News Archive

Jan 2021: I now serve as the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing.

June 2020: Hoi-To Wai, Tsung-Hui Chang and I are organizing a virtual signal processing seminar series.

Aug 2018: I have been advanced to Professor.

May 2018: haven't updated for a while. Here is a list of accomplishments since the last post:

 

March 2017: more than 1000 citations for our semidefinite relaxation overview paper in IEEE Signal Processing Magazine.

 

May 2016: The paper

B.-N. Vo and W.-K. Ma, "The Gaussian mixture probability hypothesis density filter," IEEE Trans. Signal Process., vol. 54, no. 11, 4091-4104, Nov. 2006. [PDF]

has reached one thousand citations in Scholar Google!

 

Mar 2016: 2015 IEEE Signal Processing Magazine Best Paper Award for the following paper

Z.-Q. Luo, W.-K. Ma, A. M.-C. So, Y. Ye, and S. Zhang, "Semidefinite relaxation of quadratic optimization problems," IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, vol. 27, no. 3, pp. 20-34, May 2010 [PDF] [Tutorial Slides, MIIS2012]

Some photos in the opening ceremony in ICASSP 2016.

Dec 2015: Xiaoxiao Wu won the Postgraduate Research Output Award 2014. See here. Congrats. Xiaoxiao!

Aug 2015: check out some of our recent publications:

J. Pan, W.-K. Ma, X. Xia, and Y. Tian, "WMMSE-based multiuser MIMO beamforming: A practice-oriented design and LTE system performance evaluation," in Proc. SPAWC 2015, Stockholm, Sweden, Jun. 2015. [PDF]

W.-K. Ma, C.-H. Lin, W.-C. Li, and C.-Y. Chi, "When can the minimum volume enclosing simplex identify the endmembers correctly when there is no pure pixel?" in Proc. WHISPERS 2015, Tokyo, Japan, Jun. 2015. [PDF]

Mar 2015: the annual awards presentation ceremony day, the CUHK engineering faculty, where I received his Research Excellence Award 2013-2014.

Mar 2015: an update of our manuscript, with MATLAB demo:

X. Fu, W.-K. Ma, T.-H. Chan, and J. M. Bioucas-Dias, "Self-dictionary sparse regression for hyperspectral unmixing: Greedy pursuit and pure pixel search are related," to appear in IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing, Sep. 2015. [ArXiv] [MATLAB code]

Feb 2015: Check out this manuscript, recently accepted by IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing:

X. Fu, W.-K. Ma, K. Huang, and N. D. Sidiropoulos, "Blind separation of quasi-stationary sources: Exploiting convex geometry in covariance domain," accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, Jan. 2015. Submitted Apr. 2014, revised Aug. 2014. [PDF] [MATLAB code]

The paper describes a novel way to tackle the classical problem of blind source separation using quasi-stationarity. In particular, we establish a link between quasi-stationary blind separation and convex geometry, which were considered two different contexts previously. From such a link, we introduce convex geometry-based algorithms for quasi-stationary blind separation, which show a different flavor from many existing quasi-stationary blind separation frameworks. Numerical experiments suggest that the convex geometry-based algorithms work well (see "SPA", "Pro-SPA" and "VolMin-AO" below).

 

June 2014: I gave a talk at the University of of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC) (电子科技大学), Chengdu. Left: Qiang Li, who was my Ph.D. student and now an Associate Professor at UESTC. Right: Jiaxian Pan, also my Ph.D. student. Jiaxian got his Ph.D. just a few months ago, and he together with me are now working on some exciting research project on MIMO communications.

May 2014: Xiao Fu received a 3rd Prize in the ICASSP 2014 Best Student Paper Awards. ICASSP is is the largest and most prestigious conference in signal processing. The work, titled "Blind Spectra Separation and Direction Finding for Cognitive Radio Using Temporal Correlation-domain ESPRIT," was carried out during his overseas exchange last summer at the University of Minnesota, where Prof. Nikos Sidiropoulos is the host.

                             

Left: Xiao Fu and his labmate Jiaxian Pan (who also received an ICASSP Best Student Award in 2011). Right: Me, Xiao Fu, and Prof. Sidiropoulos.

May 2014: Anthony So (at SEEM CUHK) and I gave a tutorial in ICASSP 2014. The tutorial, titled "Semidefinite Relaxation: From Theory to Applications to Latest Advances," describes a very powerful class of methods in signal processing - namely, semidefinite relaxation - which finds numerous applications and has significant impacts on key research topics such as MIMO detection, transmit beamforming and interference management, and sensor network localization. See [PDF] [Tutorial Slides, MIIS2012].

Dec 2012: My students, Ka-Kit Lee and Hoi-To Wai, won Outstanding Tutor Award.

July 2012: I gave a tutorial and was a speaker in MIIS2012, held in Xi'An, China.

June 2011: Our paper, entitled "robust endmember extraction using worst-case simplex volume maximization", won a Best Paper Award in WHISPERS 2011.

May 2011: Jiaxian Pan, my Ph.D. student, won an ICASSP 2011 Best Student Paper Award. ICASSP is one of the most prestigious conferences in SP, and the largest. The paper is entitled "a Lagrangian dual relaxation approach to ML MIMO detection: reinterpreting regularized Lattice decoding".


Jan 2014: A new postgraduate course, ENGG5781 Matrix Analysis and Computations, is offered by me this term. Check out the course homepage.

