Belal s. a. Korany Ph.D. Candidate Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering University of California, Santa Barbara CV Linkedin Scholar

Research Interests Research Projects Work Experience Education Publications About me

• Novel methods for sensing with existing RF signals: e.g. Localization, tracking, person identification, activity recognition, health monitoring, and others.

• Wireless Communications.

• Physical layer of next generation wireless networks.

1. Stationary Crowd Counting using WiFi signals [UCSB, 2021]:

• Developed a new and rigorous mathematical model to describe the fidgeting of stationary people. A fidget describes the small in-place motion that a stationary person is frequently involved in (such as pose adjustments).

• Proposed a method to estimate the number of people in an area based on their collective fidgeting behavior, inspired by old queuing theory problems.

• Experimentally validated our proposed approach by counting up to 10 people in 4 different areas, showing that the counting error is 0 or 1 only for 93.6% of the time.

2. Translating Videos to Instant RF Signals for Training RF Sensing Systems [UCSB, 2020]:

• Proposed a method that enables training RF sensing systems with zero RF training data and by only using the available online video footage.

• Showed how vision data can be translated to the RF domain.

• Trained a WiFi sensing system for gym activity classification by only using online available videos from YouTube.

• Extensively tested the proposed pipeline with several experiments.

3. Through-wall Person Identification with WiFi Signals [UCSB, 2019]:

• Introduced XModal-ID: a novel system that uses WiFi to determine if a person walking behind a wall is the same as one walking in a given video footage.

• Extended the proposed WiFi-based identification system to simultaneously identify multiple people through walls based on their gaits and Angles-of-Arrival.

• Extensively validated the proposed framework with several experiments by showing how WiFi cards of laptops can identify people through walls.

4. Human tracking using WiFi signal power [UCSB, 2019]:

• Proposed a particle-filter-based algorithm to track a single person using the WiFi received power.

• Extended the tracking algorithm to track multiple-people simultaneously using 3 laptops.

5. Angle-of-Arrival Estimation Using only Signal Magnitude [UCSB, 2018]:

• Demonstrated that AoA estimation using only signal magnitude is possible, without signal phase.

• Mathematically related AoA to power spectrum content and developed antenna array design strategy.

• Experimentally validated approach using a robot to synthesize arrays and measure WiFi magnitude

6. Device-to-Device (D2D) Communications Underlaying Massive MIMO Networks [Cairo University, 2015]:

• Demonstrated that AoA estimation using only signal magnitude is possible, without signal phase.

• Mathematically related AoA to power spectrum content and developed antenna array design strategy.

• Experimentally validated approach using a robot to synthesize arrays and measure WiFi magnitude

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	Summer Intern at Qualcomm, NJ, USA, 2016 Recipient of the Roberto Padovani Award for interns with extraordinary technical talent. - Analyzed wireless protocols and algorithms for 5G mmWave Networks. - Simulated the 5G access network at link-level and system-level.
	Wireless Systems Engineer at Intel Labs, Cairo, Egypt, 2013-2014 - Developed an interference mitigation solution for WiFi/LTE coexistence on Intel platforms.
	Teaching assistant at the ECE department, Cairo University, Egypt, 2012-2015 - Assisted in teaching courses on wireless communications, analog and digital communication systems, signal processing, information and coding theory, and electric circuits.

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• Ph.D., University of California Santa Barbara, California, USA, 2021 (Expected)
  Research Focus: Novel Sensing and Learning Systems.
  
  
• M.Sc., Cairo University, Egypt, 2015
  Thesis title: Device-to-Device Communications Deployment in Massive MIMO Networks.
  
  
• B.Sc., Cairo University, Egypt, 2012
  Distinction with honors.

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Patents:

• Y. Mostofi, C. R. Karanam, and B. Korany , "System and method of angle-of-arrival estimation, object localization, and target tracking, with received signal magnitude," U.S. Patent Application No. 62/656,050, April 2018.

• A. S. Ibrahim, M. F. Marzban, and B. S. Amin , "Methods and devices for interference variance estimation and interference cancellation," U.S. Patent 9,794,097, issued Oct 2017.

Journal Publications:

• B. Korany and Y. Mostofi, "Nocturnal Seizure Detection Using Off-the-Shelf WiFi," arXiV preprint.

• B. Korany, H.Cai, and Y. Mostofi, "Multiple People Identification Through-Walls Using Off-the-Shelf WiFi," in the IEEE Internet of Things (IoT) Journal, vol. 8, no. 8, pp. 6963-6974, April 2021. (Impact factor: 9.9)

• H. Cai*, B. Korany*, C. R. Karanam*, and Y. Mostofi, "Teaching RF to Sense without RF Training Measurements," in proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable, and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT), vol. 4, no. 4, December 2020. [Data and Codes]

• B. S. Amin, A. S. Ibrahim, M. H. Ismail, and H. M. Mourad, "Precoding and Power allocation Algorithms for Device-to-Device Communication in Massive MIMO Networks," in Wireless Networks, vol. 24, no. 3, pp. 925-942, April 2018.

Conference Publications:

• B. Korany and Y. Mostofi, "Counting a Stationary Crowd Using Off-the-Shelf WiFi," in proceedings of the the 19th ACM International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services (MobiSys), June 2021. (acceptance rate: 21.5%) [Project page]

• B. Korany*, C. R. Karanam*, H. Cai*, and Y. Mostofi, "XModal-ID: Using WiFi for Through-Wall Person Identification from Candidate Video Footage," in proceedings of the 25th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking, (MobiCom), Oct 2019. (acceptance rate: 18.9%) [Project page][Slides]

• C.R. Karanam, B. Korany, and Y. Mostofi, "Tracking from One Side -- Multi-Person Passive Tracking withWiFi Magnitude Measurements," in proceedings of the 18th ACM International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN), April 2019. (acceptance rate: 27%)

• B. Korany, S. Depatla, and Y. Mostofi, "Subspace-Based Imaging Using Only Power Measurements," in proceedings of the 10th IEEE Sensor Array and Multichannel Signal Processing Workshop, July 2018.

• B. Korany*, C. R. Karanam*, and Y. Mostofi, "Adaptive Near-Field Imaging with Robotic Arrays," in proceedings of the 10th IEEE Sensor Array and Multichannel Signal Processing Workshop, July 2018.

• C.R. Karanam*, B. Korany*, and Y. Mostofi, " Magnitude-Based Angle-of-Arrival Estimation, Localization, and Target Tracking," in proceedings of the 17th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN), April 2018. (acceptance rate: 26.5%)

• B. S. Amin, Y. R. Ramadan, A. S. Ibrahim, and M. H. Ismail, "Power allocation for Device-to-Device Communication Underlaying Massive MIMO Multicasting Networks," in proceedings of IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC) 2015, pp.1219-1224, March 2015.

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