(†: equal contribution, ~~: corresponding author)

Collaborators

The individuals listed below have profoundly shaped my research and personal development. Their invaluable contributions and guidance have greatly enriched all the work presented here.

• Edge Intelligence: Falko Dressler (TU Berlin), Kai Li (CMU), Yichen Li (HUST), Zheng Lin (HKU)
• Wireless Communications: Ozgur B. Akan, Haofan Dong, Houtianfu Wang (Cambridge)
• Mobile Networks: Jon Crowcroft, Junfei Zhan (UPenn), Zhezhuang Xu (FZU), Meng Yuan (VUW)
  
  

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Journal Paper

• Graph Representation Learning Augmented Model Manipulation on Federated Fine-Tuning of LLMs
  Hanlin Cai, Kai Li~~, Houtianfu Wang, Haofan Dong, Yichen Li, Falko Dressler, Ozgur B. Akan
  Submitted to an IEEE Transaction Journal, 2026.
  

• Semantic Communication for the Internet of Space: New Architecture, Challenges, and Future Vision
  Hanlin Cai, Houtianfu Wang, Haofan Dong, Ozgur B. Akan
  Submitted to an IEEE ComSoc Magazine, 2025.
  

• A Policy-Aware Cross-Layer Auditing Service for Tiering and Throttling in Starlink
  Houtianfu Wang, Hanlin Cai~~, Haofan Dong, Ozgur B. Akan
  Submitted to IEEE Networking Letter, 2026.
  

• Rain Rate Estimation Bounds and Weather-Adaptive Pilot Allocation for LEO Satellite ISAC
  Haofan Dong~~, Houtianfu Wang, Hanlin Cai, Ozgur B. Akan
  Submitted to an IEEE Transaction Journal, 2026.
  

• Risk-Aware Link Adaptation Architecture for Ka-Band LEO Downlinks Under Ionospheric Disturbances
  Houtianfu Wang, Haofan Dong, Hanlin Cai, Ozgur B. Akan
  Submitted to an IEEE Transaction Journal, 2026.
  

• Measurement-Grounded Deadline Feasibility over LEO RF and Optical Access Links
  Houtianfu Wang, Osman. T. Baydas, Hanlin Cai, Haofan Dong, Ozgur B. Akan
  Submitted to an IEEE Transaction Journal, 2026.
  

• Physically-Induced Atmospheric Adversarial Perturbations: Enhancing Transferability and Robustness in Remote Sensing Image Classification
  Weiwei Zhang, Wangze Xie, Qi Zhang, Xia Du, Zihan Lin, Zheng Lin, Hanlin Cai, Jizhe Zhou, Zihan Fang, Chi-man Pun, Wei Ni, Jun Luo
  Submitted to an IEEE Transaction Journal, 2026.
  

• Fundamental Limits of Cooperative Integrated Sensing and Communications over Low-Earth Orbit THz Satellite Channels
  Haofan Dong, Houtianfu Wang, Hanlin Cai, Ozgur B. Akan
  Submitted to an IEEE Transaction Journal, 2026.
  

  
  

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Conference Paper

• Performance Bounds and Robust Filtering for LEO Inter-Satellite Synchronization under Cross-Epoch Doppler Coupling
  Haofan Dong, Houtianfu Wang, Hanlin Cai, Ozgur B. Akan
  Submitted to the IEEE 27th International Workshop on Signal Processing Advances in Wireless Communications (SPAWC).
  Athens, Greece. September, 2026.
  

• Graph Representation-based Model Poisoning on the Heterogeneous Internet of Agents
  Hanlin Cai, Houtianfu Wang, Haofan Dong, Kai Li, Sai Zou~~, Ozgur B. Akan
  Proceedings of the IEEE 22nd International Wireless Communications & Mobile Computing Conference (IWCMC).
  Shanghai, China. June, 2026.
  

• Semantic Learning for Molecular Communication in Internet of Bio-Nano Things
  Hanlin Cai~~, Ozgur B. Akan
  Proceedings of the 9th Workshop on Molecular Communications
  Catania, Italy. April, 2025.
  

• Securing Billion Bluetooth Low Energy Devices Using Cyber-Physical Analysis and Deep Learning Techniques
  Hanlin Cai†, Yuchen Fang†, Jiacheng Huang, Honglin Liao, Meng Yuan, Zhezhuang Xu~~
  Presented at the 30th ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD), Undergraduate Consortium.
  Barcelona, Spain. August, 2024.
  

• Poster: Hybrid Detection Mechanism for Spoofing Attacks in Bluetooth Low Energy Networks
  Hanlin Cai, Yuchen Fang, Jiacheng Huang, Meng Yuan, Zhezhuang Xu~~
  Proceedings of the 22nd ACM International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services (MobiSys).
  Tokyo, Japan. June, 2024.
  

• Applying LLM-Powered Virtual Humans to Child Interviews in Child-Centered Design
  Linshi Li, Hanlin Cai~~
  Proceedings of the 24th Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference (IDC).
  Reykjavik, Iceland. June, 2025.
  

• SeeMusic: XR-Enhanced Musical Language Training Application for Hearing-impaired Children
  Linshi Li, Xianjinghua Chen, Yutian Qin and Hanlin Cai~~
  Proceedings of the 14th IEEE International Conference on Educational and Information Technology.
  Guangzhou, China. March, 2025.
  

  
  

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Early Paper (during Undergrad)

• Securing Billion Bluetooth Devices Leveraging Learning-based Techniques
  Final-year project (see thesis below).
  Hanlin Cai (Advisors: Zhezhuang Xu, Tozammel Hossain)
  Proceedings of the 38th Annual AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2024), Undergraduate Consortium.
  Vancouver, Canada. February, 2024.
  

• Optimizing Traffic Sign Detection System Using Deep Residual Neural Networks Combined with Analytic Hierarchy Process Model
  Third-year course design.
  Hanlin Cai, Zheng Li, Jiaqi Hu, Wei Hong Lim, Sew Sun Tiang, Mastaneh Mokayef, Chin Hong Wong
  Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Artificial Life and Robotics.
  Beppu, Japan. February, 2023.
  Recommended for expanding publication in the Journal of Advances in Artificial Life Robotics.

  
  

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Degree Thesis

• Semantic Communication for the Internet of Everything: From Molecular to Space Networks
  Hanlin Cai (Advisor: Dr. Ozgur B. Akan).
  Examiners: Dr. Sasitharan Balasubramaniam, Dr. Qixiang Cheng.
  Thesis awarded High Distinction.
  

• Hybrid Detection Mechanism for Spoofing Attacks in Bluetooth Low Energy Networks
  Hanlin Cai (Advisor: Dr. Zhezhuang Xu).
  Best Bachelor Thesis Award (top 1/300, the highest score of year 2024).
  

• Industrial Inspection System based on Intelligent IoT and Bionic Quadruped Robot
  Hanlin Cai (Advisor: Yuxiong Xia).
  Industrial Placement Report at China Fuzhou Huading Tech. (Third-year industrial progrom).