InterDigital and The University of Texas at Austin to Showcase Over-the-Air Federated Learning for AI Model Training at Brooklyn 6G Summit

WILMINGTON, Del., Oct. 21, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- InterDigital, Inc. (Nasdaq: IDCC), a mobile, video and AI technology research and development company, announced its participation in the 2024 Brooklyn 6G Summit, taking place October 23 – 25. At the show, InterDigital and researchers from The University of Texas at Austin will display the latest in their collaboration to validate AI solutions for wireless networks and shape how AI will be used for 5G and 6G.

Jointly organized by Nokia and the NYU Wireless Research Center, the Brooklyn Summit is an annual gathering of communications industry leaders contributing to the future of wireless technology. The theme of this year’s discussions is “6G – From vision to action.”

A key challenge in applying AI/ML to wireless networks is managing model training overhead and ensuring user data privacy. To address these issues, InterDigital and The University of Texas at Austin will showcase our research on Over-the-Air Federated Learning (OTA-FL) by training a real-time image classification in a live demo.  

While traditional federated learning (FL) requires each device to send its model updates using separate dedicated radio resources to a central server for aggregation, in OTA-FL, the aggregation of model updates happens directly "over-the-air". The joint demo between InterDigital and The University of Texas at Austin will use software defined radios (SDRs) to simultaneously transmit model updates, displaying real-time OTA-FL training. The simultaneous transmission of model updates reduces overhead and improves energy efficiency, especially as the number of users increases.

“As industry prepares for the increased use of AI, new solutions are required to enable AI – especially for the training of AI models,” said Milind Kulkarni, VP and Head of Wireless Labs at InterDigital. “Our expert teams at InterDigital are leading critical research in AI and its enablement in wireless networks, and this work is one example of the novel approaches being considered”

“OTA-FL offers an incredible opportunity to have model weight updates from large number of devices without proportional increase in precious spectrum and time resources. It is a whole new paradigm of training where the wireless medium computes for us,” said UT-Austin Professor Kaushik Chowdhury. “Through this collaboration and support from InterDigital, as well as from the US National Science Foundation, we are excited to be among the first demonstrators of OTA-FL on real-world experimental testbeds.”   

In addition to their AI demo showcase, InterDigital’s Senior Principal Engineer Phil Pietraski will participate in a panel discussion on “Energy Efficiency in AI/ML Networks,” alongside speakers from NVIDIA, Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute (HHI), Rohde & Schwarz, and MediaTek. The panel will take place on Friday, October 25^th at 1:40pm ET in the NYU Wireless Pfizer Auditorium. Learn more here.

Learn more about the Brooklyn 6G Summit here.

About InterDigital^®

InterDigital is a global research and development company focused primarily on wireless, video, artificial intelligence (“AI”), and related technologies. We design and develop foundational technologies that enable connected, immersive experiences in a broad range of communications and entertainment products and services. We license our innovations worldwide to companies providing such products and services, including makers of wireless communications devices, consumer electronics, IoT devices, cars and other motor vehicles, and providers of cloud-based services such as video streaming. As a leader in wireless technology, our engineers have designed and developed a wide range of innovations that are used in wireless products and networks, from the earliest digital cellular systems to 5G and today’s most advanced Wi-Fi technologies. We are also a leader in video processing and video encoding/decoding technology, with a significant AI research effort that intersects with both wireless and video technologies. Founded in 1972, InterDigital is listed on Nasdaq.

InterDigital is a registered trademark of InterDigital, Inc.

For more information, visit: www.interdigital.com.

InterDigital Contact:
Roya Stephens
Email: Roya.Stephens@interdigital.com
+1 (202) 349-1714