• Paul Kyungwhoon Cheun, President, CTO of the Device eXperience (DX) Division and Head of Samsung Research
• Younsun Kim, Master at Samsung Research
• Timothy Hospedales, Head of Samsung Research’s Europe AI Center
• Michael Scott Brown, Head of Samsung Research’s AI Center in Toronto
• Yuri Masuoka, Fellow and Head of the SRAM Lab in the Foundry Business of the Device Solutions (DS) Division

The title of ‘IEEE Fellow’ is the highest membership grade and, following a thorough review process, is granted annually to the top 0.1% of IEEE members who have demonstrated significant contributions to societal advancement. Those with at least ten years of experience in their fields are chosen based on seven evaluation criteria, including outstanding research and development achievements, contributions to the industry and expertise in the field.

Achievements in Telecommunications and Standardization of 5G Mobile Communication

▲ President Paul Kyungwhoon Cheun (left) and Master Younsun Kim (right)

Paul Kyungwhoon Cheun was appointed as a Fellow in recognition of his leadership in 5G and virtualized Radio Access Network (vRAN) technologies.

Having joined Samsung Electronics in 2012 and serving as head of the Network Business Division, Cheun is a telecommunications technology expert who has led the development of core technologies and commercial solutions for 5G. He has contributed to the global network business by successfully commercializing the world’s first 5G mobile communication technology.

“Being appointed as an IEEE Fellow is an honor,” said President Cheun. “Samsung Electronics will dedicate itself more to innovative technology research and development that will lead the future, taking the initiative in technological advancements that add value and provide convenience and enrichment to people’s daily lives.”

Younsun Kim received IEEE recognition for contributions and leadership in 5G physical layer standardization. He has served as both the vice chair and chair of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Radio Access Network Working Group 1 (RAN WG1) for the past seven years, and is currently preparing for 6G RAN standardization which will be fully launched starting from next year.

Newly Elevated Fellows in Machine Learning, Cameras and Foundry

▲ (From left) Timothy Hospedales, Michael Scott Brown and Yuri Masuoka

Timothy Hospedales received Fellowship honors for his contributions to data-efficient machine learning and meta-learning. Hospedales, who joined Samsung Electronics in 2019, is a machine learning and data intelligence expert. Currently, he oversees Samsung Research’s overall research and development of AI across Europe at the AI Center located in Cambridge, U.K..

Michael Scott Brown contributed to in-camera color image processing to a degree that led to the IEEE naming him a Fellow. Brown, joined Samsung Electronics in 2019 and is an expert in computer vision, currently overseeing research and development at the AI Center in Toronto.

Yuri Masuoka was also named to the IEEE Fellow Class of 2025 for her contributions to leading-edge foundry transistor development.

Samsung Electronics has previously had several IEEE Fellows in various fields, including Executive Vice President Sunghyun Choi of the Network Business, Fellow Juho Lee of Samsung Research and Senior Vice President Charlie Zhang of Samsung Research.

¹ The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is the largest professional organization dedicated to the advancement of technology related to electricity, electronics, computing, and telecommunications. With over 460,000 members from more than 190 countries, IEEE actively manages over 2,250 ongoing projects.

Recognizing Achievement in Telecommunications Technology

Zhang was acknowledged with the Industrial Innovation Award by the IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc). Recipients were recognized at an award ceremony on December 9 at the 2024 IEEE Global Communications (GLOBECOM) conference in Cape Town, South Africa.

An expert in mobile communications technology, Zhang was recognized for his groundbreaking contributions to the development and standardization of Massive MIMO systems — a technology crucial to network coverage and capacity. Introduced in 2009, the Industrial Innovation Award was presented for the first time in five years.

From 2009 to 2013, Zhang served as vice chair of the Radio Access Network Working Group 1 (RAN WG1) at the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) — a global mobile communications standardization organization — during which he led the standard development of LTE and LTE-Advanced technologies. In 2015, he was named an IEEE Fellow — the highest honor for IEEE members. Currently, Zhang leads Samsung Electronics’ global 6G strategy and technology innovation efforts at Samsung Research.

“As a researcher in the field of telecommunications, I am honored to receive this meaningful award,” said Zhang. “We will continue to research and develop innovative telecommunications technologies for a better user experience.”

A Legacy of Excellence at IEEE ComSoc Awards

Founded in 1963, IEEE is the world’s largest organization of technical professionals in the fields of electronics, communications and computers — with over 460,000 members in more than 190 countries. The IEEE ComSoc annually recognizes individuals who have demonstrated excellence in leadership and made significant advances in information and communications through a rigorous selection process.

