Statement of Research Interests
Statement of Research Interests
Research and scholarship have always been my passion. Since my early education, I
was motivated to acquire a profound understanding of the concepts of any topic that I
learnt. That zeal fuelled my desire to pursue a career in research and teaching and I set
for myself the challenge to achieve a PhD degree from a highly reputable institution
in the UK. Consequently, throughout my education, I passed all of my examinations
with distinction, and in recognition of these academic achievements, I was awarded
with the prestigious Presidential Award in Pakistan, among others.
In recognition of my achievement of securing all five gold medals in the BSc
Electrical Engineering degree from the University of Engineering and Technology,
Pakistan, I was awarded a full scholarship (CM Punjab Scholarship) to study in the
UK where I obtained my MSc degree with distinction from Imperial College, London.
Consequently, I was awarded a bursary by the Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Department at Imperial and later the Overseas Research Studentship (ORS) Award by
Universities UK to pursue a PhD degree in Electrical Engineering at Imperial College,
London.
Within the broad field of Electrical Engineering, I have specialized in Wireless
Communication Systems. My PhD thesis is entitled Resource allocation for
cooperative broadcasting in wireless communication networks and it proposes some
practical approaches for Interference Management and Channel Coding for reliable
communication on the links with interference limited performance. The proposals are
analyzed and compared with the fundamental information theoretic limits derived for
such systems.
The problem of communication over a link is subdivided into several conceptual
layers. These layers are organized as a widely used stack for communication system
design with the highest layers dealing with application related problems (presenting a
more abstract view of the problem) and the lower layer of the stack related to more
detailed physical method of enabling the communication signalling. The lower-most
layer, called the physical layer, focuses on the methods and techniques to transmit
data over a physical channel (e.g. wire, air or optical fibre); my research largely
focuses on this physical layer. My current and future research has two main facets: the
theoretical performance limits of communication systems and the practical methods to
design the communication systems that perform close to these fundamental limits.
I started my post-doctoral research as a Research Fellow at the Centre for
Communication Systems Research at the University of Surrey, UK. This research was
funded by the Mobile Virtual Centre of Excellence (MVCE) which is a consortium of
leading industrial players in the field of communication and select universities in the
UK. I had the chance of conducting some fundamental theoretical research under the
guidelines of the key industrial players in the field of mobile communication who
helped to steer the direction of my research and its objectives. The main topic of this
research was ‘Fundamental Capacity Limits for Wireless Cellular Networks’. The
objective was to mathematically derive the fundamental capacity limits of wireless
cellular systems and compare the performance of the current generation of cellular
systems against these fundamental limits. This work was recently concluded with
Dr Muhammad Ali Imran
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Statement of Research Interests
some key results published in the leading IEEE journals and seven high-profile
conference proceedings (PIMRC, SPAWC, ISWCS, VTC, ICC, AICT and
ChinaCOM)1.
The main idea pursued in my recent research activities was to consider the
cooperation between the base stations in order to provide better service to the mobile
terminals in an area. This cooperation converts the interference signals from an
unwanted energy to a useful form of redundancy that enhances performance. An
analogy that can be presented here is the comparison of the performance of competing
members and cooperating members of a team aiming to solve the same problem.
When the members cooperate, they can convert their conflicts of interest into useful
duplications of resources that enable the team to perform the tasks more efficiently.
Similarly, in the case of a cellular system, the base stations act as the members of the
team; a more logical approach is to enable them to cooperate in order to perform the
shared goal of serving the users. This cooperation, however, has a high cost: reliable
and high-capacity connection between the base stations. Feasibility of such
connectivity is still an area of active research.
During the course of research, I undertook the organisation of an international
technical workshop at the University of Surrey, where leading researchers in the area
of Information Theory and Communications were invited to share their views and
recent findings related to the topic. In addition to the publications in research journals
and conferences, the work was presented to the industrial partners (BBC, BT, Huawei,
Nortel, Nokia2, Siemens2 and Vodafone) in several steering committee meetings and
also in the form of well-structured deliverable reports and executive summaries1.
