeness Amin

  1 min read · Wed, Mar 4 2020

  News

  Radio frequency devices

  In this talk, we represent recent advances of radio frequency (RF) sensing technology for healthcare, specifically in monitoring human activities inside homes, retirement facilities and hospitals. Sensing technologies and data analytics are considered powerful tools in efficient indoor monitoring of human activities. Monitoring of activities of daily living (ADL) can identify falls, which are considered as the leading cause of fatal and non-fatal injuries for people aged 65 and over. It can also detect variants in activity patterns and changes in routines and lifestyle as well as the state of

February 2020

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  Internet of underground things to reveal buried vistas

  1 min read · Sun, Feb 9 2020

  News

  fuel-resources communications electrical engineering

  Pinpoint mesh of smart underground objects could give real-time 3D readout of fossil fuel reserves.

December 2019

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  Drones deliver on internet connectivity

  1 min read · Thu, Dec 12 2019

  News

  communications electrical engineering IoT

  Hovering airborne vehicles could connect smart sensors to the internet of things.

November 2019

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  EE 398 Graduate Seminar

  1 min read · Mon, Nov 11 2019

  News

  In November 2019, Professor Tareq Al-Naffouri delivered a talk at a Graduate Seminar in KAUST.

August 2019

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  ISL Student Khalil ElKhalil does internship at Duke University

  1 min read · Thu, Aug 8 2019

  News

  Random Matrix Theory machine learning statistical finance

  ISL PhD student Khalil ElKhalil was a visiting Duke university from September 2018 to March 2019. Khalil was working with Vahid Tarokh on topics related to random matrix theory, machine learning and statistical finance.
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  Energy Conservation in Adaptive Filtering

  1 min read · Wed, Aug 7 2019

  News

  energy storage Adaptive filtering ISL Highlighted Publications

  A. H. Sayed, Tareq Y. Al-Naffouri, and Vitor H. Nascimento, "Energy conservation in adaptive filtering", Nonlinear Signal and Image processing: Theory, Methods, and Applications, CRC Press, November 2003. Introduction: The study of the steady-state and transient performance of adaptive filters is a challenging task because of the nonlinear and stochastic nature of their update equations (e.g., References 1 to 4). The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of an energy-conservation approach to study the performance of adaptive filters in a unified manner.4 The approach is based on
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  Wireless Monitoring of Respiration and Heart Rates

  1 min read · Wed, Aug 7 2019

  News

  Wireless Communications health monitoring

  ISL Visiting Students Safwan Ibrahim and Abdullah Zayat worked on a wireless monitoring of respiration and heart rates project. This project introduced a wireless method to detect chest movement due to respiration and heartbeats. Universal Software Radio Peripheral (NI USRP-2922) was used to transmit and receive the signals, while two can-antennas were handmade and used as a transmitter and a receiver. The project was able to measure the respiration and heart rates with an accuracy of 95%, compared to the conventional wired monitoring devices.
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  ISL Members win Best paper award in the SmallNets and IEEE ICC Confrence

  1 min read · Tue, Aug 6 2019

  News

  communication networks

  ISL Members win the Best paper award in the 4th International Workshop on Small Cell and 5G Networks (SmallNets) organized in conjunction with IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), London, UK, June 2015.
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  Transient analysis of data-normalized adaptive filters

  1 min read · Tue, Aug 6 2019

  News

  transient analysis filters ISL Highlighted Publications

  T. Y. Al-Naffouri and A. H. Sayed, "Transient analysis of data-normalized adaptive filters", IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing. vol. 51 , pp. 639-652, Mar 2003. Abstract: This paper develops an approach to the transient analysis of adaptive filters with data normalization. Among other results, the derivation characterizes the transient behavior of such filters in terms of a linear time-invariant state-space model. The stability, of the model then translates into the mean-square stability of the adaptive filters. Likewise, the steady-state operation of the model provides information about
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  Impulse Noise Estimation and Removal for OFDM Systems",  IEEE Transactions on Communications

  1 min read · Tue, Aug 6 2019

  News

  impulse noise estimation ISL Highlighted Publications

  T. Y. Al-Naffouri and A. A. Quadeer and G. Caire, "Impulse Noise Estimation and Removal for OFDM Systems", IEEE Transactions on Communications. vol. 62 , pp. 976-989, Mar 2014 Abstract: Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is a modulation scheme that is widely used in wired and wireless communication systems. While OFDM is ideally suited to deal with frequency selective channels and AWGN, its performance may be dramatically impacted by the presence of impulse noise. In fact, very strong noise impulses in the time domain might result in the erasure of whole OFDM blocks of symbols
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  On the Distribution of Indefinite Quadratic Forms in Gaussian Random Variables

