Contact me

Phone : 514-340-4711
extension: 2204
Email: francois.leduc-primeau@polymtl.ca

Office :

Office M-5023,
Polytechnique Montréal
2500 Chemin de polytechnique,
Montréal, Qc, Canada, H3T 1J4

Postal address :

Polytechnique Montréal
C.P. 6079, succursale Centre-ville
Montréal, Qc, Canada, H3C 3A7

Associate Professor

François Leduc-Primeau, ing., Ph.D.

I am an Associate Professor in the Electrical Engineering department of Polytechnique Montreal. I obtained my M. Eng. and Ph. D. degree in Electrical & Computer Engineering from McGill University, respectively in 2010 and 2016.

My research group focuses on the design and analysis of algorithms for hardware implementations, and on novel approaches for improving energy efficiency.

Some of our research topics, each time with a focus on implementation issues:

  • error-correction codes,
  • signal processing for the physical layer of communication systems,
  • machine learning,
  • machine learning applied to communication systems.

Research Positions

I am always looking for outstanding students/researchers at all levels (Master's, Ph.D., Postdoc) interested in carrying out research in the context of one of our ongoing projects. A successful candidate must master or have an interest in at least two of the following areas: telecommunications, machine learning, digital circuits. Solid programming skills are also required.

To apply, send me an e-mail with your CV and transcript and describe the general topic you are interested in, and why your background prepares you to work on that topic.

For international students applying at the Master's level, please keep in mind that the tuition fees are significant for citizens of countries other than Canada, France, and Belgium. See this page for details. Although it is possible to apply for scholarships, they are very competitive. Therefore you have to be prepared to cover part or even all of the tuition fees.

