Zhichao Cao Ph.D
Office: Room 3224, Engineering Building, 428 S. Shaw Lane, East Lansing, MI 48824
Email: caozc at msu dot edu BiographyI am an assistant professor at Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Michigan State University (MSU). I am also a faculty affiliate of AgBioResearch at MSU. I joined MSU at 2020. Before that, I had worked in School of Software, Tsinghua University for 6 years. I received my Ph.D. degree supervised by Yunhao Liu at 2013 in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering of Hong Kong University of Scienc and Technology. I received my B.E. degree at 2009 in the Department of Computer Science and Technology of Tsinghua University. My research interests lie broadly in IoT systems, edge computing and mobile computing. Currently, I serve as Associate Editor for ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks (TOSN), which is the flag journal related to computational intelligence in IoT. |
News
- [Wireless Networking] Our paper "AeroEcho: Towards Agricultural Low-power Wide-area Backscatter with Aerial Excitation Source" is accepted by IEEE INFOCOM 2025. Congratulations to Yidong!
- [Edge ML] Our paper "GeoFL: A Framework for Efficient Geo-Distributed Cross-Device Federated Learning" is accepted by IEEE INFOCOM 2025. Congratulations to Maolin!
- [Wireless Sensing] Our paper "Adonis: Neural-enhanced Fine-grained Leaf Wetness Sensing with Efficient mmWave Imaging" is accepted by IEEE INFOCOM 2025. Congratulations to Yimeng!
- [Media Report] My NSF CAREER Award has been highlighted in several reports of MSU Engineering Communications, MSU Today, and Spartan Community Letter . Go Green!
Edge Intelligence and Networking (EIN) Group [Group Members]
Our EIN research group consists of 6 PhD candidates with diverse undergraduate backgrounds. We focus on broad networking optimization and computational intelligence topics we have met during developing and implementing various edge and IoT systems.Research Projects:
- MindCare: Long-term sensing and monitoring IoT and edge systems for mental health. (2024 - Present)
- FedIoT: Efficient and Scalable Federated Learning systems for IoT. (2021 - Present)
- FarmEye: A large-scale agriclture data collection and analysis system with LoRa and AI. (2021 - Present)
- DeepSensing: Deep Neural Network augmented RF sensing systems. (2020 - Present)
- MobileSEC: Mobile system security and privacy ralted to cameras and microphones. (2020 - Present)
- IndoorSys: Practical tracking systems in indoor environments with mobile devices and RF infrastrucutres. (2019 - 2022)
- LoSee: A wide-area vehicle tracking system with LoRa. (2018 - 2020)
- BatteryLink: A product-cycle management system for lead batteries. (2016 - 2019)
- OilNet: A high speed mesh back-bone network for wild oil fields. (2014 - 2016)
- CitySee: A long-term city-wide urban sensing system for Carbon balance evaluation and environmental surveillance. (2012 - 2014)
- GreenOrbs: A long-term kilo-scale wireless sensor network system in the vast forest. (2009 - 2012)
- CAREER: LoRa Enabled Space-air-ground Integrated Networks for Next-Generation Agricultural IoT. 2024 - 2029.
- Collaborative Research: NeTS: Medium: Towards High-Performing LoRa with Embedded Intelligence on the Edge (Leading PI). 2023 - 2027. [Project Website]
- CNS Core: Small: Collaborative: Coalescent Computing - New Theory, Mechanism and Platform for Adaptive Edge Computing. 2019 - 2022.
I am recruting motivated PhD students who share the same research interests with us.
Surveys, Highlights, and Benchmarks
- Shakhrul Iman Siam, Hyunho Ahn, Li Liu, Samiul Alam, Hui Shen, Zhichao Cao, Ness Shroff, Bhaskar Krishnamachari, Mani Srivastava, and Mi Zhang.
Artificial Intelligence of Things: A Survey. ACM TOSN, (2024).[PDF] - Samiul Alam, Tuo Zhang, Tiantian Feng, Hui Shen, Zhichao Cao, Dong Zhao, JeongGil Ko, Kiran Somasundaram, Shrikanth S. Narayanan, Salman Avestimehr, and Mi Zhang.
FedAIoT: A Federated Learning Benchmark for Artificial Intelligence of Things. Journal of Data-centric Machine Learning Research (DMLR), (2024).[PDF] - Jialuo Du, Yidong Ren, Mi Zhang, Yunhao Liu, and Zhichao Cao.
NELoRa-Bench: A Benchmark for Neural-Enhanced LoRa Demodulation. ML4IoT Workshop on ICLR 2023.[PDF] - Chenning Li, Hanqing Guo, Shuai Tong, Zhichao Cao, Mi Zhang, Qiben Yan, Li Xiao, Jiliang Wang, and Yunhao Liu.
