John L. VOLAKIS

Future Directions of Wireless Links: Performance, Packaging and Integration

The rapid evolution of wireless communications with potentially 3 orders of magnitude in higher data connectivity and a goal of Terabit per second speeds for wired/chip-to-chip data transfers is upon us for the next decade. These speeds are needed to enable short range (a few meters) and long-range communications (km and satellite links) for distributed systems that will realize visions for tactile internet and haptic communications, virtual reality/artificial intelligence, manufacturing with digital twin models for inline adaptable fabrication, intelligent transportation, digital health care and remote surgery, to mention a few. These technologies are bound to change our way of living and in the next 10 years and beyond, from our workspace, government services to our daily routines. This presentation will present progress in technologies that will contribute to this vision with laboratory demonstrations. Among them: 1) reinventing spectral employment by co-designing multi-functional system that better exploit the millimeter-wave to THz spectrum, 2) wide band RF-front ends boasting 30:1 contiguous bandwidths and beyond to consolidate several functions under a small aperture for the smaller vehicles (drones, cubesats or remote controlled automated delivery vehicles), 3) vertical heterogenous packaging of high-density RF/millimeter -wave transceivers that combine high power and low power components and deliver gigabit speeds on the go, and terabit speeds within the package, 4) suppression of EMI/EMC with inline corrections during manufacturing while realizing <10 µm pitch, 5) digital ultrawideband beamformers for high power and high rate deliveries on portable handheld devices with MIMO capabilities, 6) secure communications by exploiting the larger bandwidths, possibly with co-sharing options, 7) integration of wireless systems, algorithmic, and circuit technologies, required in future wireless links across low SNRs for IoT and privacy as relates to medical data sharing, navigation and vehicle to vehicle to vehicle communications, to mention a few, 8) robotics and 3D manufacturing with low latencies, 9) digital twin Multiphysics modeling for pre-design of entire densely packaged electronics with 1000s of parameters using AI algorithms, 10) entire radio transceivers that include apertures and reflectarrays operating across 30:1 bandwidth with reconfiguration and enabling technologies such as tiny implants to simultaneous transmit-receive radios (STAR).

John L. Volakis is a Professor in the College of Engineering and Computing at Florida International University (FIU). From 2017-2023, he was the Dean of Engineering and Computing where he grew the College’s research by over 200% and increased three-fold the 4-year graduation rates. He is an IEEE, AAAS, NAI, URSI and ACES Fellow. Prior to coming to FIU, he was the Roy and Lois Chope Chair in Engineering at Ohio State and a Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Dept. (2003-2017). He is currently an Emeritus faculty at Ohio State. He also served as the Director of the Ohio State Univ. ElectroScience Laboratory for 14 years. His career spans 2 years at Boeing, 19 years on the faculty at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, and 15 years at Ohio State. At Michigan he also served as the Director of the Radiation Laboratory (1998-2000). Prof. Volakis has 40 years of engineering research experience, and has published over 450 journal papers, nearly 1000 conference papers, and over 30 chapters. Among his many leadership positions, he served as the 2004 IEEE APS President and as the Vice Chair/Chair of the International Union of Radio Science (URSI)-Commission B from 2017-2024. In 2004, he was listed by ISI Web of Science as one of the top 250 most referenced authors, and his google h-index=82 with over 32,000 citations. He mentored nearly 110 Ph.Ds/Post-Docs and has written with them 46 papers which received best paper awards. He is one of the most active researchers in electromagnetics, RF materials and metamaterials, antennas and phased array, RF transceivers, textile electronics, millimeter waves and terahertz, EMI/EMC as well as EM diffraction and computational methods. He is also the authors of 9 books, including the Antenna Handbook, referred to as the “antenna bible.” His research team is recognized for introducing and/or developing 1) hybrid finite method for microwave engineering, now defacto methods in commercial RF design packages with over 6 million google hits, 2) novel composite materials for antennas & sensor miniaturization, 3) a new class of wideband conformal antennas and arrays with over 30:1 of contiguous bandwidth, referred to as tightly coupled dipole antennas garnering several million google hits , 4) textile surfaces for wearable electronics and sensors, 5) battery-less and wireless medical implants for non-invasive brain signal collection, 6) diffraction coefficients for material coated edges, and for 7) model-based radar scattering verification methods.