Samsung has a history of being recognized for its outstanding achievements at the IEEE ComSoc Career Awards — a reflection of the company’s contributions to the standardization of communication technology and the development of mobile phones.

Former Samsung Vice Chairman Ki-tae Lee, who played a pivotal role in developing Samsung’s Anycall mobile phone series, received the IEEE ComSoc Distinguished Industry Leader Award in 2004. Former Samsung Vice Chairman Jong-kyun Shin, who played a key role in developing the world’s first color phone, received the same award in 2016. More recently, Samsung Research Fellow Juho Lee, who successfully helped lead 4G and 5G standardization, received the IEEE ComSoc Excellence in Supporting Standardization for Communications Award in 2023.

Continuing Next-Generation Communication Research

Samsung is working to standardize and integrate AI technology in next-generation communication.

The company currently holds two chairmanships and four vice chairmanships within 3GPP. This year, the company further engaged in standardization activities by adding a chair to the Radio Communication Sector of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU-R), a United Nations specialized agency for information and communication technologies (ICT).

Samsung is a founding member of the AI-RAN Alliance, a global organization dedicated to advancing telecommunications technology. Recently, the company has also been reappointed as vice chair of the Next G Alliance — an initiative dedicated to advancing North American wireless technology leadership — further strengthening its leadership in the convergence of AI and wireless communication technologies.

▲ Juho Lee, a fellow at Samsung Research, won the Excellence in Supporting Standardization for Communications Award from IEEE ComSoc at the GLOBECOM 2023 conference on December 5.

Juho Lee, a fellow at Samsung Electronics’ advanced R&D hub Samsung Research (SR), received a Career Award for his outstanding leadership and technical contributions in standardization of wireless communication from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) — the world’s largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity.

In recognition of his leadership and pivotal role in the development and standardization of global mobile communication technologies, Lee won the inaugural Excellence in Supporting Standardization for Communications Award established this year by the IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc). Lee was the sole recipient of the award, honoring his outstanding contributions to the industry.

The winners of IEEE ComSoc Career Awards are selected through a rigorous judging process, with 14 judges deliberating over candidates for two months. Recipients were recognized at an award ceremony on December 5 at the 2023 IEEE Global Communications (GLOBECOM) conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Lee has been leading research and standardization of mobile communication technology since 2000 when the commercialization of 3G smartphones began. From February 2003 to August 2009, Lee served as vice chair of the Radio Access Network Working Group 1 (RAN WG1) at the 3^rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) — a global mobile communications standardization organization — where he contributed to the standardization of 4G LTE technology. In 2018, Lee was elected as an IEEE Fellow, a distinction reserved for top IEEE members who have accomplished extraordinary achievements.

“It is an honor to be named the first winner of the IEEE ComSoc Excellence in Supporting Standardization for Communications Award,” he said. “Going forward, I will continue to research, develop and standardize advanced mobile communications technologies such as 5G and 6G technology.”

Lee joins the prestigious ranks of previous Samsung executives who have also been recipients of IEEE ComSoc Career Awards. Former Samsung Vice Chairman Ki-Tae Lee, who played an instrumental role in the development of Samsung’s Anycall mobile phone series, was awarded the IEEE ComSoc Distinguished Industry Leader Award in 2004. Former Samsung Vice Chairman Jong-Kyun Shin, who made the world’s first color phone, received the same award in 2016.

A leader in mobile communication technology standardization, Samsung Research holds a total of six officials in the 3GPP: two chairs and four vice chairs. In July 2020, Samsung published “The Next Hyper-Connected Experience for All,” a 6G white paper outlining the company’s vision for the next era of communication. Samsung and Samsung Research’s experts are vigorously working to realize the commercialization of 6G around 2030.

▲ (From left) Dr. Daniel Ahn, EVP and Head of Mobile Platform Center, MX Business and Dr. Michael Polley, SVP and Head of MPI Lab at SRA

The highest grade awarded by the IEEE, the “Fellow” title is conferred by the institute’s Board of Directors when a person demonstrates an outstanding record of accomplishment in any of the IEEE’s fields of interest. The total number of fellows selected in any one year cannot exceed 0.1 percent of the organization’s total voting membership.

Other members of Samsung Electronics who have been named as IEEE Fellows in the past include: Chairman of the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology Kinam Kim, Executive Vice President and Samsung Research AI Center head Daniel Lee, Executive Vice President and Head of the Advanced Communications Research Center Sunghyun Choi, Senior Vice President Charlie Zhang of Samsung Research America, Vice President Xue (Steve) Liu of the Samsung AI Center (SAIC) in Montreal and Fellow Juho Lee of Samsung Research.