Oct 2014: Check out this recently published paper

K.-Y. Wang, A. M.-C. So, T.-H. Chang, W.-K. Ma, and C.-Y. Chi, "Outage constrained robust transmit optimization for multiuser MISO downlinks: Tractable approximations by conic optimization," IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, vol. 62, no. 21, pp. 5690-5705, Nov. 2014. [PDF] [Companion Technical Report]

Outage constrained robust multiuser transmit beamforming is known to be difficult. This paper describes efficient convex approximation methods for dealing with this challenging design problem.

Sep 2014: Check out several new preprints done by us:

N. Gillis and W.-K. Ma, "Enhancing pure-pixel identification performance via preconditioning," arXiv preprint, Jun. 2014. [ArXiv]

C.-H. Lin, W.-K. Ma, W.-C. Li, C.-Y. Chi, and A. Ambikapathi, "Identifiability of the simplex volume minimization criterion for blind hyperspectral unmixing: The no pure-pixel case," arXiv preprint, Jun. 2014. [ArXiv]

X. Fu, W.-K. Ma, T.-H. Chan, and J. M. Bioucas-Dias, "Self-dictionary sparse regression for hyperspectral unmixing: Greedy pursuit and pure pixel search are related," arXiv preprint, Sep. 2014. [ArXiv]

July 2014: Dr. Ma received Research Excellence Award 2013-2014, by CUHK.

Jan 2014: The IEEE Signal Processing Magazine special issue on signal and image processing in hyperspectral remote sensing, guest-edited by José Bioucas, Jocelyn Chanussot, Paul Gader and myself, has appeared.

 

Jan 2014: Our MIMO detection website was updated. We release the source code of a new set of algorithms based on lattice decoding and Lagrangian dual relaxation. For technical details, see our recent paper

J. Pan, W.-K. Ma, and J. Jaldén, "MIMO detection by Lagrangian dual maximum-likelihood relaxation: Reinterpreting regularized lattice decoding," IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, vol. 62, no. 2, pp. 511-524, Jan 2014. [PDF]

Sep 2013: I'll be among one of the tutorial speakers in ICASSP 2014. The tutorial title is "Semidefinite Relaxation: From Theory to Applications to Latest Advances," and the tutorial will be delivered together with Anthony Man-Cho So.

Jun 2013: I am a speaker of STATOS 2013, a workshop in memory of Alex B. Gershman.

Sept 2012: I serve as Lead Editor of the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, Special Issue on "Signal and Image Processing in Hyperspectral Remote Sensing."

Mar 2012: I serve as Guest Editor of IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, special issue on "Signal Processing Techniques for Wireless Physical Layer Security."

Sept 2011: I, together with Anthony M.-C. So, at SEEM department, CUHK, gave a tutorial in EUSIPCO 2011. The title is "Semidefinite Relaxation of Nonconvex Quadratic Optimization: A Key Technique in Signal Processing and Communications".

Dec 2010: Eric Yu, my final year project student in 2009-2010, won the HKEIA Innovation & Technology Project Competition Award. His project title is "Blind Source Separation of Non-Negative Sources".

April 2010: Qiang Li, my student, won the First Place of the Paper Contest of the IEEE HK Chapter Signal Processing Postgraduate Forum.

Oct 2009: I now serve as an associate editor of IEEE Signal Processing Letters.

Dec 2008: I gave two invited talks for Inauguration of IEEE ComSoc Xi’an Chapter, in Xidian University, Xi’an.

Dec 2008: I, together with Daniel Palomar, taught a 3-day intensive short course in "Convex Optimization for Wireless Communications and Signal Processing" in National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan.

Dec 2008: I am invited as a contributing book-chapter author of Convex Optimization in Signal Processing and Communications, edited by Daniel P. Palomar and Yonina C. Eldar and contributed by top experts in the area.

Dec 2008: I serve as a guest editor of the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, Special Issue on "Convex Optimization for Signal Processing".

July 2008: My students in National Tsing Hua Univ., Tsung-Hui Chang, Tsung-Han Hsieh, Lenyi Li, Chien-Wei Shin, and Chao-Cheng Su (co-supervised with Prof. Chong-Yung Chi) have successfully defended their MPhil or PhD theses. They are going to high-tech. industry, except for Tsung-Hui (should call him Dr. Chang) who will pursue his career in the academia and will work as a postdoctoral fellow in the same institute. Congratulations to you all and I believe all of you will have a bright future!

 

Aug. 2008: A new graduate course on signal processing, entitled "Signal Processing Optimization Techniques" is offered this term. You are welcome to join.

Aug. 2008: We have two new PhD students coming through this Aug.: Qiang Li and Jiaxian Pan. Welcome!

July 2008: I am serving as a Guest Editor of a special issue of EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking, entitled Optimization Techniques for Wireless Communications; see call for paper. The manuscript submission deadline is Dec. 1, 2008.

Dec 2007: We have made a homepage for our very recently proposed framework for non-negative blind source separation. In there you can find available MATLAB source codes for reproducing the research results.

Sept 2007: Starting from Oct. 2007, I will be appointed as an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, a very prestigious journal in signal processing.

Dec 2006: A series of IEEE ComSoc & SPS Distinguished Lectures, by Prof. K. M. Wong at McMaster University, Canada, will be held consecutively in NTU, NCTU, and NTHU. See the flyer for the details. Please contact me for any further information. 

July 2006: Ahmed Pasha, the principal author of the following paper, has won the Best Student Paper Contest in the 9th International Conference on Information Fusion 2006.

A. Pasha, B.-N. Vo, H. D. Tuan, and W.-K. Ma, "Closed form PHD filtering for linear jump Markov models," in Proc. 9th International Conference on Information Fusion, July 2006.