Tommaso Melodia
William Lincoln Smith Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Director, Institute for the Wireless Internet of Things
Office
- 412 ISEC
- 617.373.4159
Research Focus
Modeling, optimization, and experimental evaluation of wireless networked systems; Networked implantable medical systems; Multimedia sensor networks; Secure tactical cognitive radio networks; Underwater networks; Mobile cloud computing
About
Tommaso Melodia (M’07) received the “Laurea” and Doctorate degrees in telecommunications engineering from the University of Rome “La Sapienza,” Rome, Italy, in 2001 and 2005, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA, in 2007.
Between 2007 and 2014 he was an Assistant and then Associate Professor at SUNY Buffalo. In 2014, he joined Northeastern University as an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. His current research interests are in modeling, optimization, and experimental evaluation of wireless networks, with applications to intra-body networks of implantable devices, tactical cognitive radio networks, multimedia sensor networks, and underwater networks.
Prof. Melodia serves in the editorial boards of the IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, and Computer Networks (Elsevier). He received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, and he coauthored a paper that was recognized as the Fast Breaking Paper in the field of Computer Science by Thomson ISI Essential Science Indicators and a paper that received an Elsevier Top Cited Paper Award.
Honors & Awards
- COE Faculty Fellow
- COE Faculty Research Team Award
- IEEE Fellow
- IEEE Communications Society Distinguished Lecturer
- NSF CAREER Award
- Soren Buus Outstanding Research Award
Research Overview
Modeling, optimization, and experimental evaluation of wireless networked systems; Networked implantable medical systems; Multimedia sensor networks; Secure tactical cognitive radio networks; Underwater networks; Mobile cloud computing

Wireless Networks and Embedded Systems Laboratory
The WINES Lab is designing a new generation of secure, reliable, energy-efficient wireless networked systems with higher intelligence and integration with the physical environment. Focus is on advancing the fundamental understanding of wireless networking. We also design and develop new networked systems, with a cross-layer and cross-disciplinary approach.
Selected Research Projects
- Dynamically Adjustable Spectrum Sharing between Ground Communication Networks and Earth Exploration Satellite Systems Above 100 GHz
- – co-Principal Investigator, National Science Foundation
- Resilient-by-Design Data-Driven NextG Open Radio Access Networks
- – co-Principal Investigator, National Science Foundation
- Next-Gen Wireless Networks
- – Principle Investigator, CHIPS and Science Act
- Cognitive Distributed Sensing in Congested Radio Frequency Environments
- – co-Principal Investigator, U.S. Army Research Laboratory
- Smart Seizure Prediction System based on AI-enabled Implantable Sensor Networks
- – Principle Investigator, National Science Foundation
- An Open, Programmable Platform to Conquer the 5G and 6G Wireless Spectrum
- – Co-Principle Investigator, National Science Foundation
- NSF AI Institute for Future Edge Networks and Distributed Intelligence (AI-EDGE)
- – Co-Principal Investigator, National Science Foundation
- RFDataFactory: Principled Dataset Generation, Sharing and Maintenance Tools for the Wireless Community
- – Co-Principal Investigator, National Science Foundation
- Colosseum: Opening and Expanding the World’s Largest Wireless Network Emulator to the Wireless Networking Community
- – Principal Investigator; National Science Foundation & Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
- MRI: SEANet: Development of a Software-Defined Networking Testbed for the Internet of Underwater Things
- – Principal Investigator, National Science Foundation
Research Centers and Institutes
Department Research Areas
Selected Publications
- Cen, Nan, Guan, Zhangyu, Melodia, Tommaso (2021). Compressed Sensing based Low-Power Multi-view Video Coding and Transmission in Wireless Multi-path Multi-hop Networks. IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, ,1-1. 10.1109/TMC.2021.3049797
- F. Restuccia, T. Melodia, PolymoRF: Polymorphic Wireless Receivers Through Physical-Layer Deep Learning, Proceedings of ACM International Symposium on Theory, Algorithmic Foundations, and Protocol Design for Mobile Networks and Mobile Computing (ACM MobiHoc), 2020
- S. D’Oro, L. Bonati, F. Restuccia, M. Polese, M. Zorzi, T. Melodia, Sl-EDGE: Network Slicing at the Edge, Proceedings of ACM International Symposium on Theory, Algorithmic Foundations, and Protocol Design for Mobile Networks and Mobile Computing (ACM MobiHoc), 2020
- L. Zhang, F. Restuccia, T. Melodia, S. Pudlewski, Jam Sessions: Analysis and Experimental Evaluation of Advanced Jamming Attacks in MIMO Networks, ACM International Symposium on Mobile Ad Hoc Networking and Computing (MobiHoc), Catania, Italy, 2019
- S. D’Oro, F. Restuccia, A. Talamonti, T. Melodia, The Slice Is Served: Enforcing Radio Access Network Slicing in Virtualized 5G Systems, IEEE Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM) Paris, France, 2019