Dr. Ahn is Executive Vice President and Head of the MX Business’ Mobile Platform Center. His contributions include providing users with differentiated mobile experiences through the development of innovative security solutions for Galaxy smartphones, artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud-based mobile platform function expansion and enhancement.

“I am both honored and humbled being elevated to IEEE Fellow,” said Dr. Ahn. “I will continuously devote myself to achieve technological advancements that would eventually help improve our products and provide better and meaningful experiences to our valued customers.”

Dr. Polley is Senior Vice President and Head of the Mobile Processor Innovation (MPI) Lab at SRA, where he leads a team of world-class algorithm and system designers focused on creating advanced technologies for Samsung’s Galaxy smartphones as well as next-generation mobile devices.

“I feel honored to be elected as an IEEE Fellow,” said Dr. Polley, “I am pleased that the innovative camera technology research that the MPI Lab at SRA, R&D team at MX Business and Samsung Research India-Bangalore Research Institute have worked closely together on to achieve is being recognized.”

¹ Samsung Research, acting as Samsung Electronics’ advanced R&D hub, leads the development of future technologies for the company’s Device eXperience (DX) Division.

ICCE is the flagship conference of the IEEE Consumer Technology Society (formerly the IEEE Consumer Electronics Society), held annually in conjunction with the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, USA. A total of 190 research papers were accepted this year, with five finalists nominated for the virtual conference’s Best Paper Award. The competition consisted of video-recorded paper presentations and a live Q&A session, and just three papers were selected as winners.

“The work portrayed in this paper connects domains such as AI, UX and affective computing with the goal of providing an emotionally enriching user experience by bridging artworks and music in an unconventional manner,” said Anant Baijal, a Samsung Staff Engineer (Advanced R&D Group) and the lead author of the paper. “We propose a method that considers both an artwork’s style (classical, baroque, impressionist etc.) and the emotion it conveys (calm, joyful, mellow, etc.) to automatically curate music that is well-suited to accompany the image.”

The research highlighted in the paper is under review for possible commercialization in Samsung’s flagship products, including the recently announced Neo QLED TVs, along with lifestyle products such as The Frame. Currently, through Ambient Mode on QLED and Art Mode on The Frame, consumers can display pictures of their choice when they are not watching TV. The research team wants to take the user experience to the next level by giving consumers the option to play music that is curated based on automatic analysis of the image displayed on the screen. The results obtained from initial tests conducted during the research support the efficacy of the proposed approach. 

“When a user uploads a picture, such as artwork or a photograph, our proprietary AI algorithms evaluate the image to recommend music through a user-subscribed music streaming provider,” added Baijal. “Future work on this technology would include integrating other parameters into the algorithm, such as the weather, time, geolocation and user activity, in addition to the image being displayed. We are designing the algorithm to be capable of adapting to individual users’ preferences.” 

“At Samsung’s Advanced R&D Group, we’re continually striving to provide a more dynamic screen experience by developing innovative technologies that complement consumers’ ever-changing lifestyles,” said Dr. Danny Hyun, Corporate Vice President and Head of Advanced R&D Group at Samsung Electronics and a co-author of the paper. 

The Advanced R&D Group’s research spans multidisciplinary areas such as AI, Big Data and connectivity, and the Group is also responsible for creating futuristic concepts and product prototypes. Multiple international patent applications covering the technology’s concept, components and user scenarios have been filed by Samsung Electronics. 

Check out Samsung’s First Look 2021 event (highlights available here) for more details on the company’s vision for the future of screens, including its latest display innovations and 2021 product lineup.

Spearheading Speech Translation Research

Samsung R&D Institute Poland and Samsung R&D Institute China-Beijing competed with some of the world’s top universities and research labs to win first place in two separate challenges at the International Workshop on Spoken Language Translation (IWSLT), one of the world’s longest-running workshops on automatic language translation. This year, IWSLT joined the Association for Computational Linguistics conference (ACL), a premier conference in the field of computational linguistics, to cover a broad spectrum of research areas that are concerned with computational approaches to natural language.

For the Offline Speech Translation task, which assesses the translation of TED talks from English to German, Samsung R&D Institute Poland won first place for the second time with its own research capabilities in audio to text translation. The conferral of this award marks the fourth consecutive year that teams from Samsung R&D Institute Poland have taken first prize in IWSLT challenges, including previous years’ text translation tasks.

This year’s Offline Speech Translation task allowed participants to submit systems based on either the traditional speech translation pipeline system composed of an automatic speech recognition (ASR) and a machine translation (MT) or an End-to-End (E2E) system. Samsung R&D Institute Poland’s system is based on a single encoder-decoder deep neural network – an E2E system – capable of both English and German texts.

