Terrestrial and Aerospace Broadb

Claudio Sacchi

Ph.D. Assistant Professor

(Short) curriculum vitae

CLAUDIO SACCHI was born in Genoa (Italy) in 1965. He obtained the Laurea degree (corresponding to MsC) in Electronic Engineering, and the Ph.D. in Space Science and Engineering at the University of Genoa. Since 1996 to 2002, Dr. Sacchi has been working as research assistant at the Signal Processing and Telecommunications Research Group of the Dept. of Biophysical and Electronic Engineering (DIBE) of the University of Genoa. He was involved in European and National research projects on multimedia signal processing, terrestrial communications and satellite communications

Since August 2002, Dr. Sacchi has been holding a position as assistant professor at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Trento. He is teaching courses dealing with telecommunication topics both in the BSc and in the MSc of Telecommunications Engineering. Claudio Sacchi is currently affiliated to the Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science (DISI) of the University of Trento.

The research interests of Dr. Sacchi are mainly focused on wideband mobile and satellite transmission systems based on space, time and frequency diversity, multicarrier modulations, multi-user receivers based on non conventional techniques (neural networks, genetic algorithms, higher-order statistics-based receivers etc), multimedia transmission, video streaming over wireless networks, high-frequency ultra-wideband satellite communications. Claudio Sacchi is author and co-author of more than 70 papers published in international journals and conferences.

Dr. Sacchi is member of the Technical Program Committees of international conferences like: IEEE ICC, IEEE GLOBECOM, IEEE PIMRC, IEEE AEROCONF, etc. He was co-chair of the Personal Satellite Service 2011 (PSATS) Conference and he is currently general chair of the 4th International Workshop on Multiple Access Communications (MACOM 2011) Workshop.

Claudio Sacchi is Senior Member of IEEE and affiliated to IEEE Communication Society and IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society. He is associated editor of IEEE COMMUNICATION LETTERS and TELECOMMUNICATION SYSTEMS. He is member of the editorial board of the IEEE COMMUNICATIONS SURVEY AND TUTORIALS. He served as lead guest editor for the special issue of EURASIP JOURNAL OF WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS AND NETWORKING titled: Multiple Access Communications in Next Generation Wireless Networking. He served as co-guest editor for a special issue of the PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE, titled: Aerospace communications and networking in the next two decades: current trends and future perspectives (issue published in November 2011) and for IEEE COMMUNICATIONS MAGAZINE for the Featured-Topic Special Issue: "Toward the Space 2.0 Era" (first part: published in March 2015).

Research targets

The future of wireless networking will be broadband and ubiquitous and, most of all, user-centric.

Today Internet is substantially a powerful infrastructure of worldwide networked computers targeted to applications of remote data exchange. Although some exceptions to this paradigm are currently considered (e.g. VoIP), the big mass of exchanged bytes is related to the remote up/downloading of files, letters, images, video clips, movies, etc. From a philosophical viewpoint, Internet does not really appear different from the old wired broadcast TV service (such a criticism has been raised by some well-known intellectual personalities like the Italian writer Umberto Eco). Instead of some TV channels, Internet offers an almost infinite number of information channels dealing with an almost infinite number of subjects. In such a perspective, the Internet user substantially remains an information consumer. From a technical viewpoint, things are not exactly so. Today, Internet is really an information gate, open to the free interaction with end-users. Moreover, the cable bondage has been partially removed by the increasing deployment of broadband wireless network segments. The massive adoption of TPC/IP as transport protocol (with all involved advantages and disadvantages), together with the access control mostly based on CSMA concept make an evidence about this philosophy, which still regards Internet as a big collection of networked data available for users needs. In some sense, Internet can be seen as an infinite capacity database, where networked users continuously retrieve information. This idea of Internet reflects the still fixed and network-centric nature of the big network infrastructure, inherited since early 70s. In the next future, this concept will represent a bottleneck for the provision of new services. In fact, Internet of the future will be designed around user needs rather than network needs.

