Title: RFID technology in industrial applications, wireless connections for biological and healthcare applications, and 5-6G human exposure assessment
Abstract: RFID technology and wireless connectivity in industrial, biological and healthcare applications are interesting domains for the RFID-TA audience. In this presentation, different topics will be tackled: -RFID relative localization for drone-based inventory management in industrial facilities towards ubiquitous wireless indoor positioning, wireless power transfer for in-body sensors, and localization for wireless capsule endoscopy. Last topics fit in the domain of electromagnetic modeling for minimally invasive medical devices.
All wireless applications have to satisfy human electromagnetic exposure guidelines of ICNIRP and IEEE. In the presentation, numerical exposure assessment for future 5G-6G applications in industry will be discussed.
Wout Joseph (Orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8807-0673) was born in Ostend, Belgium on October 21, 1977. He received the M. Sc. degree in electrical engineering from Ghent University (Belgium), in July 2000. From September 2000 to March 2005 he was a research assistant at the Department of Information Technology (INTEC) of the same university. During this period, his scientific work was focused on electromagnetic exposure assessment. His research work dealt with measuring and modelling of electromagnetic fields around base stations for mobile communications related to the health effects of the exposure to electromagnetic radiation. This work led to a Ph. D. degree in March 2005. From April 2005-2009, he was postdoctoral researcher for iMinds-UGent/INTEC. From October 2007 to October 2013, he was a Post-Doctoral Fellow of the FWO-V (Research Foundation – Flanders). Since October 2009, he is professor in the domain of Experimental Characterization of wireless communication systems. He is IMEC PI since 2017. He was elected council board lid of EBEA (European Bioelectromagnetics Association) in 2015-2018,and re-elected board member at large in 2019. In 2022, he was elected board member of the new Bioelectromagnetics society and since 2024 he is re-elected as board member of the Bioelectromagnetics society .
His professional interests are electromagnetic field exposure assessment, in-body electromagnetic field modelling, electromagnetic medical applications, propagation for wireless communication systems, IoT, antennas and calibration. Furthermore, he specializes in wireless performance analysis and Quality of Experience.
His research is ranked first in number of dosimetric peer-reviewed studies for the radiofrequency range, and ranked second for studies covering the entire frequency range (Bodewein et al. BioEM 2016 www.emf-portal.org).
Title: Towards Sustainable IoT: Unified SWIPT, Backscattering, and Hybrid Energy Harvesting for Battery-Less Wireless Sensor Networks
Abstract: The rapid expansion of the Internet of Things (IoT) presents a significant challenge for powering billions of sensor nodes. This keynote discusses an innovative approach to energy-autonomous wireless sensing that leverages the integration of Simultaneous Wireless Information and Power Transfer (SWIPT), backscatter communication, and hybrid energy harvesting methodologies. Utilizing recent advancements in multitone waveform design, frequency-division duplexing (FDD), and rectifier-aware modulation, it will be illustrated how unified and passive receiver architectures facilitate bidirectional communication while simultaneously harvesting energy from both RF and ambient light sources. Recent key innovations will be presented, such as Biased-FSK modulation for efficiency-aware SWIPT, dual-band backscatter systems enabling simultaneous uplink and downlink, and the integration of hybrid photovoltaic RF rectifiers to ensure continuous power availability. Experimental results demonstrate that these systems achieve robust communication and energy self-sufficiency. The keynote further explores the theoretical foundations, circuit-level co-design strategies, and implications for sustainable RFID- and WPT-enabled IoT infrastructures. This presentation seeks to inspire a paradigm shift in the design philosophy of RFID and wireless sensors, transitioning from energy-consuming to energy-aware systems and from discrete functions to unified architectures, thereby paving the way for maintenance-free sensing platforms.
Dominique Schreurs (Fellow, IEEE) received the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electronic engineering from KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium. As a Postdoctoral Fellow, she was a Visiting Scientist with Agilent Technologies, ETH Zürich, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. She is currently a Full Professor with KU Leuven. Her research interests include microwave/mmWave metrology, device and circuit modeling, and subsystem design for wireless and biomedical applications. Since 2009, she has been on IEEE MTT-S AdCom in multiple roles. She was a Distinguished Microwave Lecturer (2012-2014) and the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on microwave theory and techniques (2014-2016). From 2018 to 2019, she was the President of the Microwave Theory and Technology Society (MTT-S). She was also the Co-Chair of the Technical Program Committee (TPC) for the International Microwave Symposium 2023 and the General Chair of IMBioC 2023. She was involved in multiple ARFTG conferences as Conference Chair or TPC Chair. She is also a past President of the ARFTG organization.