In computational linguistics, E2E systems are harnessed to solve the common problem of error accumulation, wherein, in a traditional pipeline, an error in the speech recognition phase can lead to a nonsensical translation. However, research from over the past three years has shown that traditional systems have constantly been outperforming E2E speech translation systems. The Samsung team’s system not only placed first in the E2E category, but also outscored all traditional pipeline system entrants, a remarkable achievement that puts Samsung R&D Institute Poland at the forefront of speech translation research.

The team from Samsung R&D Institute Poland Team who participated in this year’s IWSLT challenges

Innovative Approaches in the Field of Computational Linguistics AI

Samsung R&D Institute China-Beijing took part in a second challenge, the Open Domain Translation task evaluating Japanese to Chinese translation capability, ultimately taking first place. The main goals of this task were the promotion of research into translation between Asian language, the exploitation of noisy parallel web corpora for machine translation and the thoughtful handling of data provenance.

Samsung R&D Institute China-Beijing submitted a system based on Transformer model architecture and adopted the relative position attention. The team focused on improving the Transform baseline system with elaborate data preprocessing and managed to achieve significant improvements. The team also tried shared and exclusive word embedding and compared different granularity of tokens, approaching the process at a sub-word level, including Byte Pair Encoding (BPE) and Sentence Piece. Large-scale back translation on monolingual corpus was used to improve the Neural Machine Translation (NMT) performance.

Members of the team from Samsung R&D Institute China-Beijing Team who participated in this year’s IWSLT challenges

Achievements in AI Audio Signal Interpretation

In addition to their first-place finish in the IWSLT challenge, Samsung R&D Institute Poland was also recognized as one of the leading teams at the Detection and Classification of Acoustic Scenes and Events (DCASE) 2020 challenge, held by IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), which aims to use state-of-the-art AI technology to understand and interpret audio signals.

Engineers from Samsung R&D Institute Poland, who possess previous experience in Acoustic Scene Understanding and Sound Sources Localization tasks (having ranked first place in two tasks in 2019), set their focus on Task 2: Unsupervised Detection of Anomalous Sounds for Machine Condition Monitoring. The goal of this task was to identify whether the sound emitted from a target machine was normal or anomalous. The main challenge was detecting unknown anomalous sounds under a condition within which only normal sound samples have been provided as training data. The engineers scored second place out of 40 teams.

The team from Samsung R&D Institute Poland Team who participated in this year’s DCASE challenge

Envisaging the Future of Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition

In June, Samsung R&D Institute China-Beijing also participated in three challenges hosted by the 2020 Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR 2020): the Embodied AI Challenge, the VizWiz-Captions Challenge and the VATEX Video Captioning Challenge. The team claimed second place in the challenges.

The Embodied AI Challenge aimed to enable robots to understand human commands and perform correct actions within a virtual environment, while the VizWiz-Captions Challenge involved predicting an accurate caption when given an image taken by a visually impaired person and the VATEX Video Captioning Challenge aimed to benchmark progress towards models that can describe videos in various languages including English and Chinese.

Members of the team from Samsung R&D Institute China-Beijing Team who participated in this year’s CVPR challenges

The paper is derived from the Digital Health Lab’s Lung Health project, where the team is developing innovative technologies to help patients with chronic respiratory diseases such as Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) or Asthma. The paper particularly focuses on algorithms that allow users to evaluate their lung function on their own without clinical supervision, simply by recording breathing sounds on their smartphones.

“Winning the Best Paper Award at such a competitive venue as the IEEE PerCom testifies to the recognition of our research from leading experts in pervasive computing. I feel fortunate to work in a lung health project that has potential to have an impact on respiratory patients, to support the control over their illness and improve the quality of life,” said Mahbubur Rahman, the first author of the paper who is working as Research Engineer in Digital Health Lab.

Acknowledging the Best Paper Award, PerCom 2020 General Chair and the University of Texas at Austin Professor Christine Julien shared an encouraging note emphasizing the potential impact of the Digital Health Lab’s work on real-world patients. She commented, “Having much more accessible tools for treating this [respiratory] disease would be so incredible. I love that there is this real-world impact of what you’re working on.”

The Digital Health Lab at SRA is partnering with world-leading physicians and advanced health research institutions to develop novel algorithms to make the health monitoring tools accessible anywhere, anytime through smartphones and smartwatches. The Digital Health Lab’s papers have also previously received the Best Poster Award at the IEEE Body Sensor Network (BSN) 2019 conference.

