Ian F. Akyildiz

Ian F. Akyildiz, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA

Title: Enabling Terahertz Communications in Mobile Environments

Biography:  Ian F. Akyildiz received his BS, MS, and PhD degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany, in 1978, 1981 and 1984, respectively. Currently he is the President of the Truva Inc.  since March 1989. He is the Ken Byers Chair Professor in Telecommunications Emeritus at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the Director of the Broadband Wireless Networking Laboratory between (1985-2020). He serves on the Advisory Board for the newly established research center called Technology Innovation Institute (TII) in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates since June 1, 2020. Since 2017, he also serves as a Consulting Professor with the Computer Engineering Department at the University of Cyprus. He is a Megagrant Research Leader with the Institute for Information Transmission Problems at the Russian Academy of Sciences, in Moscow, Russia, since May 2018. He is a Visiting Distinguished Professor with the SSN College of Engineering in Chennai, India since October 2019 and an Adjunct Professor with Department of Electrical Engineering at University of Iceland since September 2020.

He is the Founder and Editor in Chief of the newly established of the ITU (International Telecommunication Union) Journal on Future and Evolving Technologies (ITU-J FET) since August 2020,  and is the Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of Computer Networks Journal (Elsevier) (1999-2019), the founding Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of the Ad Hoc Networks Journal (Elsevier) (2003-2019), the founding Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of the Physical Communication (PHYCOM) Journal (Elsevier) (2008-2017), and the founding Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of the Nano Communication Networks (NANOCOMNET) Journal (Elsevier) (2010-2017).  He is an IEEE Fellow and ACM Fellow and received numerous awards from IEEE and ACM and other professional organizations. His current research interests are in TeraHertz Communication, Internet of BioNanoThings, Molecular Communication, Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces, Nanonetworks, 5G/6G Wireless Systems, Internet of Space Things/CUBESATs, and Wireless Sensor Networks in Challenged Environments such as Underground and Underwater. According to Google Scholar as of October  2020, his H-index is 125 and the total number of citations to his papers is 120+K.

Abstract

The ever-increasing requirement on wireless data rates has been motivating technological innovations on wireless communications in both academia and industry. Among emerging research and development trends in wireless communications, Terahertz Band (0.1 – 10 THz) communication has been envisioned as one of the key enabling technologies in the next decade. With the ultra-wide available spectrum resources, THz band can provide terabits per second (Tbps) links for a plethora of applications. 

This talk will cover  the theoretical foundations of ultra-broadband communications in the THz band for mobile environments and bring the Tbps links one-step closer to reality. Our targeted breakthrough includes: 1) increasing the capacity of mobile wireless systems to reach Tbps, 2) overcoming the spectrum scarcity and capacity limitations of current mobile wireless networks, and 3) exploring the full potentials of THz spectrum for diverse communication scenarios. First, the concept of ultra-massive MIMO (UM MIMO) is introduced to overcome the transmission distance limitation, based on the use of the very large antenna arrays with thousands of antenna elements, especially for multi-hop THz links and THz mobile channels. The dynamic operation modes that include beamforming, spatial multiplexing and a combination of both, as well as the multi-band UM MIMO for THz mobile channels and multi-hop links will be analyzed. Second, accurate models for the end-to-end mobile THz channel will be developed with link-level performance analysis, which provide physical insights for THz communication system design in practical mobile communication scenarios. Third, by capturing the unique channel peculiarities, environment-aware adaptive resource allocation strategies will be investigated for THz mobile and multi-hop communications.