Radio Systems newsletter - October 2025

This is the ninth edition of our biannual newsletter. The aim is to give an update about recent developments within the Radio Systems group of the University of Twente. We also share more general information concerning interesting conferences and developments.

From April to September 2025, we continued our research efforts and took initiatives to develop new research projects. We also concluded the 2024-2025 academic year and started the new 2025-2026 academic year. In the beginning of July, ten bachelor students presented their bachelor's theses, completing their projects within the Radio Systems group. Congratulations to Tim Slots, Maarten van 't Hoff, Thijs van Boven, Hendrik Wiedijk, Yousef Hannouneh, Yngve Swärd, Carl-Gabriel Lindberg, Andy Zhou Zhou, Ecaterina Drebot, and Tom Kroeze! Congratulations to Ecaterina for the cum laude!

In addition, three Erasmus+ exchange students, Alina Popova, Sifiso Sechemane and Timothy Young, and a DAAD intern Johannes Ruckdeschel also successfully completed their work within the Radio Systems group.

In the first half of 2025, Yang Miao (PI), Bixing, and Mensah, in collaboration with partners from the University of Bristol and KU Leuven, successfully completed the SNS JU open call project ADA-BEAM. The team carried out tests and measurements using three distributed 7 GHz radios (USRP X410-based) in human-centric scenarios, demonstrating the feasibility of cell-free SIMO nodes with optimized frequency resource allocation for simultaneous communication and contact-free human sensing. Furthermore, an Impact Explorer project HARNET (Anastasia Lavrenko as PI) has been awarded by NWO to deploy a bespoke harmonic radar systems developed by A. Lavrenko in collaboration with the University of Canterbury in New Zealand for detection of Asian hornet nests.

For the new academic year, the Radio Systems group has been given responsibility for two additional courses: Linear Systems for pre-master's students and Continuous Linear Systems within module 5 of the Bachelor's program in Electrical Engineering. This is an expansion of our educational portfolio that fits seamlessly with our background and expertise.

On 9 September, we had our annual group outing. Due to the weather, the originally planned outdoor paintball activity was replaced by indoor padel. For most of us, this was our first introduction to this sport, and it turned out that there was quite a bit of talent. Afterwards, we played pool and bowling, and the day ended successfully with dinner at Asaka.

We are glad to welcome

• Xiaoxuan Dong as new PhD student within the SMARTTEST project.
• Ferri Gierkink, Dheetchitha Selvaraj, and Matthijs Reus as Master thesis students.
• Jeroen Mugge as a special project student.
• Karima Fadla, Syandana Fadhil Sulistyawan and Michael Kharisma Bintang Yudanto as Erasmus students.

Events

• Yang Miao gave 4 talks: at the ISAC training day in the COST action in Chalmers, at the EUSIPCO workshop “learning for sensing and communications”, at the joint workshop of the French PEPR Future Networks Program and at the COST action INTERACT on the future of ISAC and at the FNS 6G conference in Delft. Furthermore, Yang acted as co-chair of the ISAC subgroup in the COST action INTERACT workshop at the EUMW and participated in a featured media article of “6G Evolutie of Revolutie” in de Ingenieur.
• Anastasia Lavrenko and Andrei Mogilnikov delivered a short course on nonlinear radar at the European Microwave Week in Utrecht in September 2025, and A. Lavrenko has also organized and co-chaired a special session on “Harmonic tags and systems for sensing and ID” at the 2025 IEEE International Conference on RFID Technology and Applications (RFID-TA) in Valence, France.

Selected papers and publications

• Hadi Alidoustaghdam, et al, “Tiled Array Design for Multi-Beam Joint Communication and Sensing: Channel Matching Method”, IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society, 2025
• D.D. Nguyen, et al, “Joint Beamforming for Multi-user Multi-target FD ISAC System: A Hybrid GRQ-GA Approach”, 2025 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC), 2025
• A Pearson's Random Walk Method of Estimating the Electromagnetic Emissions of Parallel Connected Power Electronic Converters, E. Ballukja, K. Niewiadomski, P. Koch, J. Bojarski, P. Evans, N. Moonen et al., in IEEE Transactions on Electromagnetic Compatibility, 2025.
• A Tunable EMI Notch Filter for AM Radio in Electrical Vehicles, I. Struzhko, D. Nemashkalo, T. Hartman, F. Leferink, in IEEE Transactions on Electromagnetic Compatibility, 2025
• Passive Harmonic Transponders With RFID Capabilities: Common Challenges and Techniques (2025) IEEE Journal of Radio Frequency Identification, 9, 457-465. Mogilnikov, A. & Lavrenko, A. https://doi.org/10.1109/JRFID.2025.3584588

For the full list of publications, please visit our website (https://www.utwente.nl/en/eemcs/rs/).

Education

• First quarter 2025-2026:
  • Wireless Communication Systems (WiCoS): 202400588
  • Sensors & Acturators Project: part of bachelor EE Module 1: 202001117
  • Sense-Process-Act: part of bachelor Create Module 1: 202200130
  • Continuous Linear Systems: part of bachelor EE Module 5: 202500035
  • Linear Systems for Pre-masters: 202001185
• Second quarter 2025-2026:
  • Smart Antennas: 201200231
  • Linear Systems for Pre-masters: 202001185

More info about the previous courses? Please visit https://osiris.utwente.nl/student/OnderwijsCatalogusZoekCursus.do and search using course code.

Successful BSc thesis defenses

• Tim Slots (AT): Design of a Portable Narrowband Spectrum Analyzer for Agricultural IoT
• Maarten van 't Hoff (EE): Conducted Emissions Modelling of SPWM Modulation Schemes for Electric Vehicle Charging Stations
• Thijs van Boven (EE): Microwave based sensor for regional soil moisture analysis in agricultural applications
• Hendrik Wiedijk (EE): Analysis of the Effect of Nearby Objects on the Performance of Passive Harmonic Tags for Low-Altitude Insect Tracking
• Yousef Hannouneh (EE): Accurate Range Estimation from 2D Radar Spectograms: A Machine Learning Approach
• Yngve Swärd (EE): Combining Harmonic and Intermodulation Returns for Ranging with Dual-Mode Harmonic Radar
• Carl-Gabriel Lindberg (EE): A comparison of sparsity representations for Underwater Acoustic Channels
• Andy Zhou Zhou (EE): Optimizing Energy-Efficiency in Cell-Free Massive MIMO: A Two-Phase PRACH and OFDM-Based Monostatic Sensing Approach – joint project with 6G standardization group in Philips in Eindhoven
• Ecaterina Drebot (EE): Multi-Target Breathing Sensing using Monostatic OFDM MIMO Radar in 6G ISAC Systems
• Tom Kroeze (EE): OFDM MIMO radar for human posture imaging

Successful MSc thesis defenses

• Tim Doppenberg (master EE): RF performance optimisation by optimising distributed bond wire height over wire arrays
• Nick Hogenkamp (master EMSYS): Analysis of the Design Trade-offs in Low-Resolution MUSIC-Based DoA Estimation

Successful Internship closures

• Sélène Corbineau, Visiting student from École Normale Supérieure (Paris): Spatial noise shaping for MIMO downlink telecommunications. Internship hosted by the Design and Analysis of Communication Systems group and the Radio Systems group.
• Johannes Ruckdeschel, DAAD student from Leipzig University of Applied Sciences.

Miscellaneous

Group outing on September 9^th