“Fellow” is the highest grade awarded by the IEEE, and is conferred by the institute’s Board of Directors when a person demonstrates an outstanding record of accomplishment in any of the IEEE’s fields of interest. The total number of fellows selected in any one year cannot exceed 0.1 percent of the organization’s total voting membership.

Dr. Liu is Vice President and Chief Scientist at Samsung’s Montreal AI Center. He develops novel AI solutions for real-world applications like the intelligent automation of 5G networks and has made tremendous contributions to performance and power management advancements in the areas of computing and networking systems.

In his work, Dr. Liu applies insights from a wide range of disciplines, including feedback control, optimization, and machine learning, to lead research in the fields of performance and power management of data centers and networked servers. This line of pioneering research, which helps complex systems adapt to highly dynamic workloads and diverse conditions, has influenced many subsequent research efforts in both academia and industry.

“I am both honored and humbled to be granted the grade of IEEE Fellow,” said Dr. Liu, “I am grateful to my colleagues and the community members who have recognized my contributions, and will continue to devote myself to the development of the AI technologies that will enable intelligent systems to better complement people’s everyday lives.”

Dr. Liu received a B.S. in Applied Mathematics and M.E. in Automatic Control from Tsinghua University in 1996 and 1999 respectively, then completed his Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2006. He has been a professor of Computer Science at McGill University since 2007, and a William Dawson Scholar since 2014. Dr. Liu is a recipient of several awards, including the Mitacs Award for Exceptional Leadership – Professor from MITACS, the Outstanding Young Computer Science Researcher Award from the Canadian Association of Computer Science, and the Tomlinson Science Award from McGill University.

Other members of Samsung Electronics who have been named as IEEE Fellows in the past include: Vice Chairman, CEO and head of the Device Solutions Division Kinam Kim, Executive Vice President and Samsung Research New York AI Center head Daniel Lee, Senior Vice President and Head of the Advanced Communications Research Center Sunghyun Choi, Vice President Jianzhong (Charlie) Zhang of Samsung Research America (SRA), and Fellow Juho Lee of Samsung Research.

Samsung Electronics today announced that the Galaxy Note10 has been named by Wi-Fi Alliance as the first smartphone to be certified for a new standard in connected technology, Wi-Fi 6.

“As a pioneer in new mobile experiences Samsung is proud to be announced as one of the first companies to hold the Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 accreditation,” said Inkang Song, Vice President and Head of Technology Strategy Group of IT & Mobile Communications Division at Samsung Electronics. “The Galaxy Note10 is one of our flagship devices and the first smartphone classified Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6. Along with the Galaxy S10 we’re thrilled to bring Wi-Fi 6 to our loyal customers.”

Wi-Fi 6 Enabling New Mobile Experiences

Wi-Fi is a critical piece of infrastructure required to enable the proper function of a growing number of both consumer and commercial devices. From televisions and appliances to security and communication systems, the expectations for everything, and everyone, to be connected is growing. Wi-Fi Alliance has led the development of industry agreed standards for devices for many years. With the launch of Wi-Fi 6 this year, a new certification has been launched to ensure that the highest possible standards are continuously met.

Wi-Fi 6 technology is building on the performance of previous Wi-Fi generations and is the latest technology to be launched from the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). Wi-Fi 6 will operate in the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands, offer greater capacity than previous generations and double the number of spatial streams. Devices certified by Wi-Fi Alliance, classed as “Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6”, will deliver new capabilities for people in a range of situations.

• Wi-Fi 6 will allow family homes to better stream high-definition entertainment, simultaneously manage the connected home and efficiently support multiple devices.
• Outside, Wi-Fi 6 will improve connectivity in high population areas and provide a more consistent service as people move around towns and cities.
• In the enterprise, this new technology will enable greater automation and more advanced capabilities in healthcare monitoring and e-learning as well as continuing to handle large numbers of users and high volumes of data.

Samsung mobile devices with Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 will bring more reliable performance even in challenging environments¹. This is achieved through a number of the key features of Wi-Fi 6 technology. For example:

• Uplink and downlink Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) increases efficiency and lowers latency for high demand environments. This enables the Samsung Note10 to have stable connectivity in environments with many connected devices.
• Target-Wakeup Time (TWT) improves power efficiency in Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 devices, including the Galaxy Note10. Because the TWT schedules transmission time between the Galaxy Note10 and the access point, it allows the Galaxy Note10 to manage its power efficiently until the predetermined wake-up time.
• Multi-User Multiple-Input, Multiple-Output (MU-MIMO) allowsmore data to be transferred at one time, enabling access points to handle larger numbers of devices simultaneously when the Galaxy Note10 is connected to Wi-Fi 6.