The insights I have gained from my post-doctoral research have widened my
understanding and vision for the future communication systems and the need for
ubiquitous access to data services and information for all users. I am primarily
interested in finding the performance limits for the emerging communication systems
and technologies and also the practical approaches that enable us to operate the real
world systems with their performance close to the fundamental limits. As a result, I
become involved in a European Union funded research program that will look at the
algorithms, methods and approaches to enhance the performance of the reconfigurable
networks by enabling agile use of spectrum. In addition to the aforementioned ideas
of cooperation for interference management, this project aims at more efficient
spectrum sharing as compared to static spectrum partitioning between different
technologies. This is one of the main features of the futuristic wireless communication
technology called Cognitive Radio. The sharing of available radio spectrum within all
users of the spectrum over time and space is a promising approach that can enhance
the performance of future communication systems.
Under this research project I am looking at several techniques of cooperation between
the different players that comprise a communication network. A communication
network can be composed of three main players: the transmitter, the receiver and any
intermediary devices that may help to relay the signals from the transmitter to the
receivers. Several techniques that enable cooperation between some or all of these
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2
List of publications is provided with the application. It also lists the key presentations and reports.
Latterly, Nokia Siemens Networks
Dr Muhammad Ali Imran
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Statement of Research Interests
players enable better performance of the system. I am currently engaged in
developing suitable models of cooperative communication networks and the
derivation and evaluation of the fundamental capacity limits using the mathematical
techniques and definitions developed under the branch of Information Theory. I am
also involved in simulating the algorithms and methods that will work under real
world assumptions but are designed on the theoretical principles suggested by the
Information Theory. This work also includes the investigation of feasibility of
efficient dynamic spectrum sharing and enabling more efficient reuse of the scarce
resource of available radio spectrum.
Furthermore, I am also responsible for writing the proposals for several future
research projects. One of these projects addresses the worldwide concerns for the
environment. Communication systems have made their own contribution to pollution
in the world and the greenhouse effect. The research in the future communication
systems shall aim to reduce the carbon footprint of the existing and future
communication systems. To achieve this aim, the problem of communication system
design shall be re-visited with the objective of energy efficiency. The current system
looks at the energy efficiency of the mobile user terminal which is connected to a
limited energy source (a battery) while paying less attention to the energy efficiency
of the fixed terminal end (e.g. the base station) since it is connected to a wired energy
source. In my future research, I intend to look at the energy efficient design of the
cellular and ad hoc communication systems as a whole.
Recent natural disasters and the unfortunate terrorist attacks in the world and their
associated human and financial losses have raised an awareness among researchers, of
the need to more efficiently combat such situations. Effective and reliable
communication under these situations will play an important and effective role in
potentially saving human life and reducing losses. One of my future research goals is
to look at the techniques and methods that will enable fast-deployable, reliable and
energy-efficient communication systems that can cope with the demand of necessary
and urgent communication needs in the untoward events of catastrophes, natural
disasters and/or terror attacks. This core communication network will be of prime
importance for the government and civil services with an aim of saving the lives and
properties of people and maintaining public order in the event of such disasters.
Overall, I feel motivated to conduct future research in the fundamental as well as
practical aspects of the physical layer of the communication systems and in this
regard I have found my research centre (Centre for Communication Systems Research
- CCSR) a very conducive and supporting environment. The support accorded to me
by my line management and colleagues has helped me enormously in meeting my
current research goals, and has given me great strength and motivation to pursue my
future objectives.
I have also been involved in the supervision of seven PhD candidates and four MSc
dissertation students to date while simultaneously pursuing my own research.
Supervising the research and supporting the activities of students has always provided
an opportunity of mutual benefit, one where I have been enabled to further enhance
my research goals and achieve my research objectives with a higher vision.
Dr Muhammad Ali Imran
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