Publications

  • J. Kern, S. Henwood, G. Mordido, E. Dupraz, A. Aïssa-El-Bey, Y. Savaria and F. Leduc-Primeau. “Fast and Accurate Output Error Estimation for Memristor-Based Deep Neural Networks,” IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, pp. 1-13, 2024.
  • E. Dupraz, F. Leduc-Primeau, K. Cai and L. Dolecek. “Turning to Information Theory to Bring In-Memory Computing Into Practice,” IEEE BITS the Information Theory Magazine, pp. 1-13, 2023.
  • K. Chitsaz, G. Mordido, J. P. David and F. Leduc-Primeau. “Training DNNs Resilient to Adversarial and Random Bit-Flips by Learning Quantization Ranges,” Transactions on Machine Learning Research, 2023.
  • H. Hojatian, Z. Mlika, J. Nadal, J. F. Frigon and F. Leduc-Primeau. “Learning Energy-Efficient Hardware Configurations for Massive MIMO Beamforming,” arXiv, 2023.
  • B. El-Sayegh, L. P. Cacciari, F. Leduc-Primeau, M. Sawan and C. Dumoulin. “The state of pelvic floor muscle dynamometry: A scoping review,” Neurourology and Urodynamics, vol. 42, no. 2, pp. 478-499, 2023.
  • B. El-Sayegh, C. Dumoulin, M. Ali, H. Assaf, J. De Jong, M. Sawan and F. Leduc-Primeau. “Portable Dynamometer-Based Measurement of Pelvic Floor Muscle Force,” IEEE Journal of Translational Engineering in Health and Medicine, vol. 11, pp. 44-53, 2023.
  • H. Hojatian, J. Nadal, J. F. Frigon and F. Leduc-Primeau. “Decentralized Beamforming for Cell-Free Massive MIMO With Unsupervised Learning,” IEEE Communications Letters, vol. 26, no. 5, pp. 1042-1046, May 2022. (IEEEXplore)
  • J. Kern, E. Dupraz, A. Aïssa-El-Bey, L. R. Varshney and F. Leduc-Primeau. “Optimizing the Energy Efficiency of Unreliable Memories for Quantized Kalman Filtering,” Sensors, vol. 22, no. 3, 2022.
  • H. Hojatian, J. Nadal, J. F. Frigon and F. Leduc-Primeau. “Unsupervised Deep Learning for Massive MIMO Hybrid Beamforming,” IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, vol. 20, no. 11, pp. 7086-7099, Nov 2021. (IEEEXplore)
  • N. E. Zarif, L. Montazeri, F. Leduc-Primeau and M. Sawan. “Mobile-Optimized Facial Expression Recognition Techniques,” IEEE Access, vol. 9, pp. 101172-101185, Jul. 2021. (IEEEXplore)
  • E. Dupraz and F. Leduc-Primeau. “Noisy Density Evolution With Asymmetric Deviation Models,” IEEE Transactions on Communications, vol. 69, no. 3, pp. 1403-1416, Mar. 2021. (arXiv) (IEEEXplore)
  • M. Yaoumi, E. Dupraz, F. Leduc-Primeau and F. Guilloud. “Energy Optimization of Quantized Min-Sum Decoders for Protograph-Based LDPC Codes,” Annals of Telecommunications, 2020.
  • J. Nadal, F. Leduc-Primeau, C. A. Nour and A. Baghdadi. “Overlap-Save FBMC Receivers,” IEEE Trans. on Wireless Communications, vol. 19, no. 8, pp. 5307-5320, Aug. 2020.
  • C. Condo, P. Giard, F. Leduc-Primeau, G. Sarkis and W. J. Gross. “A 9.52 dB NCG FEC Scheme and 162 b/Cycle Low-Complexity Product Decoder Architecture,” IEEE Trans. on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers, vol. 65, no. 4, pp. 1420-1431, Apr. 2018. (IEEEXplore)
  • F. Leduc-Primeau, F. R. Kschischang and W. J. Gross. “Modeling and Energy Optimization of LDPC Decoder Circuits with Timing Violations,” IEEE Trans. on Communications, vol. 66, no. 3, pp. 932-946, Mar. 2018. (IEEEXplore) (arXiv)
  • J. C. Vialatte and F. Leduc-Primeau. “A Study of Deep Learning Robustness Against Computation Failures,” CoRR, vol. abs/1704.05396, 2017.
  • A. Ardakani, F. Leduc-Primeau, N. Onizawa, T. Hanyu and W. J. Gross. “VLSI Implementation of Deep Neural Network Using Integral Stochastic Computing,” IEEE Trans. on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems, vol. 25, no. 10, pp. 2688-2699, Oct. 2017. (IEEEXplore)
  • K. Boga, F. Leduc-Primeau, N. Onizawa, K. Matsumiya, T. Hanyu and W. J. Gross. “A Generalized Stochastic Implementation of the Disparity Energy Model for Depth Perception,” Journal of Signal Processing Systems, Dec. 2016. (Link 1) (Link 2)