As a result of close collaboration with Wi-Fi Alliance, Galaxy Note10 and Galaxy S10 have offered Wi-Fi 6 connectivity from the launch. It gives users faster and seamless Wi-Fi connection in crowded areas, and powers high-quality video calls as well as high-definition streaming without slowing down.

For more information about the Galaxy Note10 and Wi-Fi 6, visit the Samsung Newsroom or www.samsung.com/galaxy.

¹ https://www.wi-fi.org/discover-wi-fi/wi-fi-certified-6

FiRa Consortium Ensures an Interoperable UWB Ecosystem Across Chipset, Device and Service Infrastructure
Through Standards and Certifications

Recognizing the need for emerging applications to build on a strong foundation that supports interoperability among all categories of devices, four sponsor members – The ASSA ABLOY Group which includes HID Global, and NXP Semiconductors, Samsung Electronics, and Bosch, leading companies in access, secure connectivity and mobile/CE device solutions –  today announced the launch of the FiRa Consortium. The new coalition is designed to grow the Ultra-Wideband (UWB) ecosystem so new use cases for fine ranging capabilities can thrive, ultimately setting a new standard in seamless user experiences. Sony Imaging Products & Solutions Inc., LitePoint and the Telecommunications Technology Association (TTA) are the first companies to join the newly-formed organization.

The FiRa name, which stands for “Fine Ranging,” highlights UWB technology’s unique ability to deliver unprecedented accuracy when measuring the distance or determining the relative position of a target. Especially in challenging environments, UWB technology outperforms other technologies in terms of accuracy, power consumption, robustness in RF connection, and security, by a wide margin.

“As an industry consortium, we believe UWB technology can transform the way people experience connectivity, and we’re committed to the widespread adoption of interoperable UWB technologies,” says Charlie Zhang, Chair of the FiRa Consortium and VP Engineering, Samsung Electronics.

The starting point for UWB technology is the IEEE standard 802.15.4/4z, which defines the essential characteristics for low-data-rate wireless connectivity and enhanced ranging. It is the aim of the FiRa Consortium to build on what the IEEE has already established, by developing an interoperability standard based on the IEEE’s profiled features, defining mechanisms that are out of scope of the IEEE standard, and pursuing activities that support rapid development of specific use cases.

The unique capabilities of UWB promise to make it an essential technology in many areas including:

• Seamless Access Control – UWB can identify an individual’s approach toward or away from a secured entrance, verify security credentials, and let the authorized individual pass through the entrance without physically presenting the credential.

• Location-Based Services – UWB offers highly precise positioning, even in congested multipath signal environments, making it easier to navigate large venues such as airports and shopping malls or find a car in a multi-story parking garage. It also enables targeted digital marketing campaigns and foot traffic data. Retailers can present customized offers, government agencies can tailor their notifications, and entertainment venues can personalize recommendations during events.

• Device-to-Device (Peer-to-Peer) Services – By providing precise relative distance and direction between two devices, UWB lets devices find the relative location of each other even without infrastructures such as anchors or access points. This allows people to easily find one another in crowded spaces or find items even when placed in hidden areas.

Due to its low power spectral density, UWB offers little to no interference with other wireless standards, so it is well suited for use with other wireless technologies, including Near Field Communication (NFC), Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi. There are also adjacent markets that leverage UWB in other ways, especially automotive. “The FiRa Consortium’s commitment to a complete ecosystem means we will work with other consortia and industry players to develop approaches and define parameters,” says Charles Dachs, Vice-Chair of the FiRa Consortium and GM & VP Secure Embedded Transactions, NXP Semiconductors.

FiRa Consortium members will have the chance to influence industry trends, gain early access to technical details, certify interoperable products, expand the UWB ecosystem, and share expertise. Ramesh Songukrishnasamy, Director and Treasurer of the FiRa Consortium, and SVP & CTO of HID Global says, “We encourage anyone, from any relevant industry area, who has a vested interest in the success of UWB to join us and contribute to the Consortium’s work.”

Additional FiRa Consortium Member Quotes 

• Kazuyuki Sakamoto, Senior General Manager, FeliCa Business Division, Sony Imaging Products & Solutions Inc. says, “We believe that UWB technology will bring the new benefit of connectivity to industries along with other wireless technologies.”

• “UWB opens up new and complementary wireless connectivity use-cases,” said Adam Smith, Director of Marketing at LitePoint. “We’re excited to help establish an ecosystem in which companies can utilize these new technologies by providing a fully-integrated UWB test solution, making it simple to validate the performance of UWB devices. At LitePoint, our mission is to help companies bring cutting-edge UWB products to market and that’s why we’re pleased to be part of the FiRa Consortium team.”

