Mohammad Alhassoun successfully passed the oral examination of his PhD proposal. entitled “Theory and Design of Next-Generation Retrodirective Tags and Their Channels.”  The work focuses on newly invented antenna structures that reflect radio waves back towards their origins, adding information in the process.  The technology will enable new, low-cost, low-power wireless sensors and other communicators.  Already with several publications (and the recent winner of the IEEE RFID 2018 best paper award), Mohammad will be leaving for the summer to intern at Nokia Bell Labs.  Congratulations, Mohammad!

ECE PhD student Mohammad Alhassoun, along with co-authors Michael Varner and Prof. Gregory D. Durgin, has won the Best Paper Award at the IEEE International Conference on RFID 2018. Held from April 10-12 in Orlando, Florida, IEEE RFID 2018 is the world’s premier science and engineering conference for RF identification and related technologies.

Alhassoun’s paper, entitled “Design and Evaluation of a Multi-Modulation Retrodirective RFID Tag”, presented a new type of radio communicator that uses reflected power for communications.  Operating much like a corner reflector in optics, Alhassoun’s microwave device reflects incoming radio power back to where it originated, adding bits of information to the signal in the process. The device will enable many low-powered or energy-harvesting radios to communicate over long distances.