Cassella Receives EFTF Young Scientist Award
ECE Associate Professor Cristian Cassella is the recipient of the European Frequency and Time Forum (EFTF) Young Scientist Award “for his seminal research on metamaterials in RF microacoustics as well as for his pioneering contributions on long-range remote sensors and lower-noise frequency generators through parametric nonlinearities.” The award is conferred in recognition of a personal contribution that demonstrated a high degree of initiative and creativity and led to already established or easily foreseeable outstanding advances in the field of time and frequency metrology.
This article originally appeared on Northeastern Global News. It was published by Cesareo Contreras. Main photo: Cristian Cassella has been awarded the IEEE European Frequency and Time Forum Young Scientists Award. Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University.
Northeastern researchers build tiny tech that could power faster, smarter 6G wireless
In wireless communication, spectrum — radio frequencies that allow devices to communicate over the air — is king.
But spectrum, like all resources, is finite, and as more devices are brought online and data speeds increase, wireless networks are becoming overcrowded. It’s a problem that is expected to get worse as the 5G infrastructure continues to get built out and 6G technologies are introduced.
Cristian Cassella, a Northeastern associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, understands this problem better than most; it’s one of his areas of focus at the university’s Microsystem Radio Frequency Laboratory, which he leads as its principal investigator.
Taking advantage of metamaterials — a class of engineered materials not found in nature — Cassella and his team have introduced new microelectromechanical technologies that could be key in helping combat network congestion.
For his efforts, Cassella was recently awarded the IEEE European Frequency and Time Forum Young Scientists Award, a prestigious honor given to a researcher working in the field of metrology who is under the age of 40.
To understand the science behind Cassella’s work, it’s first important to understand some of the technology inside your cellphone.
Your cellphone is great for making calls, texting and surfing the web. Those actions are completed using a range of different wireless signals that are received using a phone’s array of antennas and dedicated components.
A key component is a phone’s radio frequency filter, which allows various wireless signals that are simultaneously received, such as Wi-F, Bluetooth, and many others, to be separated and siloed before being sent to the appropriate circuitry for data decoding, Cassella says. Think of it like a telephone operator routing calls to the appropriate parties.
“It seems like a simple operation, but regardless of how it looks, it’s extremely difficult to do with the technology that is out there,” says Cassella, noting that much of the technology inside those filters is more than 20 years old.
Read full story at Northeastern Global News