Claudio Sacchi

Claudio Sacchi was born in Genoa (Italy) in 1965. He obtained the “Laurea” degree in Electronic Engineering and the Ph.D. in Space Science and Engineering at the University of Genoa (Italy) in 1992 and 2003 respectively.

In January 1996, he joined the Signal Processing & Telecommunications (SP&T) Group of the Department of Biophysical and Electronic Engineering (DIBE) of the University of Genoa. In 1997, he carried on his research activity under a grant from Italian National Research Council (CNR), within the framework of the PFT2 Transport Programme. Then, Dr. Sacchi cooperated from 1999 to 2002 with CNIT (National Italian University Consortium on Telecommunications) in project activities related to the application of advanced digital transmission techniques to broadband satellite communications (ASI-CNIT 2001 project, CNR-CNIT “Multimedia 5%” project, ASI-CNIT DAVID-DCE experiment). Since August 1st 2002, Dr. Sacchi has a permanent position as assistant professor at the Faculty of Engineering of University of Trento (he was confirmed in role in 2005). Since January 2004 to December 2006, Dr. Sacchi has been appointed by the Department of Information and Communication Technology (DIT) of the University of Trento as leader of the "Wireless and Satellite Communications" research program. He is currently affiliated to the Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science (DISI, formerly DIT) of University of Trento. He is currently teaching three courses for undergraduate and graduate students attending Telecommunications Engineering (bachelor degree and MSc. degree). During his research and didactic carrier, Claudio Sacchi was supervisor and co-supervisor of 50 Master Degree theses, 5 Bachelor Degree theses and 4 Ph.D. theses.

The main research interests of Dr. Sacchi can be listed as follows:

• Study and development of innovative signal detection techniques for single carrier and multi-carrier modulations and multiple access (DS/CDMA, OFDMA, MC-CDMA) with particular focus on mobile multi-rate and high-bit-rate scenarios;

• Study and development of radio resource management techniques considering unconventional approaches based e.g. on Game Theory;

• Use of Extremely High-Frequency (EHF) spectrum portions (Q/V, W-band) for gigabit/s satellite transmissions;

• Software-Defined-Radio (SDR) techniques for the design and the implementation of cost-effective mobile terminals characterized by dynamic and optimized reconfigurability;

• SDR and cognitive radio techniques for emergency communications.

The research and project activity of Dr. Sacchi is detailed as follows:

From January to December 1997, Claudio Sacchi was involved in the activities of the CNR-PFT2 project (funded by the 1-year CNR grant) for the workpackages attributed to the DIBE of University of Genoa, dealing with secure multimedia transmission for remote video-surveillance systems. Since September 1998 until December 1999, he was technical manager of the DIBE research activities of EU ESPRIT project AVS-RIO (V Framework Programme) dealing with the development of advanced signal processing and communication techniques for remote video-based environmental monitoring supported by a CATV network infrastructure.

From 1999 to 2002, he cooperated with CNIT of Genoa (DIBE section) in the scientific and technical management of the ASI-CNIT 2001 project, focused on the design and the implementation of a software radio transceiver for Ka-band satellite communications, CNR-CNIT “Multimedia 5%" project focused on the development of innovative transmission techniques for multimedia over satellite, ASI-CNIT DAVID-DCE experiment, targeted at exploring the feasibility of the exploitation of W-band in broadband satellite links.

Since 2002 to 2006, he was also involved in the research activities of VICOM, a research project funded by MIUR in the framework of the FIRB workprogramme, which was targeted at

investigating novel techniques for ambient intelligence and virtual immersive communications.

From 2004 to 2008, Claudio Sacchi was the scientific responsible for the CNIT research unit of Trento of the research activities of the “W-band Verification and Evaluation” (WAVE) experiment, funded by Italian Space Agency (ASI) and aimed at investigating the practical exploitation of W-band in commercial broadband satellite applications.

Moreover, he had also been the local coordinator for the University of Trento of two research projects funded by MIUR in the framework of two different PRIN workprogrammes:

• “Integrated Communications and Navigation” (ICONA) (year 2006-2008: PRIN 2005 workprogramme)

• “Satellite-Assisted Localization and Communication systems for Emergency services” (SALICE) (year 2008-2010: PRIN 2007 workprogramme).

From 18 to 22 April 2011, Dr. Sacchi participated as selected member of the EU delegation to the EU-India collaboration meeting: “Monitoring and control systems technologies: towards closer EU-India R&D cooperation” in Mumbai and Bangalore (India). The meeting was organized by EU in the framework of the initiative: “Strengthening EU-India collaboration in networked monitoring and control systems technologies” (EUCLID).

