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Advanced Wireless Technologies and Spectrum Strategy Group
AT&T Network CTO Organization
Email: salam[.]akoum[at]att.com
I am a member of the advanced wireless technology and Spectrum strategy group, network CTO org. at AT&T. I am working on 5G-Advanced and 6G system design, with an emphasis on the radio access network. I am an active contributor to 3GPP and O-RAN standardization, and Next G Alliance. Prior to joining AT&T labs, I worked at the center for Social Innovation at Hitachi America R&D, where I investigated connectivity solutions, analytics and traffic optimization for IT and OT convergence, and received the Hitachi above and beyond award in 2014.
I received my Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin in December 2012. At UT, I worked within the Wireless Networking and Communication Group (WNCG) under the supervision of Prof. Robert W. Heath, Jr. I graduated with a Bachelor's of Engineering in Computer and Communications Engineering and a minor in Mathematics (Honors) from the American University of Beirut, Lebanon in 2006, and completed my Master's of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Utah in 2008. I was a visiting researcher at CentraleSupelec (Supelec), France in 2011. During the course of my PhD, I was an intern at Qualcomm, Nokia Bell Labs, and FutureWei Technologies R&D.
[Experience] [Patents] [Publications][Awards]
Experience
Principal Member of Technical Staff, AT&T Labs, Advanced Radio Technologies Group, August 2016 - Present.
Staff Research Engineer at Hitachi America R&D, Network Systems Lab, 2015 - July 2016.
Research Engineer at Hitachi America R&D, Wireless Systems Research Group, 2013 - 2015.
Research Intern at FutureWei, Wireless Research and Standards group, Summer 2012
Research Intern at Bell Labs, Nokia, small cells research project, Paris, France, Summer 2011
Visiting PhD student at Alcatel-Lucent Chair on Flexible Radios, Supelec, France, Fall-Spring 2010-2011
Engineering Intern at Qualcomm CDMA Technologies (QCT) systems, Santa Clara, California, Summer 2010
Research Intern at Alcatel-Lucent Chair on Flexible Radios, Supelec, France, Summer 2009
Patents
> 110 Granted Patents [USPTO granted patent list]
Publications
Journal Articles
[J1] E. Tekgul, T. Novlan, S. Akoum and J. G. Andrews, "Joint Uplink-Downlink Capacity and Coverage Optimization via Site-Specific Learning of Antenna Settings," accepted, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, 2022 [Arxiv]
[J2] I. Tariq, S. Rajat, T. Novlan, S. Akoum, M. Majmundar, G. de Veciana, and S. Shakkottai, "Auto-Tuning for Cellular Scheduling Through Bandit-Learning and Low-Dimensional Clustering," IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking , Nov. 2021
[J3] D. Zhu, R. Bendlin, S. Akoum, A. Ghosh and R. W. Heath, Jr., "Double-Sequence Frequency Synchronization for Wideband mmWave Systems with Few-Bit ADCs," IEEE Trans. on Wireless Commun., Nov. 2019
[J4] D. Zhu, R. Bendlin, S. Akoum, A. Ghosh and R. W. Heath, Jr., "Directional Frame Timing Synchronization in Wideband mmWave Systems with Low-Resolution ADCs," IEEE Trans. on Wireless Commun., Aug. 2019
[J5] S. Akoum, and R. W. Heath Jr., "Multicell Coordination: Random Clustering and Adaptive Limited Feedback". IEEE transactions on Signal Processing, vol. 61, no. 7, April 2013, pp.1822 - 183
[J6] S. Akoum, and R. W. Heath Jr., "Limited feedback over temporally correlated channels with other cell interference". IEEE transactions on Signal Processing, vol. 58, no. 10, October 2010, pp. 5219 - 5232 [ieeexplore]
[J7] S. Akoum, M. Zwinglstein-Colin, R.W. Heath Jr., M. Debbah, "Cognitive Cooperation for the Downlink of Frequency Reuse Small Cells". EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing, Jan. 2011 [Hindawi]
Conference Papers
[C1] E. Tekgul, T. Novlan, S. Akoum and J. G. Andrews, "Uplink-Downlink Joint Antenna Optimization in Cellular Systems with Sample-Efficient Learning," IEEE Global Communication Conference (GlobeCom), 2022 [ieeexplore]
[C2] I. Tariq, K. Patel, T. Novlan, S. Akoum, M. Majmundar, G. de Veciana, and S. Shakkottai, "Bandit learning-based online user clustering and selection for cellular networks," International Symposium on Modeling and Optimization in Mobile, Ad hoc, and Wireless Networks (WiOpt), 2022
[C3] E. Tekgul, T. Novlan, S. Akoum and J. G. Andrews, "Sample-Efficient Learning of Cellular Antenna Parameter Settings," 2021 IEEE Information Theory Workshop (ITW), 2021 [ieeexplore]
[C4] S. Akoum, A. Thornburg, X. Wang, A. Ghosh, "Robust Beam Management for Mobility in mmWave Systems'', in Proc. of the IEEE Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems and Computers (Asilomar), Nov. 2018 [ieeexplore]
[C5] S. Akoum, X. Wang, and A. Ghosh, '' A Flexible Feedback Framework for 5G Massive MIMO Systems'', in Proc. of the IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor, and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC) Workshop on Massive MIMO/FD-MIMO in 5G Mobile Communications, Oct. 2017 [ieeexplore]
[C6] S. Akoum, and J. Acharya, "Vertical Beamforming for Three Dimensional User Placement", in Proc. of the IEEE International Conference on Computing, Networking and Communications, Feb. 2015 [ieeexplore]
[C7] J. Acharya and S. Akoum, "Optimizing vertical sectorization for high rises", in Proc. of the IEEE International Conference on Computing, Networking and Communications, Feb. 2015 [ieeexplore]
[C8] S. Akoum, and J. Acharya, "Full-Dimensional MIMO for Future Cellular Networks", in Proc. of IEEE Radio Wireless Week Symposium (RWW), Jan. 2014 [ieeexplore].
