Founding Chairs: Cunhua Pan, Southeast University, China (email: cpan@seu.edu.cn)
Keshav Singh, National Sun Yat-sen University Kaohsiung, Taiwan (email: keshav.singh@mail.nsysu.edu.tw)
Vice-chairs: Robert Schober, Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany (email: robert.schober@fau.de)
Yonina Eldar, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel (email: yonina.eldar@weizmann.ac.il)
Linglong Dai, Tsinghua University, China (email: daill@tsinghua.edu.cn )
Chongwen Huang, Zhejiang University, China (email: chongwenhuang@zju.edu.cn)
George C. Alexandropoulos, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece (email: alexandg@di.uoa.gr)
Haiyang Zhang, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, China (email: haiyang.zhang@njupt.edu.cn)
Marco Di Renzo, Paris-Saclay University, France (email: marco.di-renzo@universite-paris-saclay.fr)
Yuanwei Liu, Queen Mary University of London, UK (email: yuanwei.liu@qmul.ac.uk)
Emil Björnson, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden (email: emilbjo@kth.se)
Changsheng You, Southern University of Science and Technology, China (email: youcs@sustech.edu.cn)
Secretary: Sandeep Kumar Singh, National Sun Yat-sen University Kaohsiung, Taiwan
About the SIG: The sixth-generation (6G) mobile communication systems are expected to provide orders of magnitude improvements (higher data rates, lower latency, increased capacity, etc.) over their descendant generations, enabling a wide range of applications and use cases that were previously unrealizable. The integration of various distinct technological innovations, including ultra-massive multiple-input-multiple-output (UM-MIMO), cell-free massive MIMO, multi-functional Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface (RIS), and TeraHertz communications, is paving the way for this envisioned demanding expectation. However, due to the adaptation of large aperture arrays by the latter technological advancements, Near-Field (NF) communications with the resulting spherical wavefront will become indispensable, and conventional Far-Field (FF) propagation with planar wave front will be no longer valid. The existence of spherical waves in NF communications introduces several advantages over traditional far-field signal propagation. Among the main advantages of NF communications belong the efficient use of energy, since they require less energy to transmit data over short distances compared to planar waves used in FF communications, the generation of massive spatial degrees of freedom when combined with UL-MIMO systems, and the opportunities they provide for localization and sensing.
SCOPE: The main focus of this special interest group (SIG) is to bring together researchers from academia and industry to collaborate, exchange ideas, and promote initiatives with their latest research results and discuss the future research directions in the field of NF communication in 6G networks.
Topics of Interest:
- Channel estimation, measurements, and modeling in NF communications
- Electromagnetic information theory for NF communication
- Low-complexity beamforming design in NF communications
- RIS-assisted NF communication
- SWIPT/WPT in NF communication
- NF communication for mm-wave and THz systems
- NF-based Integrated Sensing and Communications (ISAC)
- Localization and beam focusing in NF communications
- Resource management in NF communications
- Machine learning-driven techniques/designs for NF communications
- Hybrid FF and NF communications
- Real testbed and validation for various NF scenarios