Claudio Sacchi is Senior Member of the IEEE, member of ACM, and affiliated to the IEEE Communication Society (ComSoc), IEEE Broadcasting Society and to the IEEE Aerospace Society (AESS).

Best paper award at 3rd International Workshop on Multiple Access Communications (MACOM 2010).

Claudio Sacchi was involved in the organization and chairing of the following workshops and conferences:

• Web chair and publications co-chair of the 2005 IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP 2005), Genoa, Italy, 11-14 September 2005;

• Co-chair of the workshop: “Exploitation of Higher Frequency Bands in Broadband Aerospace Communications” (EHF-AEROCOMM) held in conjunction with IEEE GLOBECOM 2008 Conference (New Orleans, LA, November 30 2008);

• Symposium co-chair at IEEE GLOBECOM 2009 Conference (Honolulu, Hawaii – USA, 30 November – 4 December 2009) for the Selected Areas on Communications (SAC) symposium;

• TPC chair of 3rd International Workshop on Multiple Access Communications (MACOM 2010), held in Barcelona (Spain) from 13 to 14 September 2010;

• General co-chair of the 3rd International ICST Conference on Personal Satellite Services (PSATS 2011), held in Malaga (Spain) from 17 to 18 February 2011;

• General chair of 4th International Workshop on Multiple Access Communications (MACOM 2011), held in Trento (Italy) from 12 to 13 September 2011;

• Invited speaker at the 41st European Microwave Week 2011 (Manchester, UK, 9-14 October 2011). Title of the invited talk: “Software defined radios for 4G and beyond: beyond the state-of-the-art and beyond mass-market applications”;

• Track co-chair at 2012 IEEE Aerospace Conference (Big Sky, MT – USA, 3-10 March 2012), co-chaired track: Wideband Communication Systems (4.11).

Editorial and review activities

Claudio Sacchi is author and co-author of more than 100 contributions published on international journals, edited books, international conferences, project reports, etc. He is reviewer for many top-ranked international journals (IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMMUNICATIONS, IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SIGNAL PROCESSING, IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, etc.). He was associate editor for IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS and he is still in role of associate editor for COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS journal. He is member of the editorial board of IEEE COMMUNICATIONS SURVEYS AND TUTORIALS. He is member of the Technical Program Committees of IEEE ICC, IEEE PIMRC, and IEEE GLOBECOM conferences.

In 2011, he was co-guest editor of PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE for the special issue titled: “Aerospace Communications and Networking: History, Trends and Future.”

In the same year, he was lead guest editor for the special issue of the EURASIP JOURNAL ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS AND NETWORKING titled: “Multiple Access Communications in Future-Generation Wireless Networks.”

In 2015, Dr. Sacchi had been lead guest editor of IEEE COMMUNICATIONS MAGAZINE for the special issue: "Toward Space 2.0 Era".

International seminars

Claudio Sacchi has been invited to hold the following seminars in international academic institutions:

• “NON CONVENTIONAL DIVERSITY COMBINING, MULTI-USER AND MULTI-CARRIER DETECTION TECHNIQUES BASED ON EVOLUTIONARY OPTIMIZATION TOOLS”, date: 19 March 2007, inviting institution: Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering (ECE) of University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) (Santa Barbara, CA – USA);

• “ADAPTIVE AND OPTIMIZED PHY-LAYER RECONFIGURABILITY IN 4G WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS: THE ICONA PROJECT EXPERIENCE”, date: 5 March 2008, inviting institution: Communications and Remote Sensing Lab., Université catholique de Louvain (UCL), Louvain-La-Neuve (Belgium);

• “EXPLOITATION OF HIGHER FREQUENCY BANDS FOR BROADBAND SATELLITE COMMUNICATIONS: A PATH TOWARDS GIGABIT CONNECTIVITY IN THE SPACE?” date: 3 September 2009, inviting institution: Faculty of Engineering of University of Alberta, Edmonton (Canada);

• “TERABIT SATELLITES, SCIENCE OR SCIENCE FICTION?” date: 14 September 2012, inviting institution: North Carolina State University (NCSU), Rayleigh (NC);

• “TERABIT SATELLITES, MYTH, REALITY AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHALLENGES” date: 4 June 2014, inviting institution: Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL), Pasadena (CA).