Biography
Andrea Tonello leads the Wireless and Power Line Communications Lab at the University of Udine.
He received the doctor of enginering degree in electronics (cum laude) and the doctor of research degree in telecommunications from the University of Padova.
On February 1997 he joined as a Member of Technical Staff , Bell Labs - Lucent Technologies where he worked on the development of base band algorithms for cellular handsets first in Holmdel, NJ, and then within the Philips/Lucent Consumer Products Division in Piscataway, NJ.
From September 1997 to December 2002 he has been with the Bell Labs Advanced Wireless Technology Laboratory, Whippany, NJ. He was promoted at the end of 2001 to Technical Manager, and he was appointed Managing Director of Bell Labs Italy.
He has conducted research on wireless systems, on air interface design and performance analysis. He has been responsible for fostering research initiatives with industrial and academic institutions.
He has been involved in the standardization of the evolution of 2G and 3G celluar technology.
On January 2003 he joined the DIEGM at the University of Udine, Italy, where he is currently an Aggregate Professor (ricercatore since February 2005, professore aggregato from October 2005).
He regularly teaches classes on telecommunication systems and wireless communications.
He is a representative of the researchers in the engineering faculty council since 2005, he is part of the council of the electrical engineering programme and of the doctorate council in industrial and informatoin engineering.
His research interests focus on wireless and power line communications, communication theory, cross-layer optimization, software/hardware co-design.
He is the founder and coordinator of the WiPLi Lab where he supervises the activity of about 12 among researchers and graduate students.
The activity of the lab has received about 2.5 MEuros funding and focuses on next generation wireless systems, infomobility and vehicular networks,
power line communications including in-home and smart grids.
Dr. Tonello is also the founder and CEO of WiTiKee s.r.l. a spinf off company of the lab.
Dr. Tonello has been involved in several national and European research projects, in particular he has been:
- Principal investigator in EU FP5 CRAFT WIRENET (2003-06) for the development of a ultra wide band system for communications over power lines;
- Co-proposer of the regional project TECH-UP for the development of a laboratory for ubiquitous and pervasive technologies (2005-08);
- Scientific responsible for the University of Udine of the EU FP6 CRAFT project AGAVE (2005-2007) about the development of a navigation system in industrial environment based on ultra wide band modulation;
- Scientific responsible of a project with the consortium Rinave for the evaluation of the power line technology in naval environments (2008-10);
- Scientific responsible of the EU FP7 Integrated Project OMEGA (2008-2011) about next generation in-home gigabit networks;
- Scientific responsible of the POR/FESR project LAK (2010-2013) about integrated domotic services and networks;
- Scientific responsible of the POR/FESR project EASYMOB (2010-2013) about indoor guidance/navigation systens for impaired people;
- Principal investigator in the project POLSAR (Power line communications for the smart Grid) with access to the University of Strathclyde facilities under the EU FP7 DERri project (2011);
- Coordinator of the project ESTAMOS (Electronics and Systems in the Electrical Car for Sustainable Mobility) (2012-2014).
Dr. Tonello has been the recepient of several awards among which:
- Student grant award for his paper on space-time coding at IEEE Globecom 2000.
- Bell-Labs Lucent Recognition of Excellence Award in 1999 for his work on enhanced receiver techniques.
- EURASIP Journal Paper Award 2007 for the best paper published on the EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing.
- StartCup Udine 2006 co-recepient of the third prize for the best innovative start-up business plan.
- StartCup Udine 2007 co-recepient of a recognition of merit for one of the eight best business plans.
- IEEE ISPLC 2010 Best Student Paper Award (co-author with F. Versolatto).
- Royal Academy of Engineering (UK) Distinguished Visiting Fellowship Award 2010.
- IEEE ISPLC 2011 Best Student Paper Award (co-author with. M. Antoniali, M. Lenardon and A. Qualizza).
- IEEE VTC 2011 Spring Best Paper Award MIMO Track (co-author with N. Moret and S. Weiss).
- IEEE Vehicular Technology Society Distinguished Lecturer Award for years 2011-12.
- IEEE ISPLC 2013 Best Student Paper Award (co-author with M. Antoniali and M. De Piante).
He authored more than 130 peer reviewed papers, 5 book chapters, 6 patents, and several standard contributions.
He serves as an Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Communications, as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology and he is in the Editorial Board of ISRN Communications and Networking.
He was a Guest co-editor (with L. Lampe and D. Shaver) of IEEE Communications Magazine special issue on PLC for the Smart Grid and Automation Networks, 2011.
He was a Guest co-editor (with J. Anatoy, M. Ribeiro and A. Zeddam) of Hindawi Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering special issue on Power-Line Communications: Smart Grid, Transmission, and Propagation.
He has been elected Vice Chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Power Line Communications for the term 2010-2012 and for the term 2012-2014 and serves as the Chair of the Awards and nominations committee for the term 2011-12.
He held chairing positions at conferences:
- TPC Co-chair of IEEE ISPLC 2007.
- TPC Co-Chair of the IEEE Globecom 2008 General Symposium
- Area Chair for the track signal processing for communications at EUSPICO 2009
- Co-Chair of the track on mobile satellite and positioning systems at IEEE VTC 2010 Fall.
- Chair of the Workshop on Power Line Communications 2009 in Udine.
- Chair of IEEE ISPLC 2011.
- Co-Chair of tutorials at ACM MSWiM 2011.
- Co-Chair of Special sessions and panels at IEEE ISPLC 2012.
- Co-Chair of Symposium on Smart Metering Infrastructure Networks and Data at IEEE SmartGridComm 2012.
- Co-Chair of Symposium on Smart Grid and Power Line Communications at IEEE ICC 2013.
- Area Co-Chair at EUSIPCO 2013, Signal processing for communications.
- Steering committee member of IEEE ISPLC since 2009.
He offered (invited) keynotes and tutorials:
- Keynote at IEEE PowerEng 2013
- PowerEng 2013: Principles of Communication over Power Lines
- ICC 2013: PLC: Modeling, Algorithms and Applications
- IEEE Region 8 Webinar, 2012
- Telecoms for Smart Grid, 2012
- SmartGridComm 2011: PLC for the Smart Grid
- EUSIPCO 2012: Advances in PLC and Application to the Smart Grid
He has been serving as a reviewer of a multitude of IEEE journal and conference papers, and has chaired technical sessions at several conferences. He has been a TPC member of IEEE ISPLC 2005-12, GLOBECOM 2006-12, ICC 2008-12, WCNC 2009-10, IFIP WD 2009-11, WICON 2010, MOBILIGHT 2010, ITG Symposium on Electronic Media 2011, MACOM 2011-12, ITU Kaleidoscope 2011-12, ESTEL 2012, LATINCOM 2012.
He is active in promoting the internationalization of the University of Udine research and education programmes. He is the promoter of the Erasmus/Socrates agreement with the University of Malaga, the joint PhD programme with the Institut National des Sciences Appliquees (INSA) de Rennes, and the joint international master in electrical engineering with the University of Klagenfurt. He has been organizing several invited courses for the joint PhD programme between the University of Udine
and the Ecole Polytechnique de Grenoble. He has organized the international student seminar with the University of Klagenfurt since 2009. He is a representative for the University of Udine in the
Institutional Human Resources Strategy Group that aims at implementing the European charter for researchers and the code of conduct of the recruitment of researchers.
He is an member of the professional societies IEEE, EURASIP, ATA, and of the Rotary International service organization.