Peng Hu

• [May. 2025]

  • A warm welcome to our summer students, Danika and Rodrigo — we're excited to have you join the AEL lab!

• [Apr. 2025]

  • Congratulations to the capstone project teams (G04 and G07) on their completion of the research on Security and Resilience on NTN & LEO Satellite Network Measurements! Special thanks to the review committee members! 🚀 🎉

  • I am glad to share my article on "Lunar PNT: Enabling Sustainable Infrastructure for Lunar Missions" was published! Special thanks to the support from the Open Lunar Foundation! 🌗 

• [Mar. 2025]

  • Congratulations on the acceptance of our paper, "Toward Onboard AI-Enabled Solutions to Space Object Detection for Space Sustainability," at the 18th International Conference on Space Operations (SpaceOps 2025)! 

  • Our AEL lab is keen to solve the challenges in space sustainability, security, and resilience with Embedded and Edge AI! 🌳🚀

  • So glad to have supported our Women in Engineering (WIE) event on campus on behalf of the IEEE Winnipeg Section team! ⚙️

• [Feb. 2025]

  • I'm trilled to be part of the organizing committee of the IEEE WiSEE 2025, Oct 13-15, Halifax, Canada! 

• [Jan. 2025]

  • I am truly honoured to be selected as a 2025 Fellow at Open Lunar and excited for our future lunar initiatives!

  • Welcome, Seth Moule, to our research team! We're excited to have you on board!

  • I am glad to offer the graduate course on "ECE 7650: Topics in Space-Air-Ground Integrated Networks" for Winter 2025, and also the new Introduction to 6G course online!

• [Dec. 2024]

  • We are thrilled to present the world's first satellite object detection dataset and new hybrid ViT models at WiSEE 2024! See our dataset, paper, and source code. 

  • Congratulations, Vincent Zhang, on successfully completing the thesis entitled "Computer Vision for Space Sustainability and Resilient Satellite Internet"!

• [Nov. 2024]

  • I am deeply honored to be elected as the IEEE Winnipeg Section Chair for 2025–2026!

  • I am thrilled to be awarded the Research Manitoba Innovation Proof-of-Concept grant!

• [Oct. 2024]

  • Our paper entitled "An Efficient and Generalizable Transfer Learning Method for Weather Condition Detection on Ground Terminals" was accepted by IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems!

  • I was so glad to have helped with the IEEEXtreme 2024 student competitions on Oct. 26th at the UM! Thanks for Prof. Ian Jeffrey's excellent organization!

  • IEEE FNWF - Symposium on Non-terrestrial Communications in Future Networks was successfully held on Oct. 15th in Dubai, UAE! Special thanks to Prof. Giovanni Giambene, Prof. Gunes Karabulut-Kurt, and all authors!

• [Sep. 2024]

  • I'd like to welcome Xin, Justin, Muhammad, and Ken to join our research teams!

  • I am honoured to have served as the Applied Sciences Subcommittee Chair of the DRI EDIA (Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Accessibility ) Champions Program Merit Review Committee. 

• [Aug. 2024]

  • I am delighted to serve on the thesis committee for Bohan Zhang at the University of Waterloo, who successfully completed his Master's thesis presentation on "Mitigating Signalling Storms in 5G" on August 12th! 

• [Jul. 2024]

  • 🛰️ 🏆 Congratulations to all the winners of the 2024 student competition on "Future 6G NTN Systems", supported by the IEEE ComSoc - Innovation Project!

  • Our survey paper on "UAV-Assisted Space-Air-Ground Integrated Networks: A Technical Review of Recent Learning Algorithms" has been accepted by the IEEE Open Journal of Vehicular Technology!

• [Jun. 2024]

  • I am glad to have presented our paper entitled "Secure and Efficient Group Handover Protocol in 5G Non-Terrestrial Networks ", attended the IEEE ComSoc SSC TC meeting, and chaired the SSC session on AI for Satellite Communication and the 6GSatComNet Workshop session at IEEE ICC 2024 in Denver!

• [May 2024]

  • A warm to my students Mana, Christian, and Xiang to be on board!

  • Call for Submissions: Challenge on “Future 6G NTN Systems” supported by the IEEE ComSoc – Innovation Project program, hosted by the Sixth International Conference on Communications, Signal Processing, and their Applications (ICCSPA’24). Visit https://2024.iccspa.org/comsoc-challenge/ for more details.

• [Feb. - Apr. 2024]

  • Call for Free Participation: I am excited to announce the upcoming virtual workshop on "LEO Satellites & Systems and Space Environment" will take place on May 2nd, 2024, at 11 AM EDT (New York/Toronto time) and is open for free registration!  (Workshop webpage: https://leosats.ieee.org/workshops/space-environment-workshop; Registration link:  http://tiny.cc/leo-may2024)

  • Call for Papers: Satellite and Space Communications track, 2024 IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM), 8–12 Dec. 2024, Cape Town, South Africa.  Submission link: https://edas.info/N31420 

• [Jan. 2024]

  • A warm to my student Yifan to be on board!

