My name is Hou Ningning (侯宁宁). I am a Lecturer (Assistant Prof) at Macquarie University(Sydney, Australia). Before joining Macquarie University, I worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU). I obtained my Ph.D. degree in 2021 from PolyU under the supervision of Prof. Yuanqing Zheng. Prior to this, I received my B.Eng. degree from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT) in 2017.
Feel free to contact me at [ningning.hou@mq.edu.au].

I am looking for self-motivated PhD students, research staffs in all levels to work on exciting research projects related to Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT), LPWANs, edge computing, wireless networking, security and privacy. If you are interested in any of these or other research topics, please feel free to contact me.

Scholarships

– Successful applicants will receive the tax-free scholarship of about $35，000 per annum (2021 rate) PLUS free tuition fee of 3 years for a PhD, or 2 years for Master Research (MRes).

– A PhD student enrolled in an overseas university can apply for the cotutelle PhD program (联合培养双学位) at Macquarie. A successful applicant can receive scholarship with the same rate of about $35,000 per annum (2024 rate) for 1-2 years. After graduation, the student can be awarded PhD degrees from both the overseas home university and Macquarie University respectively.

– An applicant from China can also apply for CSC (Chinese Scholarship Council) scholarship. If granted, Macquaire covers tuition fee (45k AUD per year) and both CSC and Macquarie will provide stipend (35,000 AUD per annum) for the entire program. Both CSC visiting students and research fellows are also welcome！

– A Ph.D. student could receive up to $7.5k for attending international conferences (5000 AUD from the university and 2500 AUD from the department) during the program.

Eligibility

For admission to the PhD program, an international applicant needs an overall score of 6.5 in IELTS, or overall 83 in TOEFL iBT, or overall 58 in PTE. This requirement is waived if you have obtained a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree from an English-speaking country, e.g., Canada, USA, UK, New Zealand, Australia etc.

Research Interests

Low Power Wide Area Networks(LPWANs), Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT), Wireless Sensing and Networking, and Wireless Security

Conference papers

[MobiCom’24] “Revolutionizing LoRa Gateway with XGate: Scalable Concurrent Transmission across Massive Logical Channels”
Shiming Yu, Xianjin Xia, Ningning Hou, Yuanqing Zheng, Tao Gu, In ACM MobiCom, Washington, D.C., USA，2-6 Oct 2024.
[PDF]

[MobiCom’23] “XCopy: Boosting Weak Links for Reliable LoRa Communication”
Xianjin Xia, Qianwu Chen, Ningning Hou, Yuanqing Zheng, Mo Li, In ACM MobiCom, Madrid, Spain, 2-6 Oct 2023.
[PDF]

[INFOCOM’23] “One Shot for All: Quick and Accurate Data Aggregation for LPWANs”
Ningning Hou, Xianjin Xia, Yifeng Wang, Yuanqing Zheng, In IEEE INFOCOM, New York, United States, 17-20 May 2023.
[PDF]

[SenSys’22] “HyLink: Towards High Throughput LPWANs with LoRa Compatible Communication” （Best paper candidate）
Xianjin Xia, Qianwu Chen, Ningning Hou, Yuanqing Zheng, In ACM SenSys, Boston, United States, 6-9 Nov 2022.
[PDF]

[INFOCOM’22] “Don’t Miss Weak Packets: Boosting LoRa Reception with Antenna Diversities”
Ningning Hou, Xianjin Xia, Yuanqing Zheng, In IEEE INFOCOM, Virtual Conference, 2-5 May 2022.
[PDF] [Presentation Video]

[MobiCom’21] “PCube: Scaling LoRa Concurrent Transmissions with Reception Diversities”
Xianjin Xia, Ningning Hou, Yuanqing Zheng, Tao Gu, In ACM MobiCom, New Orleans, United States, March 28 - April 1, 2022.
[PDF] [1-min Pitch]

[INFOCOM’21] “Jamming of LoRa PHY and Countermeasure”
Ningning Hou, Xianjin Xia, Yuanqing Zheng, In IEEE INFOCOM, Virtual Conference, 10-13 May 2021.
[PDF] [Presentation Video]

[ICNP’20] “CloakLoRa: A Covert Channel over LoRa PHY”
Ningning Hou,Yuanqing Zheng, In IEEE ICNP, Madrid, Spain, 13-16 Oct 2020. Acceptance Rate:16.8% (31/184)
[PDF] [Presentation Video]

Journal papers

[TON] “Hylink: Towards High Throughput LPWANs with LoRa Compatible Communication”
Xianjin Xia, Qianwu Chen, Ningning Hou, Yuanqing Zheng, Tao Gu, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (TON), Mar. 2024.

[TON] “One Shot for All: Quick and Accurate Data Aggregation for LPWANs”
Ningning Hou, Xianjin Xia, Yifeng Wang, Yuanqing Zheng, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (TON), Jan. 2024.
[[PDF]

[TON] “CloakLoRa: A Covert Channel over LoRa PHY”
Ningning Hou, Xianjin Xia, Yuanqing Zheng, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (TON), Sep. 2022.
[PDF]

[TOSN] “Don’t Miss Weak Packets: Boosting LoRa Reception with Antenna Diversities”
Ningning Hou, Xianjin Xia, Yuanqing Zheng, ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks (TOSN), Aug. 2022.
[PDF]

[TOSN] “PCube: Scaling LoRa Concurrent Transmissions with Reception Diversities”
Xianjin Xia, Ningning Hou, Yuanqing Zheng, Tao Gu, ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks (TOSN), Jun. 2022.
[PDF]

[TOSN] “Jamming of LoRa PHY and Countermeasure”
Ningning Hou, Xianjin Xia, Yuanqing Zheng, submitted to ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks (TOSN), Feb. 2023.
[PDF]

Demo

[INFOCOM’20] “CLoRa: A Covert Channel over LoRa PHY” Ningning Hou, Yuanqing Zheng, In IEEE INFOCOM, Beijing, China, Apr. 2020.
[PDF]

Project

“Auto Coffee Machine Robot” In this project, a robot arm makes a cup of coffee for you on your order automatically!
Explore [here!]

Teaching Experience

Teaching Assistant, COMP4334 Principles and Practice of Internet Security, 2020 Fall
Teaching Assistant, COMP5327 Wireless Networking and Mobile Computing, 2020 Spring
Teaching Assistant, COMP5311 Internet Infrastructure and Protocols, 2019 Fall
Teaching Assistant, COMP1011 Programming Fundamentals, 2019 Spring

Professional Services

Reviewer of conferences: IEEE INFOCOM 2019~2022, SenSys 2019~2022, IoTDI 2021
Reviewer of journals: ACM ToN, ToSN, TWC; IEEE TMC, TDSC, TCOM; EURASIP
TPC member of conferences: ICPADS 2022~2023, MSN 2023, ICDCS 2024, UIC 2024

Selected Awards

People’s Choice Award for the Three Minute Thesis (3MT) Competition (2021)
PolyU Annual Research Day (First prize in 2018, Second prize in 2019)
National Scholarship for Encouragement (2014-2016)
The Xingda Scholarship (2014-2016)
Outstanding Graduates & Dissertation Award of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (2017)