News

• [Wireless Networking] Our paper "AeroEcho: Towards Agricultural Low-power Wide-area Backscatter with Aerial Excitation Source" is accepted by IEEE INFOCOM 2025. Congratulations to Yidong!
• [Edge ML] Our paper "GeoFL: A Framework for Efficient Geo-Distributed Cross-Device Federated Learning" is accepted by IEEE INFOCOM 2025. Congratulations to Maolin!
• [Wireless Sensing] Our paper "Adonis: Neural-enhanced Fine-grained Leaf Wetness Sensing with Efficient mmWave Imaging" is accepted by IEEE INFOCOM 2025. Congratulations to Yimeng!
• [Media Report] My NSF CAREER Award has been highlighted in several reports of MSU Engineering Communications, MSU Today, and Spartan Community Letter . Go Green!
• [Service] Invited to be a TPC member of ACM SenSys 2025
• [Award] Gen Li won the Travel Grant of SenSys 2024. Congratulation to Gen.
• [Award] Yidong Ren and Maolin Gan won the Travel Grant of MobiCom 2024. Congratulation to Yidong and Maolin.
• [Service] Invited to be a TPC member of ACM MobiSys 2025
• [Service] Invited to be a TPC member of IEEE DySPAN 2025
• [Mobile Security] Our paper "PiezoBud: A Piezo-Aided Secure Earbud with Practical Speaker Authentication" is accepted by ACM SenSys 2024. Congratulations to Gen!
• [Wireless Sensing] Our paper "Hydra: Accurate Multi-Modal Leaf Wetness Sensing with mm-Wave and Camera Fusion" is accepted by ACM MobiCom 2024. Congratulations to Yimeng!
• [Wireless Networking] Our papers "SateRIoT" and "LoRaTrimmer" are accepted by ACM MobiCom 2024. Congratulations to Yidong and Jialuo!
• [Group] Jingkai Lin, working on LoRa, officially joins our group this fall. Welcome Jingkai!
• [Award] Yidong Ren won the Travel Grant of MobiSys 2024. Congratulation to Yidong.
• [Service] Invited to be the TPC Co-Chair of IEEE ICPADS 2024
• [Service] Invited to be the Track TPC Co-Chair for the "Wireless\Mobile Sensing and Networking" track of IEEE MSN 2024
• [Award] I won NSF CAREER Award entitled "LoRa Enabled Space-air-ground Integrated Networks for Next-Generation Agricultural IoT". Thank NSF for the support.
• [Service] Invited to be a TPC member of ACM SenSys 2024
• [Wireless Networking] Our paper "ChirpTransformer: Versatile LoRa Encoding for Low-power Wide-area IoT" is accepted by ACM MobiSys 2024. Congratulations to Yidong Ren and Chenning Li!
• [Mobile Security] A collaboration paper "Eye of Sauron: Long-Range Hidden Spy Camera Detection and Positioing with Inbuilt Memory EM Radiation" is accepted by USENIX Security 2024. Congratulations to Daibo Liu!
• [Service] Invited to be a TPC member of IEEE MASS 2024
• [Service] Invited to be a TPC member of IEEE ICDCS 2024.
• [EIN Group] Manni Liu and Li Liu have successfully passed their Ph.D dissertation defense. Congratulations.
• [Wireless Networking] Our paper "Demeter: Reliable Cross-soil LPWAN with Low-cost Signal Polarization Alignment" is accepted by ACM MobiCom 2024. Congratulations to Yidong Ren!

Edge Intelligence and Networking (EIN) Group [Group Members]

• FedIoT: Efficient and Scalable Federated Learning systems for IoT. (2021 - Present)
• FarmEye: A large-scale agriclture data collection and analysis system with LoRa and AI. (2021 - Present)
• DeepSensing: Deep Neural Network augmented RF sensing systems. (2020 - Present)
• MobileSEC: Mobile system security and privacy ralted to cameras and microphones. (2020 - Present)
• IndoorSys: Practical tracking systems in indoor environments with mobile devices and RF infrastrucutres. (2019 - 2022)
• LoSee: A wide-area vehicle tracking system with LoRa. (2018 - 2020)
• BatteryLink: A product-cycle management system for lead batteries. (2016 - 2019)
• OilNet: A high speed mesh back-bone network for wild oil fields. (2014 - 2016)
• CitySee: A long-term city-wide urban sensing system for Carbon balance evaluation and environmental surveillance. (2012 - 2014)
• GreenOrbs: A long-term kilo-scale wireless sensor network system in the vast forest. (2009 - 2012)

• CAREER: LoRa Enabled Space-air-ground Integrated Networks for Next-Generation Agricultural IoT. 2024 - 2029.
• Collaborative Research: NeTS: Medium: Towards High-Performing LoRa with Embedded Intelligence on the Edge (Leading PI). 2023 - 2027. [Project Website]
• CNS Core: Small: Collaborative: Coalescent Computing - New Theory, Mechanism and Platform for Adaptive Edge Computing. 2019 - 2022.

I am recruting motivated PhD students who share the same research interests with us.

