CV
Updated April 2026
Xiangyu Cui
Ph.D. student in Electrical and Computer Engineering at New York University Abu Dhabi, currently based in New York.
Education
New York University Abu Dhabi
Aug. 2025 - PresentPh.D., supervised by Prof. Qurrat-Ul-Ain Nadeem. Abu Dhabi, UAE; New York, US.
King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)
Aug. 2023 - Jul. 2025M.S. with Thesis in Electrical and Computer Engineering, supervised by Prof. Mohamed-Slim Alouini. Thuwal, Saudi Arabia.
GPA: 4.00/4.00
University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC)
Sept. 2019 - Jul. 2023B.Eng. in Communication Engineering. Chengdu, China.
GPA: 3.93/4.00
Research Experience
Channel Power Gain Analysis and Orientation Optimization for CAPA Systems
Aug. 2025 - Apr. 2026- Studied point-to-point continuous aperture array (CAPA) systems where transmit and receive apertures are modeled as continuous current distributions rather than discrete antenna elements.
- Derived a semi-closed-form expression for near-field channel power gain under a dyadic Green's function based channel model with polarization effects.
- Analyzed how CAPA orientation, aperture size, propagation distance, and transceiver misalignment affect received channel gain.
- Showed that optimal Tx/Rx aperture orientation is not always parallel and depends on the relative geometry between the two CAPAs.
- Validated the expression through numerical simulations with substantially lower computational complexity than direct integral evaluation and densely sampled discrete MIMO approximation.
Channel Capacity Saturation and Beamforming Acceleration for Near-Field XL-MIMO
Aug. 2024 - Jul. 2025- Investigated capacity saturation in near-field XL-MIMO multiuser communications, showing that excessive array growth can lead to marginal capacity improvement.
- Derived analytical criteria for determining the capacity saturation point and choosing practical array sizes.
- Proposed a low-complexity beamforming algorithm that reduces computational burden while maintaining near-optimal performance around the saturation point.
- Validated the theoretical analysis and beamforming design through numerical simulations for near-field multiuser XL-MIMO systems.
- Published the work in IEEE Wireless Communications Letters.
Near-Field Performance Analysis for XL-MIMO
Aug. 2023 - Sept. 2024- Analyzed extremely large-scale MIMO systems where conventional far-field assumptions become inaccurate.
- Summarized existing received SNR results for several near-field wave models and derived generalized received-power expressions for different channel models and array structures.
- Derived closed-form approximations for user-channel correlation using the stationary phase method.
- Applied received-power and correlation results to analyze multi-user XL-MIMO uplink sum rate.
- Modified a previous user-selection algorithm using analytical results, achieving significant speed-up while maintaining the same sum-rate performance.
- Published the work in IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society.
Performance Analysis of OAM Communication under Random Misalignment
Apr. 2022 - Jul. 2023- Analyzed millimeter-wave orbital angular momentum (OAM) communication systems under practical random transceiver misalignment.
- Derived closed-form intensity expressions for given misalignment values in indoor and outdoor propagation scenarios.
- Evaluated average channel capacity under two-dimensional Gaussian random misalignment and validated the analysis through numerical simulations.
- Used Gauss-Laguerre quadrature to reduce computational complexity in capacity evaluation under realistic misalignment distributions.
- Published the work in IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society.
Specific Emitter Identification Using RF Hardware Impairments
Jan. 2022 - Jun. 2022- Developed a specific emitter identification system that distinguished transmitters using physical-layer hardware fingerprints, including IQ imbalance and carrier leakage.
- Built a signal processing pipeline with digital down-conversion, FIR low-pass filtering, Costas carrier synchronization, and Gardner timing synchronization.
- Modeled transmitter impairments through gain imbalance, quadrature phase error, and carrier leakage, and estimated features using maximum-likelihood and statistical-property-based methods.
- Trained SVM classifiers with One-vs-One multi-class classification and grid-searched hyperparameters, achieving approximately 98% transmitter identification accuracy in testing.
Publications
- X. Cui, K.-H. Park, and M.-S. Alouini, "Channel Capacity Saturation Point and Beamforming Acceleration for Near-Field XL-MIMO Multiuser Communications," IEEE Wireless Communications Letters, vol. 15, pp. 1390-1394, 2026.
- X. Cui, K.-H. Park, and M.-S. Alouini, "Near-Field Analysis of Extremely Large-Scale MIMO: Power, Correlation, and User Selection," IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society, vol. 6, pp. 252-270, 2024.
- X. Cui, K.-H. Park, and M.-S. Alouini, "Effect of Random Misalignment in the Capacity of Millimeter-Wave OAM," IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society, vol. 5, pp. 1141-1154, 2024.
Conferences
- 4th KAUST 6G Summit, Thuwal, Saudi Arabia, Nov. 27-29, 2023.
- 5th KAUST 6G Summit, Thuwal, Saudi Arabia, Nov. 4-5, 2024.
- Abu Dhabi 6G Summit, Abu Dhabi, UAE, Nov. 14-15, 2024.
- IEEE Communication Theory Workshop (CTW), Murano, Venice, Italy, May 4-7, 2025.
Academic Service
Reviewer:
- IEEE Transactions on Communications
- IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society
- IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing
Honors and Awards
- National Scholarship of China (Top 1%), Dec. 2020 and Nov. 2021.
- Excellent Student Scholarship of UESTC, Dec. 2020 and Nov. 2021.
- First Prize, Electronic Design Contest of UESTC, Nov. 2019.
- Third Prize, National Electronic Design Contest, Sichuan Province, Oct. 2020.
- First Prize, National College Students Mobile Communication 5G Technology Contest, Sichuan Province, May 2020.
- Excellent Prize, National College Students Mobile Communication 5G Technology Contest, Jul. 2020.
Technical Skills
- Languages
- C, MATLAB, Python, LaTeX
- Software
- MATLAB, Keil5, Mathematica
- Research Areas
- Wireless communication, near-field communication, XL-MIMO, continuous aperture arrays
- ML Framework
- PyTorch
