Postdoc Spotlight: Beyond 5G

Data traffic demand is expected to increase exponentially, and the wireless communications industry has aimed to increase the capacity of existing networks by 1,000 times over the next 20 years. To address this issue, Amir Torabi, Ph.D., an electrical engineer and research scientist at FAU’s Institute for Sensing and Embedded Network System Engineering (I-SENSE), is exploring advanced technologies for wireless communication.

Torabi joined FAU’s I-SENSE and the Center for Connected Autonomy and AI in FAU’s College of Engineering and Computer Science, as a postdoctoral fellow in 2019. He works closely with Dimitris Pados, Ph.D., an I-SENSE fellow, and George Sklivanitis, Ph.D., a research professor, both from the College of Engineering and Computer Science. As a team, their goal is to design, develop and deploy truly smart, programmable wireless networks that autonomously avoid radio frequency interference and support high bandwidth applications -like high definition video streaming, augmented reality, virtual reality, machine-to-machine drone communications- over long ranges, he said.

In 2011, Torabi earned a master’s degree from Tarbiat Modares University in Tehran, Iran, which is where he first became interested in research. “I designed and manufactured wireless radio components such as resonators, filters, metamaterial structures and antenna arrays,” he said. From his master’s work, Torabi published four journal papers that focus on radio components.

For his doctoral degree, Torabi attended Michigan Technological University and studied how to improve 5G cellular networks and wireless sensor networks. He continues this work now with his team at FAU, to “build wireless networks that can achieve Gigabit-per-second data rates and can maintain connectivity in congested (and sometimes contested) environments,” he said.