Besma Smida recognized for her contributions to efficient wireless communications
Besma Smida recognized for her contributions to efficient wireless communications Heading link
Associate Professor Besma Smida was highlighted by the IEEE Communications Society in their Women in Engineeringseries, and lauded by the group Women in 6G who included her in their “100 Brilliant and Inspiring Women in 6G” list.
At UIC, Smida is a member of the Networks Information Communications and Engineering Systems Laboratory, or NICEST lab. Their research focuses on information and data processing, communication, and storage over networks. The lab member’s goal is to understand how to best communicate data over networks, from theory to practice.
“My research aims to unify communication and electromagnetic theories,” Smida said. “We need to consider the new hardware/materials used in wireless communication, covered by electromagnetism theory and circuit theory when we are trying to make wireless communication more efficient. This is a very hot topic right now.”
Smida was one of the first researchers to emphasize this need. To date, the research focus has been on wireless transmission power and energy, but Smida is working on integrated sensing and communications, which provides environmental awareness to wireless communication systems.
Especially in 5G and 6G communications, computational energy greatly exceeds the amount of energy used in data transmission. If wireless communications can be made more spectrum efficient, the data rate will increase, the latency will decrease, and a lot of power can be saved.
Smida is a member of UIC’s Networks Information Communications and Engineering Systems Laboratory, or NICEST lab, which focuses on information and data processing, and communication. She and her lab members work to understand how to best communicate data over networks from theory to practice.
“We are hitting the wall because we needed to go for much higher frequency i.e. millimeter waves, and much higher data rates,” Smida said. “We need to study the circuit/hardware itself, not just the concept of information theory at the software level.”
Smida said she can’t control what is adopted by industry but sees a shift toward doing things in the most efficient way. For example, autonomous cars require radar and communications, so linking the two to achieve this goal requires a different approach.
“We use roughly the same tools to solve problems in communication,” Smida said. “We should really look for the solution everywhere; the problem should lead the methodology and not the other way around.”