With the help of the Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT) and the IEEE Communication Society, the IEEE ComSoc Harbin Chapter organized the Asia-Pacific Distinguished Series of Lectures from July 12 to 23, 2021. The activities attracted many scholars and students from around the world, and also won high praise.

The theme of the lectures was “Intelligent Communication Empowers the Internet of Things”. The academic activities consisted of three parts, including academic lectures, teaching and innovative practice. A total of 23 scholars were invited to give a specific theme lecture, which mainly focused on cutting-edge technologies, i.e., artificial intelligence (AI), intelligent Internet of Things (IoT), and industrial big data. The students were guided to understand the latest development status and future trends in the field of communication technology. In this case, students can develop their interests in information and communication technology, AI and related interdisciplinary research areas.

Prof. Yingjun Zhang gave a lecture called “Over-the-Air Federated Learning over Wireless Communication Systems”. Prof. Zhang introduced federated learning (FL) basics and its unique challenges in wireless fading channels, and discussed the state-of-art of works on FL mechanism design in wireless channels. She also introduced several recent works such as RIS and relay to enhance the FL performance and practicality.

Dr. Tao Chen discussed the application of AI/machine learning in radio access networks (RAN) to solve resource optimization problems.

Prof. Hsiao-Hwa Chen talked about their works on the NG-CDMA technologies to solve the difficulties of B5G wireless communications.

Different advanced academic ideas were exchanged in the Asia-Pacific Distinguished Series of Lectures held by the IEEE ComSoc Harbin Chapter. The activities left a deep impression on the teachers and students who attended.