Nov 30, 2023
Developing Cutting-Edge Testing Technology for 5G Open RAN
ECE Principal Research Scientist Pedram Johari is leading a $2M project awarded by the Wireless Innovation Fund to develop a digital framework for testing 5G Open RAN systems called “DigiRAN: High-Fidelity Digital Twins for Interoperability, Security and Performance Testing of Open RAN Systems.” DigiRAN is a digital framework that enables diverse, low-cost, and automated testing […]

Nov 29, 2023
Protecting Wireless Systems from Adversarial Attacks
ECE William Lincoln Smith Professor Tommaso Melodia, Assistant Professor Francesco Restuccia, and Assistant Research Professor Salvatore D’oro were awarded a patent for “Neural network for adversarial deep learning in wireless systems.”

Nov 29, 2023
Improving the Efficiency of Communication with Medical Devices
ECE William Lincoln Smith Professor Tommaso Melodia was awarded a patent for “Ultrasonic multiplexing network for implantable medical devices.”

Nov 29, 2023
Connecting to Medical Devices Through Ultrasonic Network
ECE William Lincoln Smith Professor Tommaso Melodia was awarded a patent for “Internet-linked ultrasonic network for medical devices.”

Sep 20, 2023
Reshaping Spectrum Sharing Above 100 GHz
ECE Professors Josep Jornet (PI), Tommaso Melodia, Principal Research Scientists Michele Polese, Michael Marcus, and Associate Research Scientist Vitaly Petrov, in collaboration with Steven Reising from Colorado State University, was awarded a $750K NSF grant for “DASS: Dynamically Adjustable Spectrum Sharing between Ground Communication Networks and Earth Exploration Satellite Systems Above 100 GHz.”

Aug 11, 2023
Developing Secure Next-Generation Cellular Networks
ECE Assistant Professor Francesco Restuccia, William Lincoln Smith Professor Tommaso Melodia, and Khoury Associate Professor Alina Oprea were awarded a $900K NSF grant for “Resilient-by-Design Data-Driven NextG Open Radio Access Networks.”

Aug 11, 2023
Everything to Know About the 5G Revolution—and How it Will Usher in 6G
Northeastern’s Institute for the Wireless Internet of Things is working on improving 5G operability and developing 6G technology, which will enable faster speeds and more reliable connections.

Aug 09, 2023
Northeastern Receives One of First Research Grants from CHIPS and Science Act’s $1.5 Billion Fund to Study Next-Gen Wireless Networks
The announcement of the grants was made at Northeastern’s Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Complex in Boston and was followed by a tour of the Wireless Internet of Things lab. The CHIPS and Science Act provides $1.5 billion over the next decade to support the development of open and interoperable wireless networks.

Jul 06, 2023
Northeastern University launches O-RAN OTIC, Pioneering Capabilities for Next-Generation Cellular Networks in the Open6G Hub
The Institute for the Wireless Internet of Things (WIoT) has established an Open Testing and Integration Center (OTIC) in Burlington, Mass. to promote research, development, and testing of next-generation Open Radio Access Networks (Open RAN). OTIC will be a resource for industry, academia, and the federal government to provide testing, certification, and badging capabilities to guarantee multi-vendor interoperability, perform compliance and performance testing, and validate end-to-end control logic;, as well as test artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to control open and programmable cellular networks.

May 24, 2023
Kostas Research Institute Receives $13M U.S. Army Contract for Wireless Research
The Kostas Research Institute (KRI) at Northeastern University has been awarded $13 million by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory for foundational research into Cognitive Distributed Sensing in Congested Radio Frequency Environments. KRI and five partner institutions will conduct innovative research to enable technologies in distributed machine learning, signal processing algorithms, and computational, sensing, and communication hardware infrastructure for distributed sensing and communication.