• Yongbum Park, Vice President, Telecommunications Technology Association says, “Device-to-device fine ranging technology without additional equipment is very useful for home or industrial applications. We believe that FiRa technology will change our lives.”

To learn more about the FiRa Consortium and the benefits of membership, visit www.firaconsortium.org.

Samsung Electronics reported on the 29th of July that, adding to his inductions into the Hall of Fame of the HPCA (IEEE International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture) in 2015 and the MICRO (IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture) in 2016, Dr. Kim has recently been named to the Hall of Fame of the ISCA (ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Computer Architecture). The ISCA, HPCA and MICRO are the three most prestigious international computer architecture conferences, and have their own Hall of Fame which list researchers with eight or more papers with technological excellence and influence.

Nam Sung Kim, Senior Vice President of the Memory Business, Device Solutions Division, Samsung Electronics

There are only about 20 people who have been inducted into the halls of fame of all the three conferences in the last 50 years of the computer architecture history. This rare honor shows the international recognition of Dr. Kim’s authority in his research on computer architecture.

In 2016, Dr. Kim became the first Korean researcher to be selected as an IEEE Fellow (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) in the field of computer architecture by the world’s largest professional association in the field. He was also the first Korean researcher who won the Most Influential Paper Award at ACM SIGARCH / IEEE-CS TCCA ISCA, co-hosted by the Association for computing Machinery (ACM) and IEEE in 2017. This award recognizes the paper from the ISCA Proceedings 15 years earlier that has had the most impact on the field (in terms of research, development, products or ideas) during the intervening years. Dr. Kim’s paper “Drowsy Caches: Simple Techniques for Reducing Leakage Power” made a pioneering contribution to the development of more energy-efficient microprocessors.

Dr. Kim was a tenured professor of computer engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) before he joined Samsung Electronics in May, 2018. At Samsung, his focus has been applying his research to the rapidly changing semiconductor industry and creating innovations.

In light of his renowned expertise in computer architecture, Dr. Kim and his team are tasked to develop faster and more reliable memory devices, based on their comprehensive understanding of next-generation computing systems. “It has gotten much more difficult to cost-effectively develop faster and more reliable memory devices these days because of many reasons. One of those reasons is that the complexity of computing systems and the interactions between their components, including the memory devices, have become significantly more complex and intense to run more sophisticated applications such as autonomous vehicles.”

In addition, Dr. Kim has been focusing on developing disruptive future memory technology that can substantially improve computing performance of artificial intelligence (AI) applications in various ways going forward. His team is now focusing on developing a memory technology that can not only store information like conventional memory but also perform computing like a microprocessor at the same time. Utilization of the technology will considerably reduce the need for fast information exchange between memory and microprocessors, which has been a major bottleneck in operations of many AI applications.

“In 1997, Samsung Electronics gave me an eye-opening opportunity, allowing me to visit leading IT companies and top universities in the U.S. It led me to continue my study in the U.S. where I got very lucky to be involved in cutting-edge research projects with world-class researchers. Such experiences allowed me to be where I am now and I am very grateful for the opportunities given to me,” said Dr. Kim.

Samsung Research’s R&D Institute Poland Team

Samsung Research’s R&D Institute China-Beijing Team

For Task 1 – Subtask B, testing acoustic scene classification with mismatched recording devices, Samsung Research’s R&D Institute Poland won the first place. For Task 1 – Subtask C which tests open set acoustic scene classification, Samsung Research’s R&D Institute China-Beijing, in partnership with Beijing University of Post and Telecommunication (BUPT), won the first place while Samsung Research Institute Poland received the second place.

The goal of Subtask B and C of Task 1 (Acoustic Scene Classification) was to classify a test recording into one of the provided predefined classes that characterizes the environment in which it was recorded. In addition to this, Subtask C also asked participants to detect undefined acoustic scene from the 10 target classes. The recordings were taken in 12 large European cities and represented 10 categories: airport, indoor shopping mall, metro station, pedestrian street, public square, street with medium level of traffic, traveling by tram, traveling by bus, traveling by underground metro, and urban park.

In addition, Samsung Research’s R&D Institute Poland was recognized as the best team in Task 3 measuring sound event localization and detection. The goal of Task 3 was to jointly localize and recognize individual sound events and their durations. This technology has a wide variety of applications, including robots and AI speakers.

Sounds carry a large amount of information about our everyday environment and physical events that take place around us.¹ We’re now able to perceive the sound scene we’re in -such as a busy street, and even identify individual sounds such as a baby crying. This technology could help design intelligent monitoring systems that recognize activities in their environment by acoustic information.

