I moved to the Department of Electronic Engineering at Tsinghua University in 2021. This website has stopped updating since July 2021. Please find my latest infomation at the new Website.


Biography

Dr. Zhi Sun received the Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA, in 2011, under the guidance of Prof. Ian F. Akyildiz. Prior to that, he received the M.S. degree in Electronic Engineering from Tsinghua University and the B.S. degree in Telecommunications Engineering from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT), respectively.

Currently, Dr. Sun is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York, which he joined in August 2012 as Assistant Professor. Prior to that, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Broadband Wireless Networking Laboratory at Georgia Institute of Technology. Dr. Sun is a senior member of IEEE.


Selected Honors and Awards

  • UB Exceptional Scholar - Young Investigator Award, University at Buffalo, 2017.
  • NSF CAREER Award, National Science Foundation, 2017.
  • Best Demo Award, IEEE Infocom, 2017.
  • Best Paper Award, IEEE Globecom, 2010.
  • Researcher of the Year Award, BWN Lab, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009.
  • Outstanding Graduate Award, Tsinghua University, 2007.


Research Interests

    Experiments with metamaterial-enhanced magnetic induction antennas and reconfigurable reflector array. People in the photo (from left to right): Xin Tan, Zhi Sun, Hongzhi Guo. Photo courtesy of The Onion Studio.


  • Wireless Communication and Networking in Extreme Environments: channel modeling, physical and media access layer solutions, antenna design, network performance modeling and optimization, coordination of energy harvesting, battery management, real-time control and communications, and the systems-level implementation for wireless networks in underground, underwater, and confined environments (e.g. tunnels and pipelines).
  • Metamaterial Inspried Networking: design and model the magnetic induction wireless communications with metamaterial enhancements, metamaterial design and fabrication in microwave band for wireless communication applications, metamaterial inspried networking control algorithms.
  • Wireless Physical-Layer Identification: design and implement efficient and reliable wireless device identification strategies based on physical-layer properties, including device hardware imperfection, wireless channel characteristics, and injectable device fingerprints.
  • Wireless Intra-Body Networks: modeling EM wave propagations in intra-body environments, deployment strategy and topology control, network protocol design.
  • Wireless Underground Sensor Networks and Cyber Physical Systems:
    • Real Time and In-Situ Monitoring for Enhanced Oil Recovery
    • Underground Mine Disaster Prevention & Survivor Rescue
    • Underground Infrustructure Fault Detection and Maintainence
    • Concealed Border Patrol & Intrusion Detection
    • Intelligent Traffic & Heavy Truck Detection
    • Intelligent Agoriculture & Irrigation
    • Real-Time Sandstorm Monitoring
  • 60 GHz mmWave Infrastructure Development: mmWave reconfigurable reflector array design and applications, cross-layer design for indoor mmWave communications.