  1 min read · Tue, Aug 6 2019

  News

  guassian random variables ISL Highlighted Publications

  T. Y. Al-Naffouri and M. Moinuddin and N. Ajeeb and B. Hassibi and A. L. Moustakas, "On the Distribution of Indefinite Quadratic Forms in Gaussian Random Variables", IEEE Transactions on Communications. vol. 64 , pp. 153-165, Jan 2016. Abstract: In this work, we propose a unified approach to evaluating the CDF and PDF of indefinite quadratic forms in Gaussian random variables. Such a quantity appears in many applications in communications, signal processing, information theory, and adaptive filtering. For example, this quantity appears in the mean-square-error (MSE) analysis of the normalized
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  Mobility-Aware User Association in Uplink Cellular Networks

  1 min read · Tue, Aug 6 2019

  News

  Cellular Networks ISL Highlighted Publications

  R. Arshad and H. Elsawy and S. Sorour and M. S. Alouini and T. Y. Al-Naffouri, "Mobility-Aware User Association in Uplink Cellular Networks", IEEE Communications Letters. vol. 21 , pp. 2452-2455, Nov 2017. Abstract: This letter studies the mobility aware user-to-base station (BS) association policies, within a stochastic geometry framework, in two-tier uplink cellular networks with fractional channel inversion power control. Particularly, we model the BSs’ locations using the widely accepted Poisson point process and obtain the coverage probability and handover cost expressions for the coupled
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  SNR Estimation in Linear Systems With Gaussian Matrices

  1 min read · Tue, Aug 6 2019

  News

  SNR estimation Guassian matrices ISL Highlighted Publications

  M. A. Suliman and A. M. Alrashdi and T. Ballal and T. Y. Al-Naffouri, "SNR Estimation in Linear Systems With Gaussian Matrices", IEEE Signal Processing Letters. vol. 24 , pp. 1867-1871, Dec 2017. Abstract: This letter proposes a highly accurate algorithm to estimate the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for a linear system from a single realization of the received signal. We assume that the linear system has a Gaussian matrix with one sided left correlation. The unknown entries of the signal and the noise are assumed to be independent and identically distributed with zero mean and can be drawn from
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  Compressive Sensing for Millimeter Wave Antenna Array Diagnosis

  1 min read · Tue, Aug 6 2019

  News

  array diagnosis antenna arrays ISL Highlighted Publications

  M. E. Eltayeb, T. Y. Al-Naffouri and R. W. Heath, "Compressive Sensing for Millimeter Wave Antenna Array Diagnosis", IEEE Transactions on Communications. pp. 1-Jan, Jan 2018. Abstract: The radiation pattern of an antenna array depends on the excitation weights and the geometry of the array. Due to wind and atmospheric conditions, outdoor millimeter wave antenna elements are subject to full or partial blockages from a plethora of particles like dirt, salt, ice, and water droplets. Handheld devices are also subject to blockages from random finger placement and/or finger prints. These blockages
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  Saudi Summer Internship (SSI) Poster Competition Winners

  1 min read · Sun, Aug 4 2019

  News

  Ultrasonic-based Localization machine learning

  Rawan Al Ghamdi, Abdulwahab Felemban and Abdullah Zayat were interns this summer as part of the Saudi Summer Internship (SSI) Program. This is a program involving undergraduates from various universities in the Kingdom and this year hosted 43 students. Abdulwahab and Abdullah worked on enhancing ultrasonic indoor localization and in particular using machine learning to classify arriving signals between line-of-sight and multi-path. Abdulwahab and Abdullah won the second place in the poster competition that took place at the end of the SSI program. Rawan Al-Ghamdi was an intern this summer as

July 2019

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  ISL Student Khalil-ElKhalil goes to ICASSP 2019

  1 min read · Tue, Jul 30 2019

  News

  Khalill ElKhalil, an Electrical Engineering PhD student went to the ICASSP ( IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing). The confrence was held in Brighton, UK on May 12-17. ElKhalil went to present his work on LDA with random projections.
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  ISL has 10+ new visiting students joining this year

  1 min read · Tue, Jul 30 2019

  News

  ISL this year is receiving over 10+ students from all around the world. Students range from Montreal, Canada, to Ile-Ife, Nigeria. These visiting students are all supervised by Dr. Tareq AlNaffouri and working on a variety of topics within the Information Systems Lab. These students are a great asset to the lab, and will further develop their research skills through working with Professor AlNaffouri.
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  ISL Students place 4th at Microsoft Indoor Localization Competition 2017

  1 min read · Mon, Jul 29 2019

  News

  Accurate indoor positioning has the potential to transform the way people navigate indoors similar to the way the GPS transformed outdoor navigation. Over the last 20 years, many indoor positioning technologies have been proposed and experimented by both academia and industry. We developed an accurate acoustic 3D positioning system, which consists of one mobile device (MD) and four base stations (BSs) with known locations. The MD transmits a series of ultrasound and RF sequences, named Zadoff-Chu (ZC) sequences, at the same time. The propagation time of the RF signal is negligible compared to
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  ISL Student Osama Bushnaq does an Delft Internship

  1 min read · Sun, Jul 28 2019

  News

  IoT

  Summary of Delft internship : Advanced sensor networks are needed in order to meet the increasing needs of IoT applications, such as automated surveillance, environmental monitoring, smart cities, and so on. Optimal sensor placement, i.e., to select the best subset of sensing locations out of a large set of available locations, keeping in mind the network infrastructure and the inference task, forms an important sensor network design task. In this internship, the offline sensor selection for source estimation is improved by considering different practical issues such as observation accuracy
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  ISL PhD Student Osama Bushnaq does Internship at UBC