In such a complex and challenging scenario, the Network will be built around the user needs and will follow users wherever they are. Someone is clearly speaking about the near-future disruption of global cellular networking infrastructures (that are intrinsically narrowband), with the consequent atomization of wireless connectivity. This scenario should not worry us like a (wireless) apocalypse. On the contrary, it will open new (broadband) opportunities. Maybe, wireless connectivity will become more insular, more sparse, but being mostly in local range, it will become more and more broadband. We think that the network personalization will increase the data rates in local area, but will also need the transparent interconnection among heterogeneous wireless network segments. Satellite and, more in general, the aerospace segment, will play a key role in wireless interconnection and global coverage extension.

The aforesaid scenario will consider, as main research targets:

Coexistence of different communication standards;
Efficient utilization of satellite and aerospace infrastructures as backbone in the sky for global-coverage mobile services;
Integration of heterogeneous wireless networks (terrestrial and satellite) and wired networks (optical networks);
Capability of the radio segment of extended reconfigurability;
Flexible and dynamic radio resource management;
Cognitive and opportunistic multiple access;
Multi-beam satellites and terabit satellites;
Enhanced convergence among satellite communications and terrestrial communications;
Quality of experience instead of quality of service.

Potential applications: high-data rates ubiquitous multimedia communications, top-quality broadcast services, communication for emergency recovery, etc.

Research topics

Considering the research targets and scenarios listed above, we can mention some essential research topics to be investigated:

Study and development of advanced signal processing techniques for MIMO systems in the framework of 4G and 5G;
Study and development of innovative signal detection techniques for single carrier and multi-carrier modulation and multiple access (OFDM, SC-FDMA, constant-envelope multicarrier waveforms) with particular accent of multi-rate scenarios;
Study and development of radio resource management techniques for wireless communications;
Software-Defined-Radio (SDR) techniques for design and implementation of mobile terminals characterized by context-aware optimized reconfigurability;
Use of Extremely High-Frequency (EHF) spectrum portions for broadband satellite transmissions and for terrestrial multi-gigabit point-to-point connections;
Cooperative communications in LTE-A: performance analysis, algorithm development, and SDR-based implementation and emulation by using GNU-radio tools;
Software-defined radio-based SDR emulation of real communication systems with open-field testing (using USRP boards and GNU-radio tools);
Millimetre wave 5G transmission techniques (waveform design, multiple access management, MIMO techniques for small-cell backhaul).

Teaching

The following courses are taught by Dr. Claudio Sacchi at the University of Trento:

SIGNAL THEORY

COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS (MSc Telecommunications Engineering 1st year)

DESIGN OF NETWORKS AND COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS (shared folder for slides)

Research projects

2002-2004: Satellite and HAP Integrated Communications (SHINES) research project (funded by Italian Ministry of University and Scientific Research in the framework of the Projects of Relevant National Interest, PRIN Workprogramme)

2002-2004: Augmented Perception and Environmental Personalization (PER2) research project (funded by Italian Ministry of University and Scientific Research in the framework of the Projects of Relevant National Interest, PRIN Workprogramme)

2003-2006: Virtual Immersive Communications (VICOM) research project (funded by Italian Ministry on University and Scientific Research in the framework of the Basic Research Investment Funding, FIRB Workprogramme)

2004: W-band Verification and Evaluation (WAVE) research project (early feasibility phase A, funded by Italian Space Agency, ASI).

2006-2008: Integrated Communications and Navigation (ICONA) research project (funded by Italian Ministry of University and Scientific Research in the framework of the Projects of Relevant National Interest, PRIN Workprogramme)

2007-2008: W-band Verification and Evaluation (WAVE) project continuation (feasibility phase B, funded by Italian Space Agency, ASI)

2008-2010: Satellite-Assisted LocalIzation and Communication systems for Emergency services (SALICE) (funded by Italian Ministry of University and Scientific Research in the framework of the Projects of Relevant National Interest, PRIN Workprogramme)

Publications

Journal papers (click here for the updated list)

Selected conference papers (click here for the updated list)

Journal special issues (on-going and published)

Thesis proposals

THESIS PROPOSALS FOR MASTER DEGREE: 2017-2018 (UPDATED 22/05/2018)

NEW: PROPOSALS FOR MASTER THESIS STAGES AT IRCICA RESEARCH CENTER (LILLE, FR)

National and international cooperations

Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium)

Tallinn University of Technology (Estonia)

University of Rome Tor Vergata

Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia (CAN)