Prof. Fadhel M. Ghannouchi

Director of the iRadio Laboratory in the Department of Electrical and Software Engineering at the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Title: AI/ML Techniques for Impairment Mitigation and Linearization of MIMO Wireless Phased Array Transmitters.

Abstract: This presentation will cover AI/ML-based techniques for modeling and reducing nonlinear distortion and hardware impairments in radios designed for 5G and beyond wireless networks. It will explore a new environment-aware transmitter architecture using an integrated communications and sensing approach. The focus will be on neural network (NN) based digital pre-distortion techniques for linearizing multi-band and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) phased array transmitters. Additionally, state-of-the-art approaches such as Real-Valued Time-Delay Neural Networks (RVTDNN) and Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) will be discussed in terms of their suitability for in-field applications. The performance of these models will be evaluated based on their ability to mitigate transmitter distortion and hardware impairments, including antenna crosstalk and impedance mismatch, PA nonlinearity, I/Q imbalance, and DC offset in multi-band and MIMO applications.

Biography: Fadhel M. Ghannouchi is a professor and former Alberta Innovates/Canada Research Chair. He is also the Director of the iRadio Laboratory in the Department of Electrical and Software Engineering at the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Additionally, he serves as an Adjunct Professor at the Department of Genie électrique, Ecole Polytechnique, Universite de Montreal, and a part-time invited Distinguished Professor at the Department of Electronics Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. His research interests include RF and wireless communications, nonlinear modeling of microwave devices and communications systems, power- and spectrum-efficient microwave amplification systems design, and SDR systems for wireless, optical, and satellite communications applications. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Science of the Royal Society of Canada, a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada, and an Emeritus Distinguished Lecturer for IEEE-MTT Society.