Roberto Bomfin
Postdoctoral Associate
Affiliation: NYU Abu Dhabi
Education: PhD Technische Universität Dresden
Research Areas: Integrated sensing and communication, waveform design, receiver design
Roberto Bomfin received his PhD in electrical engineering in 2021 from the Technische Universität Dresden (TUD), Germany, and his BSc and MSc degrees in Electrical Engineering from the Instituto Nacional de Telecomunicações (INATEL), Brazil, in 2014 and 2016, respectively. In 2014, he worked as a researcher for the Brazilian undergraduate research program, on the topic of spectrum sensing for cognitive radio networks. From 2017 to 2022 he worked on the H2020 European projects ORCA, iNGENIOUS, and Hexa-X, with proof of concept implementation of wireless communications systems on software-defined radio (SDR). His research interests include spreading waveforms and receiver design for systems under doubly selective channels, and integrated sensing and communications (ISAC)
Current Research
With the recent advancements of wireless networks to satisfy new requirements, the investigation of novel transmission schemes and receivers to improve the link level performance is of major importance. In this context, we focus on designing waveforms (precoders) with iterative equalization and studying their performance and complexity trade-offs. In addition, integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) has emerged as one of the key novel technologies of the future 6G radio access network and is currently under the initial research phase in academia and industry.
There are three main challenges involving the development of ISAC in which we are interested: i) full-duplex operation of monostatic sensing nodes: we are interested in investigating novel schemes such as zero-padding (ZP) transmissions where the ISAC node, typically called dual-functional base-station (DFRC), senses the backscattered signals during the ZP periods, such that self-interference is completely avoided and the main drawback of full-duplex operation is resolved. ii) system-level analysis: it is known that the power of radar signals is typically weaker than communication signals due to its double pathloss characteristic.
In this study, we are interested in investigating how the system parameters impact the signal strength of both radar and communication and ultimately enable ISAC applications in specific deployments. Moreover, we consider including reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) to boost the signal strength in multistatic sensing deployments. iii) joint waveform and frame design: the joint design of ISAC promises to provide higher integration gains. In this context, we are interested in investigating novel frame design schemes tailored for passive radar applications that use communication signals for sensing the environment, such as 5G and wi-fi signals. The goal is to investigate how the frame structure of current standard technologies can be modified without affecting the communication services while enhancing the sensing capabilities.