  • S. Hemati, F. Leduc-Primeau and W. J. Gross. “A Relaxed Min-Sum LDPC Decoder With Simplified Check Nodes,” IEEE Communications Letters, vol. 20, no. 3, pp. 422-425, Mar. 2016. (IEEEXplore)
  • F. Leduc-Primeau, V. Gripon, M. G. Rabbat and W. J. Gross. “Fault-Tolerant Associative Memories Based on c-Partite Graphs,” IEEE Trans. on Signal Processing, vol. 64, no. 4, pp. 829-841, Feb. 2016. (IEEEXplore)
  • F. Leduc-Primeau, S. Hemati, S. Mannor and W. J. Gross. “Relaxed Half-Stochastic Belief Propagation,” IEEE Trans. on Communications, vol. 61, no. 5, pp. 1648-1659, May 2013. (IEEEXplore)
  • F. Leduc-Primeau, S. Hemati, S. Mannor and W. J. Gross. “Dithered Belief Propagation Decoding,” IEEE Trans. on Communications, vol. 60, no. 8, pp. 2042-2047, Aug. 2012. (IEEEXplore)
  • M. AskariHemmat, T. Dupuis, Y. Fournier, N. El Zarif, M. Cavalcante, M. Perotti, F. Gürkaynak, L. Benini, F. Leduc-Primeau, Y. Savaria and J. P. David. “Quark: An Integer RISC-V Vector Processor for Sub-Byte Quantized DNN Inference,” in 2023 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS), 2023.
  • T. Dupuis, Y. Fournier, M. AskariHemmat, N. E. Zarif, F. Leduc-Primeau, J. P. David and Y. Savaria. “Sparq: A Custom RISC-V Vector Processor for Efficient Sub-Byte Quantized Inference,” in 2023 21st IEEE Interregional NEWCAS Conference (NEWCAS), 2023.
  • H. Hojatian, J. Nadal, J. F. Frigon and F. Leduc-Primeau. “Flexible Unsupervised Learning for Massive MIMO Subarray Hybrid Beamforming,” in GLOBECOM 2022 – 2022 IEEE Global Communications Conference, 2022.
  • Y. Zhang, Y. Savaria, S. Zhao, G. Mordido, M. Sawan and F. Leduc-Primeau. “Tiny CNN for Seizure Prediction in Wearable Biomedical Devices,” in 44th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), Jul. 2022.
  • D. B. Dermont, J. Nadal and F. Leduc-Primeau. “Single-Minimum LDPC Decoding Offset Optimization Methods,” in 2022 IEEE 17th Canadian Workshop on Information Theory (CWIT), 2022. (Link 1)
  • J. Kern, S. Henwood, G. Mordido, E. Dupraz, A. Aïssa-El-Bey, Y. Savaria and F. Leduc-Primeau. “MemSE: Fast MSE Prediction for Noisy Memristor-Based DNN Accelerators,” in 2022 IEEE 4th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence Circuits and Systems (AICAS), Jun. 2022. (arXiv)
  • J. Nadal, S. Brown, E. Dupraz and F. Leduc-Primeau. “Towards an Accurate High-Level Energy Model for LDPC Decoders,” in 2021 11th International Symposium on Topics in Coding (ISTC), 2021. (IEEEXplore)
  • J. Kern, E. Dupraz, A. Aïssa-El-Bey and F. Leduc-Primeau. “Improving the Energy-Efficiency of a Kalman Filter Using Unreliable Memories,” in ICASSP 2021 – 2021 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), 2021.
  • E. Dupraz, L. R. Varshney and F. Leduc-Primeau. “Power-Efficient Deep Neural Networks with Noisy Memristor Implementation,” in 2021 Information Theory Workshop (ITW ’21), 2021. (IEEEXplore)
  • J. Nadal, M. Fiorentino, E. Dupraz and F. Leduc-Primeau. “A Deeply Pipelined, Highly Parallel and Flexible LDPC Decoder,” in 2020 18th IEEE International New Circuits and Systems Conference (NEWCAS), 2020.
  • H. Hojatian, V. N. Ha, J. Nadal, J. F. Frigon and F. Leduc-Primeau. “RSSI-Based Hybrid Beamforming Design with Deep Learning,” in 2020 IEEE Int. Conf. on Communications (ICC), 2020. (IEEEXplore)
  • S. Henwood, F. Leduc-Primeau and Y. Savaria. “Layerwise Noise Maximisation to Train Low-Energy Deep Neural Networks,” in 2nd IEEE International Conference on Artificial Intelligence Circuits and Systems (AICAS), 2020. (IEEEXplore)
  • M. Yaoumi, E. Dupraz, F. Leduc-Primeau and F. Guilloud. “Optimisation de la Consommation d’Energie pour des Codes LDPC Construits \`a Partir de Protographes,” in Colloque GRETSI 2019, Aug. 2019.
  • M. Yaoumi, F. Leduc-Primeau, E. Dupraz and F. Guilloud. “Optimization of Protograph LDPC Codes based on High-Level Energy Models,” in 16th International Symposium on Wireless Communication Systems (ISWCS), Aug. 2019.
