The 32nd European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO 2024), organized by the European Association for Signal Processing (EURASIP), took place in Lyon, France, from August 26 to 30, 2024. Feiyang Qian, a student from the Shannon Honorary Class at the College of Information Science and Electronic Engineering, Zhejiang University, received the prestigious EURASIP Student Travel Grant for his first-author conference paper titled Spatial Sectorized Neural Network for 2-D DOA Estimation in the Full Azimuth (supervised by Prof. Chengwei Zhou). Feiyang Qian was invited to attend EUSIPCO 2024 and delivered an oral presentation on his research.

EUSIPCO is EURASIP's flagship annual conference, offering a comprehensive technical program that addresses the latest advancements in signal processing research and technology. The 2024 edition focused particularly on interdisciplinary research tackling significant societal challenges through signal and image processing. Each year, EURASIP awards partial funding to outstanding students to encourage participation, with the quality of their papers being a key factor in the selection process. This year, Feiyang Qian was among 20 students worldwide to receive this distinguished grant.

The research presented at EUSIPCO 2024 addresses practical requirements for 360° full-azimuth direction finding. It explores the use of neural network architecture and optimization methods for full-azimuth direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation. Specifically, the proposed two-dimensional DOA estimation algorithm, based on a spatial sectorized neural network, effectively tackles the challenges of excessive classification categories and angular discontinuity issues in regression networks within a 360° full-azimuth scenario. This work lays a theoretical foundation for diverse applications in drone surveillance, passive localization, and next-generation wireless communications.

Feiyang Qian, Hang Zheng, Chengwei Zhou, and Zhiguo Shi, Spatial Sectorized Neural Network for 2-D DOA Estimation in the Full Azimuth, in Proc. European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO), Lyon, France, Aug. 2024, pp. 1147−1151.

URL: https://eurasip.org/Proceedings/Eusipco/Eusipco2024/pdfs/0001147.pdf