Improving the Resilience of Wireless Communication and Computing

CSE Distinguished Seminar

Speaker: Professor Falko Dressler
Chair for Telecommunication Networks
School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Technische Universität Berlin

Title: Improving the Resilience of Wireless Communication and Computing

Date: Monday, 28 September 2026

Time: 4:00pm to 5:00pm

Venue: Lecture Theater F (Leung Yat Sing Lecture Theater); near lift 25/26, HKUST

Abstract:

Disruptions and large-scale outages of communication infrastructure pose a significant threat to mission-critical systems and everyday life. Lessons learned from past natural disasters have revealed both critical vulnerabilities and promising approaches for improving resilience. This talk explores two complementary directions toward resilient next-generation communication systems.

The first direction focuses on edge computing in the evolution from 5G to 6G networks. Rather than relying exclusively on centralized cloud infrastructures, edge computing places computational resources closer to end users, enabling low-latency and computation-intensive services such as continuous machine learning model training. We present the concept of virtual edge computing (V-Edge), which bridges cloud, edge, and fog environments by virtualizing and integrating all available resources, including end-user devices. V-Edge enables cooperative computing and novel microservice architectures for future intelligent networks.

The second direction investigates cross-technology communication (CTC). Traditionally viewed as a coexistence challenge, heterogeneous wireless technologies can instead collaborate to improve network performance and resilience. By enabling communication across technologies such as WiFi, ZigBee, Bluetooth, LTE, and LoRa, CTC supports coordination among co-located networks. Combined with network coding, CTC opens new opportunities for designing high-throughput, low-latency, and resilient communication platforms by design.

Biography:

Falko Dressler is full professor and Chair for Telecommunication Networks at the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, TU Berlin. He received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the Dept. of Computer Science, University of Erlangen in 1998 and 2003 respectively. Dr. Dressler has been associate editor-in-chief for IEEE Trans. on Network Science and Engineering, IEEE Trans. on Mobile Computing and Elsevier Computer Communications as well as an editor for journals such as IEEE/ACM Trans. on Networking, Elsevier Ad Hoc Networks, and Elsevier Nano Communication Networks. He has been chairing conferences such as IEEE INFOCOM, ACM MobiSys, ACM MobiHoc, IEEE VNC, IEEE GLOBECOM. He authored the textbooks Self-Organization in Sensor and Actor Networks published by Wiley & Sons and Vehicular Networking published by Cambridge University Press. He has been an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer as well as an ACM Distinguished Speaker. Dr. Dressler is an IEEE Fellow, an ACM Fellow, and an AAIA Fellow. He is a member of the German National Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech). He has been serving on the IEEE COMSOC Conference Council and the ACM SIGMOBILE Executive Committee. His research objectives include next generation wireless communication systems in combination with distributed machine learning and edge computing for improved resiliency. Application domains include the internet of things, cyber-physical systems, and the internet of bio-nano-things.