ABOUT
Leonardo Lizzi is currently an Associate Professor at the University Côte d’Azur, France. He received the master’s degree in Telecommunication Engineering and the Ph.D. degree in Information and Communication Technology from the University of Trento, Italy, in 2007 and 2011, respectively. During his Ph.D. he has been visiting researcher at the Pennsylvania State University, USA, and the University of Nagasaki, Japan. From 2011 to 2014 he was Post-Doctoral researcher at the Laboratory of Electronics, Antennas and Telecommunications (LEAT) of the University Nice – Sophia Antipolis, France. At the moment, his research focuses on reconfigurable, miniature, multi-standards antennas for Internet-of-Things applications, wearable devices and 5G terminals. He is the coordinator of the European School of Antennas (ESoA) Ph.D. course on “Antennas and Rectennas for IoT Applications”. He is co-author of more than 110 papers in international journals and conference proceedings.
Tutorial: Antennas for compact 5G IoT devices
Abstract: Last years have seen the spreading of the Internet-of-Things (IoT) idea, for which any kind of object should be equipped with wireless connectivity to communicate and share information over the internet. This paradigm will be disruptive by changing the way people interact with their environment, such as at home, at work, in transportation, etc. This implies that standard telecommunication aspects must be revised to match the IoT challenges. This led for example to the development of ultra-sensitive modulation schemes thanks to lower bandwidth requirements or the definition of new protocols capable of dealing with the tremendous number of connected objects and enabling compatibility between heterogeneous devices.
In this framework, this talk will focus on the antenna design problem, which must be also completely rethought. Differently from classical approaches, the design of IoT antennas can neglect the bandwidth requirements and focus on other aspects, such as strong miniaturization. On the other hand, depending on the application at hand, aspects as antenna efficiency or environmental sensitivity become particularly important and must be carefully considered. During the lecture, several examples of antennas integrated into IoT devices and developed for different industrial and research projects will be presented and discussed.
Keynote: A reconfigurable antenna for compact IoT tracking devices: an industrial project
Abstract: Narrowband antennas naturally suffer from high sensitivity to the environment. Moreover, IoT terminal are usually deeply integrated in various objects with different materials. A small variation of the characteristics of the surroundings of the antenna causes a shift of the antenna resonant frequency, resulting in an impedance mismatching at the operating frequency. A possible solution for compensating the effects of the environment is to use frequency-agile antennas.
This talk presents the results of an industrial project whose objective was the design of a frequency tunable Inverted-F Antenna (IFA) integrated in a compact and battery powered IoT tracking device. The frequency reconfiguration capability is used to counterbalance the shift of the antenna resonant frequency produced by the variation of the close environment surrounding the IoT device. This allows the maximization of the antenna total efficiency whatever the operation condition.