NELoRa: Neural-enhanced Demodulation for Low-Power WANs. ACM SIGMOBILE GetMobile, (Sep, 2022). (SenSys'21 Best Paper)[PDF] - Chenning Li, and Zhichao Cao.
LoRa Networking Techniques for Large-scale and Long-term IoT: A Down-to-top Survey. ACM Computing Survey (CSUR) 55(3):52, (2022).[PDF] - Chenning Li, Zhichao Cao, and Yunhao Liu.
Deep AI Enabled Ubiquitous Wireless Sensing: A Survey. ACM Computing Survey (CSUR) 54(2):32, (2021).[PDF] - Nikolay Ivanov, Chenning Li, Qiben Yan, Zhiyuan Sun, Zhichao Cao, and Xiapu Luo.
Security Threat Mitigation for Smart Contracts: A Comprehensive Survey. ACM Computing Survey (CSUR) 55(14):326, (2023).[PDF]
Selected Publications [Full List]
- Yidong Ren, Amalinda Gamage, Li Liu, Mo Li, Shigang Chen, Younsuk Dong, and Zhichao Cao.
SateRIoT: High-performance Ground-Space Networking for Rural IoT MobiCom 2024.[PDF] - Jialuo Du, Yunhao Liu, Yidong Ren, Li Liu, and Zhichao Cao.
LoRaTrimmer: Optimal Energy Condensation with Chirp Trimming for LoRa Weak Signal Decoding. MobiCom 2024.[PDF] - Chenning Li*, Yidong Ren*, Shuai Tong, Shakhrul Iman Siam, Mi Zhang, Jiliang Wang, Yunhao Liu and Zhichao Cao. (*Co-primary author)
ChirpTransformer: Versatile LoRa Encoding for Low-power Wide-area IoT. MobiSys 2024.[PDF] - Yidong Ren, Wei Sun, Jialuo Du, Huaili Zeng, Younsuk Dong, Mi Zhang, Shigang Chen, Yunhao Liu, Tianxing Li, and Zhichao Cao.
Demeter: Reliable Cross-soil LPWAN with Low-cost Signal Polarization Alignment. MobiCom 2024.[PDF] - Maolin Gan, Lanpeng Li, Samiul Alam, Li Liu, Luyang Liu, Mi Zhang, and Zhichao Cao.
GeoFL: A Framework for Efficient Geo-Distributed Cross-Device Federated Learning. INFOCOM 2025.[PDF] - Chenning Li, Xiao Zeng, Mi Zhang, and Zhichao Cao.
PyramidFL: A Fine-grained Client Selection Framework for Efficient Federated Learning. MobiCom 2022.[PDF] - Shichen Zhang, Qijun Wang, Maolin Gan, Zhichao Cao, and Huacheng Zeng.
RadSee: See Your Handwriting Through Walls Using FMCW Radar. NDSS 2025.[PDF] - Gen Li*, Huaili Zeng*, Hanqing Guo, Yidong Ren, Aiden Dixon, Zhichao Cao, and Tianxing Li. (*Co-primary author)
PiezoBud: A Piezo-Aided Secure Earbud with Practical Speaker Authentication. ACM SenSys 2024.[PDF] - Gen Li, Zhichao Cao, and Tianxing Li.
EchoAttack: Practical Inaudible Attacks To Smart Earbuds. MobiSys 2023.[PDF] - Yimeng Liu, Maolin Gan, Gen Li, Younsuk Dong, and Zhichao Cao.
Adonis: Neural-enhanced Fine-grained Leaf Wetness Sensing with Efficient mmWave Imaging. INFOCOM 2025.[PDF] - Yimeng Liu, Maolin Gan, Huaili Zeng, Li Liu, Younsuk Dong, and Zhichao Cao.
Hydra: Accurate Multi-Modal Leaf Wetness Sensing with mm-Wave and Camera Fusion. MobiCom 2024.[PDF] - Li Liu, Zhichao Cao, and Tianxing Li.
FaceTouch: Practical Face Touch Detection with a Multimodal Wearable System for Epidemiological Surveillance. IoTDI 2023.[PDF]
Wireless Networking
ML/Edge System
Mobile Security/Application
Wireless and Multi-Modality Sensing
Teaching
- Fall 2020/Spring 2021, 2022, 2023, CSE-220, Programming in C
- Spring 2020/Fall 2021, 2022, 2023, CSE-891, AIoT: Artificial Intelligence in the Edge
- Spring 2024, 2025, CSE-410, Operating System
Codes and Datasets
- L2 Implementation in TinyOS.
[ZIP] - Chase Implementation in TinyOS.
[ZIP] - NELoRa codes and datasets.
[Link] - CurvingLoRa codes and datasets.
[Link] - PyramidFL codes and datasets.
[Link] - WiSIA: Wi-Fi imagings datasets.
[Link]
Quote
"Nothing endures but change."- Heraclitus, Greek philosopher (540 BC - 480 BC)