The objective of Audio Intelligence at Samsung Research, the advanced research & development hub of the company’s SET (End-products) Business, is to improve the technology so that it can better pick out individual sounds even in environments with other background noise distractions.

¹ http://dcase.community/challenge2019/

The IEEE Grade of Fellow is conferred by the IEEE Board of Directors upon a person with an outstanding record of accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest. The total number selected in any one year cannot exceed 0.1 percent of the total voting membership. Among the membership, IEEE Fellow is the highest grade and is recognized by the technical community as a prestigious honor and an important career achievement.

Master Lee is a representative expert of Samsung in the research and standardization of mobile communication technologies. He has made tremendous contributions on 3G, 4G, and 5G over the last 18 years, including incorporation of essential technologies into standards. From February 2003 to August 2008, he was a Vice Chairman of RAN1 working group of 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), a global telecommunications standards organization, and led the standardization of 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) technologies.

In developing 5G standards, Master Lee has been representing Samsung and has made a crucial role to set up the standardization plan and to develop detailed standards. The 5G network is currently in the process of commercialization and can be characterized by the ultra-high speed of 20 Gbps, ultra-low latency of 0.001 second, and ultra-reliability of 99.999 percent. Because of these advances, 5G is expected to help provide unprecedented communication quality and create new services such as smart factory and vehicular communication.

Master Lee received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Korea, in 1993, 1995, and 2000, respectively. He is currently leading the research and standardization of 5G technologies in the Standard Research Team of Samsung Research.

“I am honored to be named IEEE Fellow as the recognition of my contributions during the last 18 years for evolution and standardization of mobile communications from 3G to 5G” said Master Lee. “I will continue to devote myself to the commercialization and further enhancement of 5G technologies as well as advanced research toward 6G.”

Samsung Electronics has other IEEE Fellows who were named in the past years as follows: Vice Chairman and CEO Kinam Kim of DS Division, Executive Vice President Daniel Lee of Samsung Research New York AI Center, and Vice President Jianzhong Zhang of Samsung Research America (SRA).

During a keynote speech at the 2018 IEEE* International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM), Dr. ES Jung, president and head of Foundry Business at Samsung Electronics, shared his vision that the next industrial revolution can only happen by the continuous evolution of semiconductor technology.

In his presentation “Fourth Industrial Revolution and Foundry: Challenges and Opportunities”, Dr. Jung explained that the evolution of advanced foundry technologies will be crucial to enable the design and manufacture of innovative semiconductor products that will take our everyday life into new and previously unthought-of directions.

New and exciting applications such as AI, cloud computing, autonomous vehicles, and smart home require high-level technologies including sophisticated design and system level optimization.

Dr. Jung discussed the increased complexities of semiconductor technology that has altered the role of the semiconductor foundry from a conventional wafer manufacturing business to a total solution provider. Today, foundries are providing value-added services, especially in the areas of design service and infrastructure, product engineering, and packaging/testing.

Semiconductors have evolved to be faster in speed, higher in density, and lower in power consumption, allowing a wide range of new and innovative applications. In addition, to analyze exponentially growing, unprecedented amounts of data, new memory architectures and completely new schemes of computation, such as neuromorphic computing, have to be developed.

“None of these technological advancements would have been possible without collaboration across the entire semiconductor industry” emphasized Dr. Jung. “This collaboration is paramount between material, equipment, electronic devices, government, universities, research centers, and consortiums, to ensure the success in the upcoming 4^th industrial revolution.”

New Technological Milestones

Dr. Jung also introduced some of recent research and development in future silicon technology, including MRAM, a non-volatile memory solution embedded in conventional logic process, and 3nm Gate-All-Around (GAA) technology.

MRAM is one of the examples of new semiconductor devices that consume much less power. As memory density becomes higher, MRAM’s power efficiency becomes more prominent, consuming only 0.5% of power compared to SRAM at 1,024Mb. MRAM also has smaller cell area, which allows design flexibility.

Samsung’s unique GAA technology called Multi-Bridge-Channel FET(MBCFET) uses vertically stacked multiple nanosheet channels. With variable width of nanosheet, this technology provides not only optimal performance and power characteristics, but also high design flexibility. Furthermore, MBCFET is fabricated using 90% or more of FinFET process with only a few revised masks, allowing easy migration.

Also with one of its newly published papers at 2018 IEDM, Samsung Electronics shared the development progress of 3nm, a successful demonstration of fully functioning high-density SRAM circuit. The development of Samsung’s first process node applying MBCFET technology is on schedule.

For more information, please visit https://www.samsungfoundry.com

* IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) is one of the world’s largest associations of technical professionals dedicated to advancing technologies, including electronic engineering, telecommunications, and computer engineering. Link