"Beijing's most beautiful scientific and technological worker" Peng Mugen: In the 6G era, the field of intelligent unmanned bodies must be developed

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by, and that has been the one that has decided the path of my life.” Poet Robert Frost wrote in the poem "The Road Not Taken."

For Peng Mugen, executive dean of the School of Information and Communication Engineering at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, he has chosen "the road less traveled" many times and achieved success by "finding another path".

Since entering the field of mobile communications in 2000, he has been committed to the research of sophisticated base stations and intelligent wireless networking for mobile communications systems in densely populated areas, promoting "3G breakthroughs, 4G parallel running, and 5G leadership", and has provided my country's independently developed dense wireless network technology has become an international mainstream and has contributed to changing the world's communications landscape. He believes that in the 6G era, it is necessary to develop intelligent unmanned bodies to solve the problem of efficient broadband interconnection of drones, unmanned vehicles, etc., so that these intelligent unmanned bodies can make independent decisions and actions.

Recently, the Propaganda Department of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee, the Beijing Association for Science and Technology and other departments jointly launched a learning and publicity activity for the most beautiful science and technology workers in Beijing for the first time. Peng Mugen was selected as the "most beautiful science and technology worker" in Beijing in 2021.

Rejecting preferential treatment from companies and embarking on the "communication" scientific research path across majors

In 1996, Peng Mugen was admitted to the Department of Computer Science and Technology of Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, as an early exposure to computers. A group of young students, he has studied DOS operating system, UNIX operating system and Windows operating system successively, and witnessed the development of personal computers.

Peng Mugen felt that he might not be able to play a particularly big role in the computer field, so he decided to take the postgraduate entrance examination across majors and applied for the mobile communications major at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications.

After the postgraduate entrance examination, Peng Mugen tried to find a job just to be on the safe side. "At that time, many classmates went to foreign companies. Undergraduate students could earn more than 10,000 yuan a month, while others could earn at least 2,000 yuan a month, but they were also 'iron rice bowls'. These are very attractive to undergraduate graduates."

Later, Peng Mugen signed a contract with a company in Beijing, but after learning that he was admitted to graduate school, Peng Mugen did not join the company, but officially embarked on his "communications" scientific research path.

Involved in my country's 3G "deep water area" and published "Industrial Guide"

In 2000, Peng Mugen enrolled in Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications and faced the choice of research direction. At that time, because the core basic theory of my country's third-generation mobile communications (3G) standard TD-SCDMA was still immature, relevant theoretical research was lacking, which seriously restricted industrial applications. Some foreign experts believe that my country's 3G can only be used for small-scale local networking and is not suitable for large-scale seamless networking.

In order to break the theoretical bottleneck restricting the development of 3G in my country and break the lies of foreign experts, Peng Mugen gave up research on 4G OFDM in 2002, and got involved in the "deep water" of my country's 3G when the theory and technology were "poor and useless". District", taking the lead in carrying out research on TD-SCDMA networking theory and key technologies in universities at home and abroad.

"How much capacity does a TD-SCDMA cell have and how many users can it receive? If multiple base stations exist at the same time, how much interference will there be between multiple cells? Can large-scale seamless networking be possible? ? "Peng Mugen constructed single-cell and multi-cell capacity analysis models by introducing multi-user detection technology and beamforming gain factors, derived cell capacity expressions that were different from other 3G technologies, and proposed TD-SCDMA technology The unique multi-carrier networking theory and scrambling code planning method revealed the capacity relationship of my country's 3G, confirmed that the capacity and coverage performance of my country's 3G are basically the same as those of other 3G systems, and successfully countered foreign experts' criticism of my country's 3G Arbitrary conclusion that only local networking is possible.

These research results have also made 27-year-old Peng Mugen well known in the industry.

After graduating with his doctorate in 2005, he combined relevant research results with industry needs and published the monograph "TD-SCDMA Mobile Communication System", which introduced in detail the principles, theoretical basis, key technologies, standard formulation, test results, etc. of my country's 3G. This book It is called "my country's 3G Industry Guide" by industry insiders.

"It is difficult to print 3,000 copies of professional books in the field of mobile communications because there are not so many scientific researchers to buy them. However, this book has been printed more than ten times in three years and has sold more than 16,000 copies." Peng Mugen told an interesting story. Many scientific researchers became familiar with my country's 3G through this book and then entered the mobile communications industry. They were very surprised when they saw Peng Mugen himself - "I always thought you were an old gentleman. I didn't expect that you were an old man." So young. ”

Peng Mugen said that my country’s 3G started from scratch, driving the development of mobile phone terminals, mobile communication modules, chips, base station modules, antennas, network operation and maintenance, etc. in my country’s mobile communications industry. Our country has experienced and developed the entire mobile communications industry chain and cultivated R&D and operation talents at all levels throughout the industry chain.

Take a break from teaching to further his studies abroad and establish his status in the international academic community

After graduating from Ph.D., Peng Mugen stayed in school and joined the School of Telecommunications Engineering of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications. The core disciplines of the school were later ranked first in the national subject evaluation Consecutively ranked first or rated A.

Peng Mugen was promoted to PhD supervisor at the age of 32 and professor at the age of 34. Due to his outstanding contribution in my country's 3G field, Peng Mugen's path to "advancement" has been smooth. Making another breakthrough "choice" stems from the experience of being selected for the first National Natural Science Foundation of China Outstanding Youth Fund in 2012.

