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Hyowoon Seo

Sungkyunkwan University · Computer Science

About the Lab

Professor Hyowoon Seo's research lab specializes in next-generation wireless communication systems, with a strong focus on semantics-aware communication, efficient resource management, and distributed learning in constrained environments. The lab explores semantic-native communication (SNC) to enhance communication efficiency by leveraging meaning rather than raw data, and develops advanced signal processing and machine learning techniques for IoT, edge computing, and mission-critical applications. Key research directions include compressed sensing for random access, federated distillation for low-bandwidth model sharing, and co-design of communication and consensus protocols for reliable, low-latency wireless systems.

semantic communicationcompressed sensingfederated learningresource managementwireless consensus

Research Overview

Papers
51
Total Citations
426
Papers (5y)
27
Primary Field
Computer Science

Research Output Trend

Figures are computed from collected data and may differ slightly.

Publications per year (5y)
27total
2022
2023
2024
2025
2026
Citations per year (5y)
159total
20222023202420252026

Selected Papers

15
1
Article|49 citations·2023
Semantics-Native Communication via Contextual Reasoning
Hyowoon Seo, Jihong Park, Mehdi Bennis, Mérouane Debbah
SJR Q1IEEE Transactions on Cognitive Communications and Networking

Recently, machine learning (ML) has shown its effectiveness in improving communication efficiency by reinstating the semantics of bits. To understand its underlying principles, we propose a novel stochastic model of semantic communication, dubbed semantics-native communication (SNC). Inspired from human communication, we consider a point-to-point SNC scenario where a speaker has an intention of referring to an entity, extracts its semantic concepts, and maps these concepts into symbols that are

Artificial IntelligenceComputer Science
2
Article|40 citations·2019
Low Latency Random Access for Sporadic MTC Devices in Internet of Things
Hyowoon Seo, Jun‐Pyo Hong, Wan Choi
SJR Q1IEEE Internet of Things Journal

This paper proposes a compressed sensing-based random access protocol (CS-RACH), which is suitable for servicing a large number of machine-type communication devices in Internet of Things (IoT) network. In CS-RACH, we utilize a larger number of unique preambles compared to conventional LTE-RACH, however, the compressed sensing technique makes it possible to simultaneously detect the users with high accuracy. Compared to the user detection in conventional LTE-RACH, the proposed user detection can

Electrical and Electronic EngineeringEngineering
3
Preprint|38 citations·2021
Semantics-Native Communication with Contextual Reasoning
Hyowoon Seo, Jihong Park, Mehdi Bennis, Mérouane Debbah
arXiv (Cornell University)OA

Spurred by a huge interest in the post-Shannon communication, it has recently been shown that leveraging semantics can significantly improve the communication effectiveness across many tasks. In this article, inspired by human communication, we propose a novel stochastic model of System 1 semantics-native communication (SNC) for generic tasks, where a speaker has an intention of referring to an entity, extracts the semantics, and communicates its symbolic representation to a target listener. To

Artificial IntelligenceComputer Science
4
Preprint|34 citations·2020
Federated Knowledge Distillation
Hyowoon Seo, Jihong Park, Seungeun Oh, Mehdi Bennis, Seong‐Lyun Kim
arXiv (Cornell University)OA

Distributed learning frameworks often rely on exchanging model parameters across workers, instead of revealing their raw data. A prime example is federated learning that exchanges the gradients or weights of each neural network model. Under limited communication resources, however, such a method becomes extremely costly particularly for modern deep neural networks having a huge number of model parameters. In this regard, federated distillation (FD) is a compelling distributed learning solution t

Artificial IntelligenceComputer Science
5
Article|33 citations·2020
Communication and Consensus Co-Design for Distributed, Low-Latency, and Reliable Wireless Systems
Hyowoon Seo, Jihong Park, Mehdi Bennis, Wan Choi
SJR Q1IEEE Internet of Things Journal

Designing distributed, fast, and reliable wireless consensus protocols is instrumental in enabling mission-critical decentralized systems, such as robotic networks in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), drone swarms in rescue missions, and so forth. However, chasing both low-latency and reliability of consensus protocols is a challenging task. The problem is aggravated under wireless connectivity that may be slower and less reliable, compared to wired connections. To tackle this issue, we

Computer Networks and CommunicationsComputer Science
6
Article|33 citations·2019
Learning-Based Resource Management in Device-to-Device Communications With Energy Harvesting Requirements
Kisong Lee, Jun‐Pyo Hong, Hyowoon Seo, Wan Choi
SJR Q1IEEE Transactions on Communications

In this paper, we propose a resource management method based on deep learning, which controls both the transmit power and the power splitting ratio to maximize the sum rate with low computational complexity in D2D networks with energy harvesting requirements. The introduction of the energy harvesting requirements to D2D networks makes it hard to design an effective resource management solution since the treatment of interference signals should be completely different from the conventional resour

Electrical and Electronic EngineeringEngineering
7
Article|30 citations·2022
Learning Emergent Random Access Protocol for LEO Satellite Networks
Ju-Hyung Lee, Hyowoon Seo, Jihong Park, Mehdi Bennis, Young‐Chai Ko
SJR Q1IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications

A mega-constellation of low-altitude earth orbit (LEO) satellites (SATs) are envisaged to provide a global coverage SAT network in beyond fifth-generation (5G) cellular systems. LEO SAT networks exhibit extremely long link distances of many users under time-varying SAT network topology. This makes existing multiple access protocols, such as random access channel (RACH) based cellular protocol designed for fixed terrestrial network topology, ill-suited. To overcome this issue, in this paper, we p