Surveys, Highlights, and Benchmarks

• Shakhrul Iman Siam, Hyunho Ahn, Li Liu, Samiul Alam, Hui Shen, Zhichao Cao, Ness Shroff, Bhaskar Krishnamachari, Mani Srivastava, and Mi Zhang.
  Artificial Intelligence of Things: A Survey. ACM TOSN, (2024).
  [PDF]
• Samiul Alam, Tuo Zhang, Tiantian Feng, Hui Shen, Zhichao Cao, Dong Zhao, JeongGil Ko, Kiran Somasundaram, Shrikanth S. Narayanan, Salman Avestimehr, and Mi Zhang.
  FedAIoT: A Federated Learning Benchmark for Artificial Intelligence of Things. Journal of Data-centric Machine Learning Research (DMLR), (2024).
  [PDF]
• Jialuo Du, Yidong Ren, Mi Zhang, Yunhao Liu, and Zhichao Cao.
  NELoRa-Bench: A Benchmark for Neural-Enhanced LoRa Demodulation. ML4IoT Workshop on ICLR 2023.
  [PDF]
• Chenning Li, Hanqing Guo, Shuai Tong, Zhichao Cao, Mi Zhang, Qiben Yan, Li Xiao, Jiliang Wang, and Yunhao Liu.
  NELoRa: Neural-enhanced Demodulation for Low-Power WANs. ACM SIGMOBILE GetMobile, (Sep, 2022). (SenSys'21 Best Paper)
  [PDF]
• Chenning Li, and Zhichao Cao.
  LoRa Networking Techniques for Large-scale and Long-term IoT: A Down-to-top Survey. ACM Computing Survey (CSUR) 55(3):52, (2022).
  [PDF]
• Chenning Li, Zhichao Cao, and Yunhao Liu.
  Deep AI Enabled Ubiquitous Wireless Sensing: A Survey. ACM Computing Survey (CSUR) 54(2):32, (2021).
  [PDF]
• Nikolay Ivanov, Chenning Li, Qiben Yan, Zhiyuan Sun, Zhichao Cao, and Xiapu Luo.
  Security Threat Mitigation for Smart Contracts: A Comprehensive Survey. ACM Computing Survey (CSUR) 55(14):326, (2023).
  [PDF]

Selected Publications [Full List]

Wireless Networking

• Yidong Ren, Amalinda Gamage, Li Liu, Mo Li, Shigang Chen, Younsuk Dong, and Zhichao Cao.
  SateRIoT: High-performance Ground-Space Networking for Rural IoT MobiCom 2024.
  [PDF]
• Jialuo Du, Yunhao Liu, Yidong Ren, Li Liu, and Zhichao Cao.
  LoRaTrimmer: Optimal Energy Condensation with Chirp Trimming for LoRa Weak Signal Decoding. MobiCom 2024.
  [PDF]
• Chenning Li*, Yidong Ren*, Shuai Tong, Shakhrul Iman Siam, Mi Zhang, Jiliang Wang, Yunhao Liu and Zhichao Cao. (*Co-primary author)
  ChirpTransformer: Versatile LoRa Encoding for Low-power Wide-area IoT. MobiSys 2024.
  [PDF]
• Yidong Ren, Wei Sun, Jialuo Du, Huaili Zeng, Younsuk Dong, Mi Zhang, Shigang Chen, Yunhao Liu, Tianxing Li, and Zhichao Cao.
  Demeter: Reliable Cross-soil LPWAN with Low-cost Signal Polarization Alignment. MobiCom 2024.
  [PDF]

ML/Edge System

• Chenning Li, Xiao Zeng, Mi Zhang, and Zhichao Cao.
  PyramidFL: A Fine-grained Client Selection Framework for Efficient Federated Learning. MobiCom 2022.
  [PDF]

Mobile Security/Application

• Shichen Zhang, Qijun Wang, Maolin Gan, Zhichao Cao, and Huacheng Zeng.
  RadSee: See Your Handwriting Through Walls Using FMCW Radar. NDSS 2025.
  [PDF]
• Gen Li*, Huaili Zeng*, Hanqing Guo, Yidong Ren, Aiden Dixon, Zhichao Cao, and Tianxing Li. (*Co-primary author)
  PiezoBud: A Piezo-Aided Secure Earbud with Practical Speaker Authentication. ACM SenSys 2024.
  [PDF]
• Gen Li, Zhichao Cao, and Tianxing Li.
  EchoAttack: Practical Inaudible Attacks To Smart Earbuds. MobiSys 2023.
  [PDF]

Wireless and Multi-Modality Sensing

• Yimeng Liu, Maolin Gan, Huaili Zeng, Li Liu, Younsuk Dong, and Zhichao Cao.
  Hydra: Accurate Multi-Modal Leaf Wetness Sensing with mm-Wave and Camera Fusion. MobiCom 2024.
  [PDF]
• Maolin Gan, Yimeng Liu, Chenshu Wu, Younsuk Dong, Huacheng Zeng, and Zhichao Cao.
  Poster: mmLeaf: Versatile Leaf Wetness Detection via mmWave Sensing. MobiSys 2023.
  [PDF]
• Li Liu, Zhichao Cao, and Tianxing Li.
  FaceTouch: Practical Face Touch Detection with a Multimodal Wearable System for Epidemiological Surveillance. IoTDI 2023.
  [PDF]

Teaching

• Fall 2020/Spring 2021, 2022, 2023, CSE-220, Programming in C
• Spring 2020/Fall 2021, 2022, 2023, CSE-891, AIoT: Artificial Intelligence in the Edge
• Spring 2024, CSE-410, Operating System

Codes and Datasets

• L² Implementation in TinyOS.
  
  [ZIP]
• Chase Implementation in TinyOS.
  
  [ZIP]
• NELoRa codes and datasets.
  
  [Link]
• CurvingLoRa codes and datasets.
  
  [Link]
• PyramidFL codes and datasets.
  
  [Link]
• WiSIA: Wi-Fi imagings datasets.
  
  [Link]

Quote

- Heraclitus, Greek philosopher (540 BC - 480 BC)