AIDRC Seminar Series - Prof. Angel Lozano

Title:

Wide-Aperture MIMO: When Multipath Propagation Becomes Dispensable

Abstract:

We are in the midst of a tidal transformation in the conditions in which wireless systems operate, with a determined push towards much higher frequencies (today mmWave, tomorrow sub-terahertz), with shrinking transmission ranges, and with much denser antenna arrays. This is stretching, even breaking, time-honored modelling assumptions such as that of planar wavefronts over the arrays. And, once the local curvature of those wavefronts is nonnegligible, a new opportunity arises for spatial multiplexing without any need for scattering or for multipath components. Conveniently, spatial multiplexing can then rely on the line-of-sight propagation path or the strong specular reflections that tend to dominate at those high frequencies and over short ranges. This presentation dwells on the physical underpinnings of this phenomenon, on how it can be harnessed for communication purposes, and on its potential implications for future systems.

Bio:

Angel Lozano is a Professor at Univ. Pompeu Fabra (UPF) in Barcelona. Prof. Lozano received a Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1998. In 1999, he joined Bell Labs (Lucent Technologies, now Nokia), where he was a member of the Wireless Communications Research Department until 2008. Between 2005 and 2008 he was also an Adj. Associate Professor at Columbia University. Prof. Lozano is a Fellow of the IEEE. He is an editor for the IEEE ComSoc Technology News, an area editor for the IEEE Trans. Wireless Communications and a former associate editor for the IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory (2011-2014) and the IEEE Trans. Communications (1999-2009). He was the Chair of the IEEE Communication Theory Technical Committee (2013-2014) and an elected member of the Board of Governors of the IEEE Communications Society (2012-2014). Prof. Lozano holds 16 patents and is the coauthor of the textbook "Foundations of MIMO Communication," released by Cambridge University Press in 2019. His papers have received several awards, including the 2009 Stephen O. Rice prize to the best paper published in the IEEE Trans. Communications, the 2016 Fred W. Ellersick prize to the best paper published in the IEEE Communications Magazine, and the 2016 Communications Society & Information Theory Society joint paper award. He also received an ERC Advanced Grant for the period 2016-2021 and was a 2017 Highly Cited Researcher.