Activity Report of Open Application Program 2023 vol.17 (Course A)
Learning Exchange about Japan's Cutting-Edge Research in Advanced Communication Networks
Report from Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST)
Associate Professor LIM Yuto
qWiSE Laboratory of JAIST that is headed by Assoc. Prof. LIM Yuto has hosted three undergraduate students and two young faculty members from the Department of Telecommunication and Network Engineering, Institute of Technology of Cambodia (ITC) from January 14th to 20th, 2024 under the Science and Technology Experience Course of JST SAKURA SCIENCE Science Exchange Program. The aim of this program is to provide them with opportunities to acquire experience and knowledge in the field of advanced communication networks and provide continuous support and collaboration for developing the laboratory-based education (LBE) in ITC, in which Japan is currently supporting through JICA.
Japan is aiming for the concept of the future society, Society 5.0 has come to be positioned the Japan's growth strategy significantly to discover the advanced ICT technologies, especially next-generation communication networks. On the other hand, ITC that was established in 1964 is Cambodia's leading technical university, offering a wide range of engineering education and research interests in the field of equipment that utilizes next-generation communications. This exchange will not only provide an opportunity to experience cutting-edge research in the next-generation digital social infrastructure research field, but also deepen the common interests of both universities to promote international collaboration in research and education.
Research Facilities
On the first day, they had an orientation, which includes welcome speech, JAIST briefing, Surface Laptop usage, network accessibility, and security policies. They had a discover tour on the research facilities, such as Testbed for Ambient Network System 2 (TANS2), iHouse, StarBED, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, Scanning Transmission Electron Microscope (STEM) and High-Performance Computing (HPC) system "KAGAYAKI". They also had an opportunity to visit JAIST gallery, which exhibits the NOB puzzle collection by YOSHIGAHARA Nobuyuki. At the end, they realized that the dimension of research facilities and environments is an essential need to foster good culture of research practices and activities.
Research Activities
On the second day, they had given a few switches and computers to construct and investigate the traffic conditions of an actual network. In particular, they first have to plan and configure the switches accordingly. Then, the switches automatically build and maintain their routing tables by using the Open Shortest Path First routing protocol. Last, they had verified and managed the network operations on the traffic transfer in between two computers using a free open-source packet analyzer, Wireshark. In the afternoon, they further extended their knowledge and experience in examining the performance of single web server using the network testbed, called Murubushi. At first, they had configured an experiment network and measured the actual throughput using a network performance measurement tool, iPerf. Then, they also measured the upper limit throughput of the multiple web servers using both benchmarking tool, ApacheBench (ab) and testing tool, httperf.
On the third day, they had learned about an essential knowledge of technologies and communications in advanced wireless networks. Since three undergraduate students do not have any experience in performing scientific research, we had adopted a comprehensive and cutting-edge research of AI-empowered wireless communication into the program. By this way, they could learn how to perform scientific research on the deployment of AI in the field of wireless communications. Besides that, they also had explored some of the experiments being carry out in the field of optical wireless communications (OWC). This new research field of OWC had stimulated their interests toward the realization of the future possible communications.
On the fourth day, they had a visit to two research laboratories. The first one is about security field by Assoc. Prof. BEURAN Razvan. They had received introduction and discussions to several research activities in cybersecurity, IoT/CPS security, trustworthiness assurance, and security education and training. The second one is about AI field by Prof. NGUYEN Minh Le. They had learning how to apply the deep learning approach for the research problems of natural language processing. They also had explored some developed AI-based natural language systems, such as CovRelex and JAIST Translation System. Through these laboratory visits and exchanging ideas with the professors and students, they had gained more knowledge not only in the latest communication field, but also the fields of security and AI.
On the fifth day, we had conducted a workshop for presenting their valuable experience and knowledge. The workshop was open to any participants from JAIST and had a lively discussion. The workshop was ended with a closing ceremony and awarded the certificate of Sakura Science Exchange Program.
Study Tour
On the last day, they had visited the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (Miraikan). They really had a great opportunity to experience the cutting-edge science and technology in Japan. Besides that, they also enjoyed the programs in the full-dome theater.
Concluding Remarks
Through this program, as a host institute, we had gained much experience to invite Cambodian students and young faculty members, who had deepened their interests and knowledge of Japan's cutting-edge technologies, and that both universities, ITC and JAIST will build a more continuous cooperative relationship. In conclusion, this program is the best fit to have collaborative research activities by inviting people from other countries. We believe that many fruitful discussions during their stay not only lead to discover innovation and cutting-edge research in the needs of Japan's society, but also the understanding of international collaboration between universities in research and education. We would like to express our thankful to this program for giving us such invaluable opportunity and international awareness.