Aerospace EngineeringEngineering
8
Article|29 citations·2022
Attention-Based Communication and Control for Multi-UAV Path Planning
Hamid Shiri, Hyowoon Seo, Jihong Park, Mehdi Bennis
SJR Q1IEEE Wireless Communications Letters

Inspired by the multi-head attention (MHA) mechanism in natural language processing, this letter proposes an iterative single-head attention (ISHA) mechanism for multi-UAV path planning. The ISHA mechanism is run by a communication helper collecting the state embeddings of UAVs and distributing an attention score vector to each UAV. The attention scores computed by ISHA identify how many interactions with other UAVs should be considered in each UAV’s control decision-making. Simulation results c

Computer Vision and Pattern RecognitionComputer Science
9
Preprint|22 citations·2018
Consensus-Before-Talk: Distributed Dynamic Spectrum Access via Distributed Spectrum Ledger Technology
Hyowoon Seo, Jihong Park, Mehdi Bennis, Wan Choi

This paper proposes Consensus-Before-Talk (CBT), a spectrum etiquette architecture leveraged by distributed ledger technology (DLT). In CBT, secondary users' spectrum access requests reach a consensus in a distributed way, thereby enabling collision-free distributed dynamic spectrum access. To achieve this consensus, the secondary users need to pay for the extra request exchanging delays. Incorporating the consensus delay, the end-to-end latency under CBT is investigated. Both the latency analys

Computer Networks and CommunicationsComputer Science
10
Article|15 citations·2021
Fast and Scalable Distributed Consensus Over Wireless Large-Scale Internet of Things Network
Hojung Lee, Hyowoon Seo, Wan Choi
SJR Q1IEEE Internet of Things Journal

Due to the rapid paradigm shift in Internet of Things networks from wired and centralized to flexible wireless and decentralized networks, building effective and reliable distributed consensus mechanisms over wireless is becoming essential. Especially, since the performance of consensus over communication endpoints in a large-scale wireless network is limited by their communication capability, it requires a careful co-design of communication and consensus to attain a fast and scalable distribute

Computer Networks and CommunicationsComputer Science
11
Article|10 citations·2022
Predictive Closed-Loop Remote Control Over Wireless Two-Way Split Koopman Autoencoder
Abanoub M. Girgis, Hyowoon Seo, Jihong Park, Mehdi Bennis, Jinho Choi
SJR Q1IEEE Internet of Things Journal

Real-time remote control over wireless is an important yet challenging application in fifth-generation and beyond due to its mission-critical nature under limited communication resources. Current solutions hinge on not only utilizing ultrareliable and low-latency communication (URLLC) links but also predicting future states, which may consume enormous communication resources and struggle with a short prediction time horizon. To fill this void, in this article we propose a novel two-way Koopman a

Statistical and Nonlinear PhysicsPhysics and Astronomy
12
Article|8 citations·2021
Communication-Efficient Private Information Acquisition: Multicasting via Crowding
Hyowoon Seo, Kyungrak Son, Sangjun Park, Wan Choi
SJR Q1IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology

This paper focuses on the way to protect privacy of clients requesting datasets stored in data servers while keeping communication efficiency. To this end, we introduce a novel communication-efficient and privacy protecting framework termed <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">crowded information acquisition (CIA)</i> , well suited to a large number of clients scenario. We investigate the CIA under various conditions addressing possibl

Artificial IntelligenceComputer Science
13
Article|7 citations·2023
Bayesian Inverse Contextual Reasoning for Heterogeneous Semantics- Native Communication
Hyowoon Seo, Yoonseong Kang, Mehdi Bennis, Wan Choi
SJR Q1IEEE Transactions on Communications

This work deals with a heterogeneous semantics-native communication (SNC) problem. When agents do not share the same communication context, the effectiveness of contextual reasoning (CR) is compromised calling for agents to infer other agents’ context before communication. This article proposes a novel framework for solving the inverse problem of CR in SNC using two Bayesian inference methods, namely: Bayesian inverse CR (iCR) and Bayesian inverse linearized CR (iLCR). The first proposed Bayesia

Artificial IntelligenceComputer Science
14
Preprint|5 citations·2019
Communication and Consensus Co-Design for Low-Latency and Reliable Industrial IoT Systems.
Hyowoon Seo, Jihong Park, Mehdi Bennis, Wan Choi
arXiv (Cornell University)OA

Designing fast and reliable distributed consensus protocols is a key to enabling mission-critical and real-time controls of industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) nodes communicating over wireless links. However, chasing both low-latency and reliability of a consensus protocol at once is a challenging task. The problem is even aggravated under wireless connectivity that is slower and less reliable, compared to wired connections presumed in traditional consensus protocols. To tackle this issue, we

Computer Networks and CommunicationsComputer Science
15
Article|4 citations·2021
Fundamental Limits of Private Information Retrieval With Unknown Cache Prefetching
Hyowoon Seo, Hojung Lee, Wan Choi
SJR Q1IEEE Transactions on Communications

The fundamental limits of private information retrieval (PIR) with unknown cache prefetching at the user are investigated in this paper. To this end, a novel random linear combination (RLC)-based PIR scheme that can solve the basic PIR problem and its variation is proposed. The proposed scheme is based on random coding approach and achieves the capacity of the basic PIR asymptotically. Then, we investigate PIR with unknown cache prefetching (PIRC) problem at different cache-to-file size ratio. S

Computer Networks and CommunicationsComputer Science

Research Areas

Artificial IntelligenceElectrical and Electronic EngineeringComputer Networks and CommunicationsAerospace EngineeringStatistical and Nonlinear PhysicsComputer Vision and Pattern Recognition

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