Dr. John Kimionis of Nokia Bell Labs

How do we achieve ubiquitous connectivity for thousands of devices over a large area with low cost? Common wireless technologies for consumer- or industrial-grade Internet of Things (IoT), including Wi-Fi, BLE, UWB, RFID, etc, tend to be on the costly and power-hungry side of the spectrum, or offer very short ranges and reduced capabilities. In this presentation, backscatter radio will be discussed as a paradigm shift for wireless communication, where one can modulate and convey information from a wireless node via radio frequency (RF) signal reflection, instead of active radiation. The power-demanding active radios are replaced by low-complexity front-ends that are practical to add to sensors, IDs, and tracking devices with minimal power consumption and cost. Then, networks are formed, which utilize multi-static topologies and offer operating ranges that are significantly longer than those achieved in commercial radio frequency identification (RFID) systems. These scalable systems are paired with new communication algorithms and signal processing for the network's physical layer between the devices (tags) and the infrastructure (transmitters and receivers), to enable wide area intelligence for industries, streamlining operations, reducing waste, and increasing safety.

Biography:

John (Ioannis) Kimionis is a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff with Nokia Bell Labs in Murray Hill, NJ, USA, where he has served as the research lead for RF Systems technologies, spanning mmWave electronics, low-power IoT connectivity & positioning, and quantum RF technologies. He has a track record of over 50 journal and conference papers, 20 invention disclosures, magazine articles, and book chapters on spectral- and energy-efficient backscatter radio and RFID, additive manufacturing for low-cost electronics, and mmWave systems, and has been involved in 3GPP standardization for IoT and positioning. He received the Diploma of Electronic and Computer Engineering from the Technical University of Crete (TUC), Chania, Greece. He holds a Master of Science degree from the same school, and a Master of Science from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology (GaTech), Atlanta, GA, USA. He obtained the Ph.D. degree from Georgia Institute of Technology in 2017, where he had been a Research Assistant with the ATHENA Group. In 2018, he joined Nokia Bell Labs in Murray Hill, NJ, USA as a full-time research scientist. Dr. Kimionis was a recipient of fellowship awards for his undergraduate and graduate studies, participated in NSF and DTRA-funded projects during his PhD work, and was a TI Scholar for his mentoring service for the Opportunity Research Scholars Program of GaTech. He has been a co-recipient of Best Student Paper Awards at the IEEE International Conference on RFID-TA in 2011 and 2014, the third Bell Labs Prize Award for game-changing technologies on printed electronics and low-cost communications in 2016, the Best Industry Paper Award at IEEE RFIC Symposium in 2020, and has been invited to contribute several articles and book chapters in his research fields. He served as a Finance Chair of the IEEE International Conference on RFID in 2018 and serves as a Board member of the IEEE MTT TC-26 RFID, Wireless Sensor, and IoT Committee.