[C9] S. Akoum, and R. W. Heath, Jr., " Multicell Coordination: a Stochastic Geometry Approach", in Proc. of IEEE Intl. Workshop on Signal Processing Advances in Wireless Communications (SPAWC), Jun. 2012 [poster][video of presentation].
[C10] S. Akoum, O. El Ayach and R. W. Heath, Jr., "Coverage and Capacity in mmWave Cellular Systems", in Proc. of the IEEE Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems and Computers (Asilomar), Nov. 2012 [ieeexplore].
[C11] S. Akoum, C.S. Chen, M. Debbah, and R. W. Heath, Jr., "Data Sharing Coordination and Blind Interference Alignment for Cellular Networks", in Proc. of the IEEE Global Communications Conference (Globecom), Dec. 2012 [ieeexplore]
[C12] S. Akoum, M. Kountouris, M. Debbah and R. W. Heath, Jr., "Spatial Interference Mitigation for Multiple Input Multiple Output Ad hoc Networks: MISO Gains", in Proc. of the IEEE Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems and Computers (Asilomar), Nov. 2011, Pacific Grove, CA [ieeexplore] [video of presentation].
[C13] S. Akoum, M. Kountouris, R. W. Heath Jr., "On Imperfect CSI for the Downlink of a Two-Tier Network", in Proc. of the IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT), Aug. 2011, Saint-Petersburg, Russia [ieeexplore] [video of presentation].
[C14] S. Akoum, R. W. Heath Jr., "Limited feedback beamforming over temporally correlated channels with other cell interference", in Proc. of the International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP), Mar. 2010, Dallas, TX [ieeexplore] [video of presentation].
[C15] S. Akoum, M. Zwinglstein-Colin, R.W. Heath Jr., M. Debbah, "Cognitive Cooperation for the Downlink of Frequency Reuse Small Cells", in Proc. of the International Workshop on Cognitive Information Processing (CIP), Jun. 2010, Italy. [ieeexplore]
[C16] S. Akoum, R. Peng, R. Chen, B. Farhang-Boroujeny, "Markov chain Monte Carlo methods for high SNR regimes", in Proc. of IEEE International conference on Communication (ICC) Jul. 2009, Dresden, Germany. [ieeexplore]
[C17] P. Amini, E. Azarnasab, P. Amini, S. Akoum, B. Farhang-Bouroujeny, "An Experimental Cognitive Radio for First Responders", in Proc. of IEEE Dynamic Spectrum Access Conference (DySpan), 2008, Chicago, Il. [ieeexplore]
[C18] P. Amini, E. Azarnasab, S. Akoum, X. Mao, H. Rao, B. Farhang-Bouroujeny, "Implementation of a cognitive radio modem", in Proc. of the Software Defined Radio Technical Conference (SDR Forum), Nov. 2007, Denver, Col. [Poster Overview], [Poster Hardware]
[C19] S. Akoum, B. Farhang-Bouroujeny, “A phase locked loop with arbitrarily wide lock range for software defined radios, in Proc. of the Software Defined Radio Technical Conference (SDR Forum), Nov. 2007, Denver, Col. [pdf]
Book Chapters
[B1] S. Akoum, M. Kountouris, and R. W. Heath, Jr., "Multiple antenna techniques in small cell networks", Chapter in "Small Cell Networks: Deployment, PHY Techniques, and Resource Management", edited by Tony Q. S. Quek, Guillaume de la Roche, Ismail Guvenc, and Marios Kountouris, Cambridge University Press
PhD Dissertation
[D1] Salam Akoum, Limited Feedback MIMO for Interference Limited Networks, The University of Texas at Austin, December 2012.
Presentations/Talks
Panelist on Making Sense of Comms, WCNC 2022
Panelist on Coloring in the 5G Triangle: Super High Bandwidth, Massive IoT, and Ultra High Reliability , 14th Annual TFI Technology Conference, Jan. 2019
Panelist on Separating Users Using Massive MIMO , 5G americas Antenna Evolution Day, May 2018
Massive MIMO Solutions in LTE-A and 5G NR, 5G Americas, May 2018
Integrated Access and Backhaul for 5G, "Texas Wireless Summit, What started here changed the world", Nov. 2017
Full Dimensional MIMO for Future Cellular Networks, RWW 2014 invited speaker for the MIMO and Smart Antennas Session, Jan. 2014.
Interference Coordination: Random Clustering and Adaptive Limited Feedback, Futurewei US Wireless standards and research department, May 2012.
Spatial interference mitigation with limited coordination for future wireless networks, Bell Labs, Nokia, June 2011.
Spatial interference nulling for femtocell networks: Altruistic precoding, European winter school on Information Theory, March 2011.
Rate backoff for goodput maximization on the downlink of a heterogeneous network, ECOSCELLS meeting, Orange Labs, France, Feb 2011.
Awards and Honors
Above and Beyond Award, Hitachi America, Ltd., Sep. 2014.
Best paper award, software defined radio technical conference, 2007
2007 Smart radio challenge finalist (top 8 teams)
Dean's honor list, American University of Beirut (Fall 2002 - Spring 2006)
Scholarship award, National center for scientific research (CNRS), Lebanon, 2002-2006
Hariri Foundation award, for outstanding academic achievement, 2002
Lebanese Ministry of Education scholarship award, Beirut, Lebanon, 2004
Ranked 2nd over Lebanon in the high school national examinations, general sciences (SG)
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