Photo of Zheng Chen

Zheng Chen

Associate Professor, Docent

Zheng Chen is an Associate Professor and Docent at the Division of Communication Systems, Department of Electrical Engineering, Linköping University, Sweden.

She received her M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in 2013 and 2016, respectively, both from CentraleSupélec, Université Paris-Saclay, France. She has been working at Linköping University since 2017.

Research interests

Her research interests center on stochastic modeling and optimization for wireless communication networks, including wireless edge caching, energy harvesting, age of information, and massive MIMO. Her current work focuses on efficient and secure decentralized AI in large-scale wireless networks. Specific topics include communication-efficient distributed consensus and optimization, resource allocation for wireless federated learning, function computation over wireless networks, and privacy-preserving, resilient distributed machine learning.

She is currently an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, IEEE Transactions on Communications, and IEEE Transactions on Green Communications and Networking.

Her research activities are supported by Zenith, ELLIIT, Swedish Research Council, and the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation.

Her publications can be found on the Google Scholar page.

Awards and Activities

Grants and Projects

  • ELLIIT project on “Coding for Secure Federated Learning”, 2026-2031.
  • Swedish Research Council (VR) starting grant, “Next-Generation Communication Design for Distributed Intelligence over Wireless Networks”, 2023-2027.
  • Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program (WASP) academic PhD student project, 2023-2028.
  • Zenith project grant, “Wireless Network Design for Decentralized Machine Learning”, 2021-2026.
  • Co-PI of Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation project grant, “Turning the air into an AI computer”. PI: Erik G. Larsson (LiU).

Teaching

She is currently teaching two Master-level courses:

  • TSKS38 Distributed Information Processing and Machine Learning
  • TSIN01 Information Networks

Ph.D. Supervision

Current students as the main supervisor:

Current students as the co-supervisor:

Previously graduated students as the co-supervisor:

  • Jianan Bai, PhD awarded in 2025
  • Chung-Hsuan Hu, PhD awarded in 2026

Research

Publications

Chung-Hsuan Hu, Zheng Chen, Erik G Larsson,  Energy-Efficient Federated Edge Learning With Streaming Data: A Lyapunov Optimization Approach, IEEE Transactions on Communications 73:1142-1156 (2025)  https://doi.org/10.1109/TCOMM.2024.3443731

Daniel Pérez Herrera, Zheng Chen, Erik G Larsson,  Faster Convergence With Less Communication: Broadcast-Based Subgraph Sampling for Decentralized Learning Over Wireless Networks, IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society 6:1497-1511 (2025)  https://doi.org/10.1109/OJCOMS.2025.3540133

Jaiprakash Nagar, Zheng Chen, Marios Kountouris, Photios A. Stavrou, Information Entropy-Based Scheduling for Communication-Efficient Decentralized Learning (2025)  https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.17426

Jianan Bai, Zheng Chen, Erik G Larsson,  Delay-Constrained Grant-Free Random Access in MIMO Systems: Distributed Pilot Allocation and Power Control, IEEE Transactions on Cognitive Communications and Networking 11:1535-1550 (2025)  https://doi.org/10.1109/TCCN.2024.3486715

Yuhang Deng, Zheng Chen, Erik G. Larsson, Robust and Efficient Average Consensus with Non-Coherent Over-the-Air Aggregation (2025)  https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.05729

News

Coworkers

About the division

About the department