  1 min read · Sun, Jul 28 2019

  News

  UAV IoT

  ISL PhD Student Osama Bushnaq did an internship at the University of British Coloumbia in Canada. His internship was focused on UAV-IoT. Every year, an average of 2.5 million hectares (ha) is burnt only in Canadian forests, which costs around 500 million to 1 billion Canadian dollars per year. The current forest fire detection methods such as satellite imaging and infrared cameras are not reliable. In order to detect forest fires before getting out of control, a new fire detection method based on Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Internet of Things (UAV-IoT) network was studied during this internship. A

May 2019

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  Measurement Selection: A Random Matrix Theory Approach

  1 min read · Thu, May 30 2019

  News

  Random Matrix Theory Measurement Wireless Communications

  Khalil Elkhalil , Student Member, IEEE, Abla Kammoun, Member, IEEE, Tareq Y. Al-Naffouri, Member, IEEE, and Mohamed-Slim Alouini , Fellow, IEEE Abstract This paper considers the problem of selecting a set of k measurements from n available sensor observations. The selected measurements should minimize a certain error function assessing the error in estimating a certain m dimensional parameter vector. The exhaustive search inspecting each of the (n) possible choices would require very high computational k complexity and as such is not practical for large n and k. Alternative methods with low

March 2019

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  KAUST alumna wins ADIPEC Young Engineer of the Year Award

  1 min read · Sun, Mar 3 2019

  Spotlight

  award

  KAUST alumna Shamael Al-Shuhail won the prestigious Abu Dhabi International Exhibition & Conference (ADIPEC) Young Engineer of the Year Award at ADIPEC 2018 held in Abu Dhabi, UAE.

January 2019

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  Lighting the way to the underwater Internet of things

  1 min read · Wed, Jan 2 2019

  News

  underwater sensor platform electrical engineering communications

  An optical system for monitoring underwater sensor positions could enable large networks of devices to be deployed for ocean measurements.

March 2018

• 

  Marine exploration sensing with light and sound

  1 min read · Sun, Mar 11 2018

  News

  marine exploration electrical engineering Sensor networks

  Unveiling new strategies to improve future wireless underwater sensing networks for marine research and communication.

February 2018

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  UESTC students visit CEMSE Laboratories during a one week Winter Camp at KAUST

  1 min read · Sun, Feb 4 2018

  News

  photonics printable electronics nanoelectronics laser sensors bioimaging biophotonics 3D printing

  Twenty-two undergraduate students from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC), Chengdu, are currently visiting the CEMSE Division as part of one week Winter Camp at KAUST.

November 2017

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  Ph. D. Student Khalil Elkhalil nominated finalist for the Best Student Paper Award in the IEEE MLSP Conference

  1 min read · Mon, Nov 20 2017

  News Spotlight

  machine learning high dimensional statistics data science

  Fast-placing Machine Learning (ML) is continuously in need of new algorithms, but testing their effectiveness is utterly time-consuming. "Asymptotic Performance Of Regularized Quadratic Discriminant Analysis Based Classifiers," a new paper presented by CEMSE Ph.D. Student Khalil Elkhalil puts ML on the fast gear and a finalist for the Best Student Paper Award in the IEEE MLSP Conference held last September in Roppongi, Tokyo, Japan.

May 2017

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  The crest of waveforms for next-gen radar

  1 min read · Sat, May 6 2017

  News

  electrical engineering Computer science radar

  A new method for shaping the waveform generated by multi-antenna radar systems is inexpensive and practical.

February 2016

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  Wireless devices tune-in to cloud power

  1 min read · Sat, Feb 6 2016

  News

  electrical engineering

  Next-generation mobile networks can use cloud computing algorithms to manage the increasingly high data demands of users.

July 2015

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  Signal noise annoys no more

  1 min read · Mon, Jul 13 2015

  News

  electrical engineering signals

  Identifying noise in communication signals helps to filter out glitches and improve transmission quality.

February 2013

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  PhD EE student Mudassir Masood from Prof. Tareq Al-Naffouri's group wins best poster award at ICCSPA'13

  1 min read · Tue, Feb 26 2013

  News Spotlight

  Distribution Agnostic Bayesian Estimation of Sparse Signals communications tracking statistical signal processing

  Mudassir Masood, a Ph.D. student in Electrical Engineering (EE) at the CEMSE division, received the best poster award at the International Conference on Communications, Signal Processing, and Their Applications (ICCSPA), held 11-14 February 2013 in Sharjah, UAE.

January 2013

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  EE students, postdocs shine in WEP poster competition

  1 min read · Sun, Jan 27 2013

  News Spotlight

  WEP Poster Competition

  EE students and postdocs won 5 out of 9 prizes at the WEP university-wide poster competition in all three categories. These prizes are the latest in a series of awards brought home by the EE students from similar contests.