10th seminar - Building Resilient Connectivity beyond Terrestrial Networks - Insights from System-Level Co-Design

Title: Building Resilient Connectivity beyond Terrestrial Networks - Insights from System-Level Co-Design 

Time: 10:30am on 4th March, Wednesday, 2026 

Location: 611 EEE Building, South Kensington Campus

Abstract: Reliable connectivity cannot be assumed in disaster-affected or infrastructure-limited environments, exposing fundamental limitations of terrestrial networks. This keynote shares system-level co-design insights derived from our drone-based non-terrestrial network (NTN) research. Through real-world experimentation, we reveal key constraints in non-terrestrial settings, including deployment flexibility, environmental impacts, energy limitations, and communication reliability. The talk also explores how semantic communication and AI-assisted operation can enhance system effectiveness under such constraints. The presentation concludes by outlining future research directions toward resilient connectivity in NTN, informed by the system-level lessons learned through these experimental studies.

Short Bio: Kaoru Ota was born in Aizu-Wakamatsu, Japan. She received her B.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Aizu, Japan, in 2006 and 2012, respectively, and her M.S. degree from Oklahoma State University, USA, in 2008. She is a Distinguished Professor at the Graduate School of Information Sciences, Tohoku University, Japan, and a Professor at the Center for Computer Science (CCS), Muroran Institute of Technology, Japan, where she served as the founding director. She was also a Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) Excellent Young Researcher. From March 2010 to March 2011, she was a visiting scholar at the University of Waterloo, Canada. Also, she was a Japan Society of the Promotion of Science (JSPS) research fellow at Tohoku University, Japan from April 2012 to April 2013. Kaoru is the recipient of IEEE TCSC Early Career Award 2017, The 13th IEEE ComSoc Asia-Pacific Young Researcher Award 2018, 2020 N2Women: Rising Stars in Computer Networking and Communications, 2020 KDDI Foundation Encouragement Award, and 2021 IEEE Sapporo Young Professionals Best Researcher Award, The Young Scientists’ Award from MEXT in 2023. She is Clarivate Analytics 2019, 2021, 2022 Highly Cited Researcher (Web of Science) and is selected as JST-PRESTO researcher in 2021, Fellow of EAJ in 2022, and Fellow of AAIA in 2025.