  • G. B. Hacene, F. Leduc-Primeau, A. B. Soussia, V. Gripon and F. Gagnon. “Training Modern Deep Neural Networks for Memory-Fault Robustness,” in Proc. IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS), 2019. (Link 1) (IEEEXplore)
  • E. Dupraz, F. Leduc-Primeau and F. Gagnon. “Low-Latency LDPC Decoding Achieved by Code and Architecture Co-Design,” in 10th Int. Symp. on Turbo Codes and Iterative Information Processing, Dec. 2018. (Link 1) (IEEEXplore)
  • J. Nadal, F. Leduc-Primeau, C. Abdel Nour and A. Baghdadi. “A Block FBMC Receiver Designed For Short Filters,” in Proc. 2018 IEEE Int. Conf. on Communications (ICC 2018), 2018. (IEEEXplore)
  • J. C. Vialatte and F. Leduc-Primeau. “A Study of Deep Learning Robustness Against Computation Failures,” in Proc. 9th Int. Conf. on Advanced Cognitive Technologies and Applications, Feb. 2017. (arXiv)
  • A. Ardakani, F. Leduc-Primeau, N. Onizawa, T. Hanyu and W. J. Gross. “VLSI implementation of deep neural networks using integral stochastic computing,” in 9th Int. Symp. on Turbo Codes and Iterative Information Processing (ISTC), Sep. 2016. (IEEEXplore)
  • A. Ardakani, F. Leduc-Primeau and W. J. Gross. “Hardware implementation of FIR/IIR digital filters using integral stochastic computation,” in 2016 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), Mar. 2016. (IEEEXplore)
  • F. Leduc-Primeau and W. J. Gross. “Finite-Length Quasi-Synchronous LDPC Decoders,” in 9th Int. Symp. on Turbo Codes and Iterative Information Processing, Sep. 2016. (IEEEXplore)
  • C. Condo, F. Leduc-Primeau, G. Sarkis, P. Giard and W. J. Gross. “Stall pattern avoidance in polynomial product codes,” in 2016 IEEE Global Conference on Signal and Information Processing (GlobalSIP), Dec. 2016. (IEEEXplore)
  • K. Boga, N. Onizawa, F. Leduc-Primeau, K. Matsumiya, T. Hanyu and W. J. Gross. “Stochastic implementation of the disparity energy model for depth perception,” in 2015 IEEE Workshop on Signal Processing Systems (SiPS), Oct. 2015. (IEEEXplore)
  • F. Leduc-Primeau, F. R. Kschischang and W. J. Gross. “Energy optimization of LDPC decoder circuits with timing violations,” in 2015 IEEE Int. Conf. on Communications (ICC), Jun. 2015. (IEEEXplore)
  • F. Leduc-Primeau, V. Gripon, M. G. Rabbat and W. J. Gross. “Cluster-based associative memories built from unreliable storage,” in 2014 IEEE Int. Conf. on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), May 2014. (IEEEXplore)
  • F. Leduc-Primeau and W. J. Gross. “Faulty Gallager-B Decoding with Optimal Message Repetition,” in Proc. 50th Allerton Conf. on Communication, Control, and Computing, Oct. 2012. (IEEEXplore)
  • F. Leduc-Primeau, A. J. Raymond, P. Giard, K. Cushon, C. Thibeault and W. J. Gross. “High-Throughput LDPC Decoding Using The RHS Algorithm,” in Proc. 2012 Conf. on Design & Arch. for Signal & Image Processing (DASIP), Oct. 2012. (IEEEXplore)
  • F. Leduc-Primeau, S. Hemati, S. Mannor and W. J. Gross. “Lowering Error Floors Using Dithered Belief Propagation,” in 2010 IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference (GLOBECOM), Dec. 2010. (IEEEXplore)
  • F. Leduc-Primeau, S. Hemati, W. J. Gross and S. Mannor. “A Relaxed Half-Stochastic Iterative Decoder for LDPC Codes,” in 2009 IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference (GLOBECOM), Dec. 2009. (IEEEXplore)
  • F. Leduc-Primeau, S. Hemati, V. C. Gaudet and W. J. Gross. “Stochastic Decoding of Error-Correcting Codes,” Chapter in Stochastic Computing: Techniques and Applications, W. Gross and V. Gaudet eds., Springer, 2019.
  • F. Leduc-Primeau, V. C. Gaudet and W. J. Gross. “Stochastic Decoders for LDPC Codes,” Chapter in Advanced Hardware Design for Error Correcting Codes, C. Chavet and P. Coussy eds., Springer, 2015. (Link 1)