D.Sc. Karol Schober of Nordic Semiconductor

In this presentation, we will review NTN IoT technology across multiple 3GPP releases, look into the NTN ecosystem as of today, and summarize outcomes of field testing in selected NTN IoT GSO and NGSO constellations.

Biography:

D.Sc. Karol Schober graduated with a master’s degree from Czech Technical University in Prague in 2006 and with doctoral degree from Aalto University in Espoo in 2016.  Since 2006 he has worked full-time on various topics in 3GPP standardization, including MIMO, unlicensed communication, time sensitive communication, power saving and IoT technologies.  Since 2020 he has been focusing on cellular IoT in Nordic semiconductor fabless chip/module vendor, and has been responsible for MNO certifications, road-mapping and proof-of-concepts for IoT NTN.

D.Sc. Mikko Uusitalo of Nokia

The presentation is giving an update on 6G from the Nokia industrial perspective as well as from the European level 6G Flagship Hexa-X-II (https://hexa-x-ii.eu/ ). Hexa-X-II ended recently in June 2025. Hexa-X-II included 44 participating member organizations covering well industry and academia. Currently the momentum in 6G creation has shifted from research consortia to standardization.   

Biography:

Mikko Uusitalo is Head of Research Department Radio Systems Research Finland at Nokia Bell Labs and Nokia Bell Labs Finland Site Lead. Mikko is the Chair of the Board of the Nokia Foundation. Mikko was leading the European 6G Flagship projects Hexa-X and Hexa-X-II. He obtained a M.Sc. (Eng.) and Dr.Tech. in 1993 and 1997 and a B.Sc. (Economics) in 2003, all from predecessors of Aalto University. Mikko has been at Nokia since 2000 with various roles, including Principal Researcher and Head of International Cooperation at Nokia Research. Mikko is a founding member of the CELTIC EUREKA and WWRF, the latter one he chaired for 2004-2006. Mikko is a WWRF Fellow. Mikko has been nominated among Nokia top inventors six times, Mikko’s H-index is 40+ and i10-index 100+. Mikko has more than 230 granted patents. In 2020 Mikko received the Cross of Merit of the Order of White Rose from the President of Finland. Mikko has and has had numerous board and advisory positions in many important groups in the industry, academia or government side.

D.Sc. Felipe Del Carpio of Ericsson

The evolution towards 6G aims to enable a cyber-physical world with capabilities that go far beyond just faster data speeds, including massive mixed reality, autonomous mobility, resilient connectivity, and global broadband coverage. 6G will be built on an evolved 5G core, featuring a standalone, intent-based, and programmable architecture, leveraging spectrum sharing and open interfaces to maximize performance and minimize complexity

Biography:

Luis Felipe Del Carpio is Research Leader for the Networks research group at Ericsson in Finland, a team that has played a central role in the standardization of 4G, 5G, and currently 6G technologies. His leadership focuses on advancing next-generation network architectures and driving innovation that shapes the future of global connectivity.

D.Sc. Riku Jäntti of Aalto University

The Internet of Things (IoT) is expected to interconnect billions of low-cost, energy-constrained devices, necessitating scalable and energy-efficient connectivity solutions. In response, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has initiated a study on Ambient IoT (AIoT), aiming to support massive machine-type communications (mMTC) by employing backscatter technology in licensed cellular bands. The current 3GPP approach relies on continuous wave (CW) carriers transmitted by cellular infrastructure to interrogate passive tags. While this enables higher data rates, it incurs significant power consumption, requires dedicated spectrum, and introduces hardware complexity.

In this talk, we present a low-power, low-complexity alternative that leverages ambient cellular signals—already present in the environment—as the illumination source for backscatter communication. The backscatter tag modulates information using frequency-shift keying (FSK), which appears as an additional multipath component in the cellular channel. We demonstrate, through a proof-of-concept implementation, how existing receiver infrastructure—specifically, the channel estimation modules in base stations and user equipment—can be repurposed to decode the backscattered signal with minimal modifications and no additional hardware. This receiver-centric approach eliminates the need for dedicated CW sources and reduces system complexity, providing a practical and energy-efficient pathway for scalable AIoT deployment.

Biography:

Riku Jäntti (M’02 - SM’07) is a Full Professor of Communications Engineering at Aalto University School of Electrical Engineering, Finland. He received his M.Sc (with distinction) in Electrical Engineering in 1997 and D.Sc (with distinction) in Automation and Systems Technology in 2001, both from Helsinki University of Technology (TKK). Prior to joining Aalto in August 2006, he was professor pro tem at the Department of Computer Science, University of Vaasa. The research interests of Prof. Jäntti include machine type communications, disaggregated radio access networks, backscatter communications, quantum communications, and radio frequency inference.