Join Us for Our WiCI Webinar @ Wednesday Mar 4, 2025 11am CT

[Tallaq, Ali [E CPE]]

WiCI Webinar

Teleoperating Autonomous Vehicles over Commercial 5G Networks: Are We There Yet?

Professor Zhi-Li Zhang Distinguished Professor University of Minnesota

Date: Wednesday, March 4, 2026
Time: 11:00 AM CT

 

Register Now

 

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Abstract

Rolled out since 2019, the 5th generation (5G) wireless technology was envisaged to usher in a new era of cellular connectivity with significantly higher bandwidth, lower latency and better scalability to enable a variety of new industrial use cases beyond mobile broadband access for smart phone users. These new use cases include augmented, extended and mixed reality (AR/VR/XR) applications, tele-operations of autonomous systems such as vehicles, robots and drones, Internet-of-things (IoT) for smart manufacturing and precision agriculture. Now six years into the 5G era, has 5G delivered on these promises? With talks about 6G also heating up, what lessons can we learn from the successes and failures of 5G deployment?

In this talk we will start by providing an overview of the large-scale measurement studies of commercial 5G networks that we have conducted since 2019 in both the US and Europe.  Based on the measurement results, we will highlight several key improvements of 5G over 4G and discuss where 5G still falls short when it comes to support emerging applications that require both high bandwidth and low latency. Using teleoperations of autonomous vehicles (AVs) as a key 5G use case, we first identify the main application requirements and then provide a deep dive into the limitations of existing 5G networks from a measurement perspective, which sheds light on the importance to make 5G networks -- and more generally, the next-generation (NextG) networks – “vertical aware” (and applications “network-aware”.  Using our recently funded NSF Breaking Low Ideas Lab project, DRIVE-SAFE, as an example, we present some ideas on how to achieve these goals. We will conclude this talk by (re-)emphasizing the importance of wireless networking for future artificial intelligence (AI)-driven autonomous systems.

Biography

Zhi-Li Zhang is McKnight Distinguished University Professor and Qwest Chair Professor at Department of Computer Science & Engineering, University of Minnesota. Dr. Zhang’s research interests lie broadly in computer communication and networks, AI, cloud and cyber-physical systems and emerging applications that they enable. His past research was centered on measurement, modeling, design and development of service-oriented Internet architectures, scalable quality-of-service (QoS) solutions, resilient routing and large-scale multimedia content distribution systems, with the goal to enhance Internet service availability, reliability, manageability, security, economic viability and user quality-of-experience. His current research focuses on 5G and next-generation wireless networks, emerging mobile applications and (human-supervised) autonomous systems such as autonomous vehicles (with remote and cooperative driving capabilities), advanced air mobility, robotics, smart manufacturing/agriculture as well as networking/systems for AI and AI for networking/systems. Dr. Zhang's research has been supported by NSF, DoD, USDOT, and Industry. He is the UMN Principal PI for the USDOT-funded Center for Connected and Automated Transportation (CCAT) led by the University of Michigan. He is the lead PI for the NSF CISE Large Project on Networking, Edge & AI Support for Teleoperations of Connected & Autonomous Vehicles (CAV) and for the NSF TIP "Breaking Low Latency" Ideas Lab Project on 5G/NextG Support for Remote and Cooperative Driving. He has collaborated with Amazon, AT&T, Cisco, Ericsson, General Motors, InterDigital, John Deere, Meta, Microsoft, and Nokia, among others. Some of these industrial collaborations have resulted in joint patents and research outcomes incorporated in production systems. Dr. Zhang has published more than 350 journal, conference and workshop papers.  Dr. Zhang has received several honors for his research, including several Best Paper Awards. He is a Fellow of IEEE.

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The Center for Wireless, Communities and Innovation (WiCI) at Iowa State University focuses on advancing the frontiers of mission-critical wireless at the far edge, as well as the platform and practice of research, education, innovation, and community empowerment.

The WiCI seminar series offers an open forum for interdisciplinary dialogues on the technical, social, economic, and policy dimensions of far-edge wireless innovation. If you are interested in sharing your insights through a WiCI seminar or have any questions/suggestions about the seminar series, please feel free to contact us at wic...@iastate.edu.