As an associate professor in the Institute of Communication, Department of Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua University, Tao Xiaoming and her team are trying to find a key to solve the problem easily-introducing intelligent computing into traditional communication technology and expanding bandwidth requirements through basic research-and opening up more possibilities for you and me in the wireless world.
"In the future, the direction of communication technology has turned to broadband and multimedia, but the communication spectrum resources are facing an increasing shortage." Tao Xiaoming said.
Tao Xiaoming
1999, 18-year-old Tao Xiaoming is a freshman in the School of Communication Engineering of Xidian University. In this era when the Internet has just sprung up in China and even blue-screen mobile phones have not appeared, every scene in the sci-fi movie "The Matrix" makes Tao Xiaoming feel very cool: in a world with unlimited bandwidth, all the connections between the protagonist Neo and "The Matrix" can be transmitted at any time through wireless communication. At that time, there was only one thought left in Tao Xiaoming's mind: can technology develop like this in the future? If only I could realize such a future by myself.
The traditional wireless communication technology is based on data communication, including multimedia information such as words, images and sounds. Every time transmission is realized, a new communication connection must be established. If every transmission of wireless communication is regarded as a "meeting", then in the traditional communication technology, "both parties" have to "introduce themselves" again every time they meet, which also takes up the already scarce bandwidth resources.
Tao Xiaoming's work photo
In this regard, the traditional method to solve bandwidth in communication field is to compress and encode multimedia information in order to improve transmission efficiency. However, due to the rate-distortion performance, it is difficult to compress multimedia information once it reaches the critical point of distortion. Faced with the shackles of traditional methods, Tao Xiaoming found another way and chose a bold and imaginative new idea: introducing artificial intelligence technology into the field of wireless communication.
"The core innovation of intelligent collaborative computing in video communication is to integrate intelligent computing into traditional communication, find out the unknown information that really needs to be transmitted through calculation, and pre-store the known information at the transceiver to avoid repeated transmission, effectively achieving the purpose of saving communication transmission bandwidth." Tao Xiaoming explained, "It's like a stranger can be born once and cooked twice." Model-based intelligent computing "introduces mutual understanding" at the first connection, and does not need to "reintroduce" to occupy bandwidth at the next transmission.
Tao Xiaoming first proposed this innovative research direction 10 years ago, when the domestic mobile communication network was transitioning from 2G to 3G. As a new interdisciplinary subject, wireless multimedia communication is by no means a simple superposition of wireless communication and multimedia processing. Although machine learning developed rapidly at that time, the idea of using computational communication as a new method to realize face-to-face real-time communication is still considered difficult to realize internationally. The paper of Tao Xiaoming's team was also rejected. The opinion of the jury is that the research idea of this paper is different from the traditional method and it is difficult to be recognized.
Tao Xiaoming recalled. In the next two or three years, this research direction came to a dead end.
"Engaging in cutting-edge technology research is often like walking in a no-man's land. The road ahead is unknown and I don't know where the end is. " Tao Xiaoming said, "Although it sometimes makes people feel scared, it is normal to have twists and turns and difficulties." In stressful days, Tao Xiaoming did not give up easily. After several years of hard work, the team finally ushered in good news: experiments have proved that with the support of the new computing communication theory, the effect of video communication is several times less than that of traditional methods. Since then, the team has continuously published high-level papers, which has been highly recognized by international peers.
Recalling the self-driving force on the road of scientific research, Tao Xiaoming said with a smile that in addition to the charm and fun of scientific research itself, there is also the "initial heart" planted by the science fiction movie "The Matrix".
/kloc-Today, 0/9 years later, Tao Xiaoming remains steadfast. "In the field of communication, the significance of insisting on doing theoretical basic research lies in solving problems in essence, fundamentally creating the future and influencing the world."
Successful people always have their reasons.