  • Our joint paper titled "Secure and Efficient Group Handover Protocol in 5G Non-Terrestrial Networks" was accepted by IEEE ICC 2024!  (Acceptance rate < 40%)

  • Call for Papers: The 4th Workshop on Satellite Mega-Constellations in the 6G Era (6GSatComNet'24), held in conjunction with IEEE ICC 2024, 9–13 June 2024 // Denver, CO, USA.  (Due on Feb 4th, 2024)

• [Nov. 2023]

  • It was great to help with the successful workshop on the IEEE LEO Satellites & Systems “LEO Ground Stations and Ground Station Services” as a co-host on Nov. 30th!

  • Our collaborative paper titled "Free-Space Optical (FSO) Satellite Networks Performance Analysis: Transmission Power, Latency, and Outage Probability" was accepted by the IEEE Open Journal of Vehicular Technology!

• [Sep./Oct. 2023]

  • A warm welcome to my student Vincent to be on board!

  • Our collaborative paper titled "Latency versus Transmission Power Trade-off in Free-Space Optical (FSO) Satellite Networks with Multiple Inter-Continental Connections" was published by the IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society!

  • I am so glad to give a keynote at the IEEE PIMRC 2023 Special Session on "The Role of Non-terrestrial Networks on 6G Communications: State-of-the-Art and Challenges" on September 6th, 2023. 

  • Our previous research on ML for satellite anomaly detection has been reported by the University of Waterloo News!

I currently have positions for graduate students and research assistants: 

• Winter 2026 intake: Ph.D. students (fully funded), Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Manitoba. 

  • Application Deadline: June 1 (international) & September 1 (Canadian/US); check here for more info

• Research Assistants/Volunteers: Upper-year undergraduate students with real passion for solving the emerging challenges, research experience, and good GPA (>= 3.2 out of 4.5) and math, computer science, or electrical/computer/mechanical engineering backgrounds. 

Interested students are encouraged to contact me directly with (1) a CV (including educational background, research/industry experience, and publications if applicable), (2) a cover letter (stating your research interests and experience), and (3) copies of transcripts. Please understand that only students who can be a good fit will be contacted.

Background of Prospective Students

Students are generally expected to have self-motivated problem-solving skills and a commitment to a high standard of ethics (please see IEEE Code of Ethics and ACM Code of Ethics). In addition to the University graduate program's requirements, students are not required to have domain knowledge of specific research projects but are expected to have a relevant background in engineering/science fields with good experience in the areas of (1) data communication/networks, (2) embedded/accelerator systems, (3) ML or computer vision with data analytics and programming skills (in C/C++ and Python), or (4) optimization (in math/science/engineering contexts). Experience in multiple areas with practical experience is considered an asset. 

I strive to offer successful training with a solid commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) to students and access to advanced platforms for studies and academic/industry jobs. Students will have opportunities to be supported to publish, attend well-ranked academic events, and interact with leading research/industry communities. 

EDI Resources

With a commitment to a high standard of EDI for mentorship, Prof. Hu's team, including students and research fellows, are encouraged to get EDI training from the University's Equity Office and NSERC. EDI resources will be introduced to students at the pre-research discussion. 

• [Oct. 2024] "Research Manitoba invests over $740K for Innovation Proof of Concept grants", Research Manitoba news. 

• [Sep. 2023] "Using machine learning to close Canada’s digital divide - Researchers use AI to detect potential problems with satellites before they happen", University of Waterloo news. 

• [Dec. 2022] Internet Society's Fellowship Symposium presentation: "Rights and Responsibilities of Internet Service Providers and Platforms: A Study of Surveillance, Resilience, and Digital Content." https://www.linkedin.com/posts/internet-society_meet-more-of-our-2022-mid-career-fellows-activity-6986767256634478592-zD8A/?originalSubdomain=ug 

• [Dec. 2022] Waterloo and NRC celebrate the opening of innovation hub: https://uwaterloo.ca/research/news/waterloo-and-nrc-celebrate-opening-innovation-hub 

• [Dec. 2021] Waterloo and NRC reaffirm partnership on future-facing technology: https://uwaterloo.ca/news/university-relations/waterloo-and-nrc-reaffirm-partnership-future-facing 

• [Nov. 2020] Waterloo Mathematics: using ML technologies to improve internet access for remote & rural communities in Canada... https://twitter.com/waterloomath/status/1332018788707942402 

• [Aug. 2018] Carleton University: Talk by Prof. Peng Hu – From Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks to Industrial Internet of Things: Some Network Architectural Challenges: https://carleton.ca/internetofthings/cu-events/from-industrial-wireless-sensor-networks-to-industrial-internet-of-things-some-network-architectural-challenges/ 

• [Nov. 2015] Wireless Technology Feature: Managing risk in the nuclear industry. Canadian Electronics. 2015.