Chao Zhou (周超)

Chao Zhou (周超)

SuSTech

Hello!

I am a Ph.D. candidate at Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech), advised by Prof. Changsheng You. I received the M.S. degree from Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, under the supervision of Prof. Bin Lyu.

My research interests include Near-Field Communications, Intelligent Antenna and Surface, and Symbiotic Radio. I have published several papers in top international communication journals and conferences. If you are interested in collaboration, please contact me via email: zhouchao2024@mail.sustech.edu.cn

Research interests

Near-field Communications (NFC)

Near-field communications account for the spherical wavefronts of large antenna arrays, so that the channel response depends on both the angle and distance of a terminal. This angle–distance dependence supports beam focusing and motivates different designs from conventional far-field beam steering.

My focus: My work covers Fourier-transform-based beam coverage design in near-field and far-field regions, robust near-field beamforming under eavesdropper location uncertainty, and movable XL-array design for mixed-field covert communications. These studies address beam coverage, secrecy robustness, and the joint optimization of subarray positions and transmit beamforming, respectively.

English illustration of near-field and far-field wireless communication scenarios around an XL-MIMO base station.

Intelligent Antennas and Surfaces

Intelligent antennas and surfaces provide additional ways to configure a wireless channel: antennas can change position or orientation, while an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) controls the reflected signal. Their configuration and placement affect the communication and sensing links.

My focus: My published work includes joint array-rotation and transmit-beamforming design for integrated sensing and communications, movable antenna position optimization with joint antenna-position and receive-beamforming design, and XL-IRS deployment optimization for multi-user communications. The respective design objectives are balancing user sum-rate and target angle estimation, maximizing communication sum-rate, and optimizing surface placement for near-field multi-user transmission.

One continuous white-background campus scene with a compact movable-antenna base station and enlarged movement detail, rotatable-antenna ISAC, and XL-IRS-assisted communications with a direct BS-to-user path obstructed by a brick wall.

Backscatter Communications and Symbiotic Radio

Backscatter communication conveys information by modulating and reflecting an incident radio signal. In symbiotic radio, the secondary transmission uses the primary signal as its carrier, and the primary and secondary links operate together.

My focus: My work studies transmit-power minimization for STAR-RIS-assisted symbiotic radio by designing active beamforming and surface transmission/reflection coefficients; robust secure multicast transmission with an active RIS under imperfect eavesdropper channel information; and movable-antenna-enabled symbiotic radio to improve primary and secondary rates through antenna positioning.

White-background isometric campus scene showing a rooftop primary transmitter, a wall-mounted RIS, a primary phone user and a secondary gateway, with three direct primary links and two RIS-assisted primary-plus-backscatter links.

News

Our paper Low-complexity Design for Beam Coverage in Near-field and Far-field: A Fourier Transform Approach was accepted by IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.

Three papers have been accepted by the IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM) 2026.

Our paper Event-Adaptive Motion Planning with Distilled Vision-Language Model in Safety-Critical Situations was accepted by IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) 2026.

Our paper Near-field Physical Layer Security: Robust Beamforming under Location Uncertainty was accepted by IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.

Our paper MA-enhanced Mixed Near-field and Far-field Covert Communications was accepted by IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.

Three papers have been accepted by the IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC) 2026.

I received the IEEE WCSP Best Paper Award for paper Channel Estimation for XL-IRS Assisted Wireless Systems with Double-sided Visibility Regions .

I received China Institute of Communications Master's Thesis Incentive Program (Only 7 recipients nationwide), 2024.

I received the National Scholarship for Master's Students (Top 2%), 2023.

I received the National Scholarship for Master's Students (Top 2%), 2022.

Selected publications

  1. Low-complexity Design for Beam Coverage in Near-field and Far-field: A Fourier Transform Approach

    Chao Zhou, Changsheng You, Cong Zhou, Li Chen, Yi Gong, and Chengwen Xing.

    IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, vol. 25, pp. 21595–21610, 2026. · Paper

  2. Near-field Physical Layer Security: Robust Beamforming under Location Uncertainty

    Chao Zhou, Changsheng You, Cong Zhou, Chengwen Xing, and Jianhua Zhang.

    IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, vol. 25, pp. 17384–17398, 2026. · Paper

  3. MA-enhanced Mixed Near-field and Far-field Covert Communications

    Chao Zhou, Changsheng You, Cong Zhou, Hai Lin, and Yi Gong.

    IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, vol. 25, pp. 14037–14052, 2026. · Paper

View all publications →

📄 Academic Services

  • Reviewer for Journals IEEE journals: JSAC, TWC, TMC, TCOM, TCCN, TVT, TGCN, JSTEAP, OJ-COMS, WCL, CL; others: China Commun.
  • Reviewer for Conferences IEEE ICC 2025/2026, IEEE WCNC 2024/2026, IEEE GLOBECOM 2024/2025, IEEE/CIC ICCC 2025, IEEE PIMRC 2024, and WCSP 2024.
  • Special Session Co-Chair Extremely Large-Scale MIMO for Near-Field Communication and Sensing at IEEE ISWCS 2026.