"Most of the other teachers who participated in the conference defense at that time had overseas study experience, and their research results included a large number of first-class international journal papers. I basically did not have high-level international first-class journal papers, and I was able to defend at the conference mainly because Contribution to my country's 3G theory and technology." Peng Mugen said that although he was lucky enough to be selected in the end, through this defense, he was deeply aware of the gap between himself and other candidates.

In order to narrow the gap and better integrate into the international academic circle, in 2013, Peng Mugen decided to leave his stable domestic scientific research and teaching job and go abroad for further study. Unlike many people who choose foreign Chinese tutors, he sent a self-recommendation email to H. Vincent Poor, the most authoritative and popular internationally renowned academician of Princeton University in the United States. The email was sincere and full of sincerity, and he became the first "local professor" accepted by Academician Poor in China.

Research smart small base stations to solve the problem of high-capacity and convenient wireless networking in hotspot areas

During and after his return, Peng Mugen has been working on high-capacity 5G cloud small stations in hotspot areas. and research on intelligent wireless networking. He said this was related to an experience he had. "In 2008, on the eve of the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, spectators took photos at the Bird's Nest and wanted to send text messages, MMS or make phone calls to share, but they were unable to send them and the phone calls were not easy to get through. This was because the users were too dense and the capacity per unit area was high. , base stations are inconvenient to deploy.”

After attending the opening ceremony, Peng Mugen devoted himself to research and proposed a “plug and play” smart small base station and intelligent networking solution, which effectively solved the problem of stadiums and CBDs. High-capacity, low-cost, and adaptive networking problems for wireless networks in user-intensive areas such as , large-scale events, etc.

In order to put these scientific research results into practice, Peng Mugen transferred the core intellectual property rights and jointly developed a series of smart small base stations, 5G cloud small stations and wireless network self-organizing products. Smart small base stations are installed in hotspot areas such as sports venues, allowing multiple operators to share access equipment, saving a lot of installation space, and can be installed and used out of the box, ensuring that our country has mastery of high-speed wireless intelligent groups in 4G/5G hotspot areas. Internet core key technologies.

As an important part of new infrastructure, 5G is developing rapidly. Peng Mugen’s dense wireless network laboratory demonstrated the application of 5G cloud cells and 5G fog cells.

He introduced that the 5G cloud station is a cabinet more than 2 meters high, which integrates the interference processing of the base station, core network, network management, business platform, and wireless big data processing, and performs centralized signal processing through cloud computing to suppress dense Interference between base stations thereby improves network capacity, and artificial intelligence is implemented to complete wireless network self-configuration, self-planning, self-optimization, etc.

5G private networks are deployed on the first basement, second floor and first floor of the scientific research building, allowing demonstrations of various 5G industry applications in these areas. For example, high-definition surveillance videos on each floor can be displayed in real time. Backhaul Lab. "The video is clear, the transmission rate is high, and the absolute delay and delay jitter are very small. It provides platform support for future holographic communications and immersive XR (AR, VR, etc.), which can be used in mines, factories, buildings, and sports in the future. Scenarios such as venues. ”

5G fog small stations add edge computing and intelligent technologies on the basis of 5G cloud small stations to better adapt to extremely low latency and huge capacity performance requirements, and can ensure the operation of all networks. Data and various services are in the hands of industry users themselves, while achieving localized data analysis and intelligent optimization. It can be applied to agriculture, forestry, mining, and factories. In the future, it can be deployed on satellites, aircraft, ships, floating platforms, and high-speed rails. middle.

Voice

The deep integration of communications, artificial intelligence and other majors will produce huge application prospects

Peng Mugen said that an important application direction of 5G and 6G is Improve the informatization and intelligence level of the industry. Applying them to vertical industries such as intelligent manufacturing, agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, fishery, military and national defense will effectively realize the informatization and intelligence of these vertical fields, and deepen the upgrading and transformation of traditional vertical industries.

“In the 6G era, it is necessary to develop intelligent unmanned bodies and solve the problem of efficient broadband interconnection between drones, unmanned vehicles, unmanned ships and robots, especially through wireless communication technology to strengthen unmanned bodies. The autonomous deployment and decision-making actions will enable these intelligent unmanned vehicles to communicate autonomously, detect and perceive autonomously, and decide actions autonomously, which will effectively enhance my country's informatization and national defense and military levels," Peng Mugen said.

He believes that traditional wireless mobile communications professionals have been basically saturated, but the development of wireless communications has moved from traditional cellular mobile communications to in-depth integration of various vertical industries. "Originally, when someone mentioned the 'Internet', they were mainly looking at the information age based on personal communication. But now 'wireless communication' is very popular. The purpose is to realize intelligent and efficient interconnection of humans, machines and things based on wireless communication. This part of the talent pool lacks special talent reserves. "

Peng Mugen suggested that the cultivation of such talents should be strengthened, and majors such as communications, computing, control, artificial intelligence, and network security should not be overly refined, "because they are deeply integrated, and the intersection will produce huge results. technological innovation and new application prospects.”

Character profile

Peng Mugen is a Yangtze River Scholar Distinguished Professor of the Ministry of Education, a leader in science and technology innovation under the National Distinguished Youth and Ten Thousand Talents Plan, and a leader in science and technology who promotes "Beijing Creation".

Peng Mugen has long been committed to the research of compact base stations and intelligent wireless networking for mobile communication systems, making important contributions to my country's independently developed wireless network technology becoming the international mainstream and changing the world's communications landscape.

Editor Bai Shuang Proofreader Zhai Yongjun