Ngô Khắc Hoàng (first left) and other representatives at the Heidelberg Science Forum in 2022. — Photo courtesy of Hoàng

HÀ NỘI — From his curiosity and special love for phones, Ngô Khắc Hoàng was determined to pursue research on the Internet of Things (IoT).

Hoàng, 33, has had dozens of articles of research published in prestigious international scientific journals and won scores of global awards, reported the Tiền Phong newspaper.

Regarding his journey to scientific research, Dr. Hoàng said, “I still remember the excitement feeling when my family first installed a landline phone. It was like a window opening to the outside world. The mobile phone is even more magical, because of its ability to connect people everywhere.”

That curiosity led him to the Electronics and Telecommunications Faculty at the Việt Nam National University – University of Engineering and Technology (VNU-UET).

“Here, I not only learned theoretical knowledge, but also had the opportunity to participate in research projects,” he said.

Hoàng first studied for his bachelor's degree, then continued to have valedictorian for his master's degree in 2016 and his doctorate in 2020 for Radio Communications at the University of Paris-Saclay in France – one of the world's leading universities in science and technology.

He did postdoctoral research at the Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden.

He is currently an assistant professor at the Linkping University, one of Sweden's leading academic institutions, with over 40,000 students.

The telecommunications research group here is particularly strong, with many contributions to the new generation of telecommunications technologies, such as the massive MIMO technology using a huge number of antennas.

Becoming an assistant professor at the university and being part of the research group is a recognition of the efforts, determination and scientific imprint of the young man from Việt Nam.

Here, Hoàng has many opportunities for research, training, cooperation and development in the field of information transmission and processing.

He is responsible for building research projects and applying for funding to develop the research group. He also teaches courses for graduate students in wireless communications, information theory and machine learning.

Hoàng has made his mark in the scientific community with one international patent, nine scientific articles published in international scientific journals, eight of them as the main author, two excellent scientific reports at international conferences, 25 scientific reports published in full text in the proceedings of international conferences and seminars, two accepted international scientific cooperation topics, in addition to four international and five national awards.

Recently, he was one of ten young doctors to receive the Golden Globe Science and Technology Award presented by the Central Youth Union.

“As a young intellectual studying and working abroad, what makes me confident and proud in front of international friends is that I carry within me the Vietnamese cultural identity and the spirit of continuous learning,” said Hoàng.

“The qualities that I have cultivated in Việt Nam such as perseverance, not being afraid of difficulties and the ability to listen have helped me a lot in my journey to conquer the path of scientific research. Everyone has their own strengths and uniqueness, the important thing is to have an open mind, ready to accept new things to become a global citizen,” he said.

Always towards homeland

Hoàng’s master thesis on caching techniques helps reduce the load on network systems by storing content close to the user.

The results led to his first scientific papers at international conferences, and one article in a leading journal in the field.

His doctoral thesis on channel-agnostic wireless communications, conducted jointly at the CentraleSupélec and Huawei's research centre in Paris, received an international patent.

The research topic opened a new direction in the design of wireless transceivers, which is an important foundation for the development of advanced telecommunications systems, especially in the era of 5G and IoT networks.

His achievements as a doctoral student motivated him to pursue an academic research path, with a research direction on IoT.

Hoàng believes that in the future, communication will not only take place between people via phones but also between sensors, devices and machines in systems. These devices continuously collect and exchange data with each other and with central processors to establish intelligent behaviours.

His latest work was published in the prestigious journal IEEE Transactions on Information Theory on random multiple access for IoT.

Hoàng said that multiple access was one of the core issues of wireless communication, allowing many devices to be served at the same time. Meanwhile, the traditional solution is to divide the devices into independent units of resources. However, in the IoT system with a huge number of devices and operating randomly, this solution is not feasible. Therefore, the next generation of multiple access needs to allow many devices to send signals at the same time, accept interference and resolve it effectively so that signals from different users can still be decoded.

“This study analyses the energy efficiency limits of such a large multi-access system. We answer the question: when hundreds of devices, which are unknown in identity and number, transmit simultaneously on a finite resource unit, what is the minimum energy level to achieve a given reliability,” said Hoàng.

Notably, this model is compatible with real IoT systems.

Hoàng always looks back to Việt Nam and aspires to inspire young people to do scientific research.

Currently, he is also a part-time lecturer at the Advanced Institute of Engineering and Technology (AVITECH) under the VNU-UET.

He is also one of the founding members and administrators of telecom-vn – a Facebook group for uniting young Vietnamese researchers in the field of telecommunications.

The group regularly shares information and organises seminars on new research topics. — VNS