Do radio engineers dream of wireless sheep?

MarketsandMarkets predicts that the wireless communications market will reach $199.3 billion by 2027. One of the key trends affecting market growth is the implementation of 5G, a frontier technology with a higher data transmission rate, security, and capacity. According to Roman Maslennikov, one of the lectors at ITMO Wireless, the head of radio frequency systems development at YADRO, in the next five years we’ll see a gradual decline of the annual volume of 2G, 3G, and 4G equipment, including the conventional passive antennas of basic stations, as the share of active 5G antennas in new ranges will be increasing.

“To ensure technological leadership, it’s important to design domestic multielement active antennas for 5G for basic stations. Such antennas will be needed to provide a high quality of mobile signal in new frequency ranges used in 5G communication systems. In order to develop such antennas, we need to first solve several problems: develop broadband antennas with double polarization, compact filters with low loss rate, efficient signal magnifiers, multichannel transmitter/receiver units, and specialized systems for digital signal processing. Another important aspect is the mechanical design and efficient heat removal systems. When we solve these engineering tasks, we’ll be able to start the serial production and implementation of such systems in the coming years,” explains Roman Maslennikov.

Another relevant task is to increase the efficiency of data transmission for existing mobile communication stations. At the moment, signals are received from – and transmitted to – users via antenna grids. However, signal quality is still affected by many factors, such as the structure and materials of nearby buildings. The coverage of such stations can be expanded with reconfigurable intelligent surfaces. They don’t transmit signals; instead, they redirect existing radio waves by changing their phase and amplitude. Users will be able to install such surfaces in areas with weak connection at offices or homes without requiring help from their mobile operators.

Another trend is the design of wireless, satellite, and radiolocation systems with the use of AI and machine learning. Researchers and engineers can already predict very precisely and efficiently the parameters of an antenna’s main properties with surrogate models, as well as design various antennas with the use of generative competitor classifiers.

ITMO Wireless 2026: new partners and topics

These and other trends were discussed at the fourth ITMO Wireless school and conference on high-frequency equipment for wireless technologies. This year, the school brought together 120 participants, lecturers and practicing engineers from different Russian cities with major engineering schools and enterprises in radio communications: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Tomsk, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Taganrog, and others.

“I often join academic conferences and schools. Quite often they unite researchers who know each other or each other’s work and get to discuss very narrow, specialized topics. This conference-school is different because it brings together specialists in different fields: applied and fundamental researchers, their clients, as well as software and hardware developers. This is a unique platform for communication, sharing experience, and discussing the field’s current ambitions. For instance, I gave a talk on using AI to design ultrahigh-frequency devices. Today, this approach is very popular, but there are real-world benefits behind the trendy term: with AI, we can significantly speed up the development process,” shares Andrey Izotov, one of the lecturers at the event, a leading researcher at the Krasnoyarsk Research Center of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

This year, the event was jointly organized by ITMO’s School of Physics and Engineering and the Krasnoyarsk Research Center of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Thanks to this, the event covered new topics and invited new experts from such companies as Kaspersky Lab, Geoscan, Russian Metrological Institute of Technical Physics and Radioengineering, GAMMA Tech, Modelling and Digital Twins, and 50ohm Technologies. Over the course of five days, participants discussed projects and trends in the field of radio communication and positioning in space, 5G and 6G technologies, the application of AI in the design of radio-electronic systems, satellite communications, and positioning. This year, the list of industrial partners also expanded: apart from YADRO and PLANAR, the school was supported by Resonance and Amungo. At the exhibition accompanying the event, they presented new samples of control and measuring equipment. 

“The Russian community of radio engineers is quite dispersed, and now there are promising research teams and centers in every region of the country. Our conference-school attracts researchers and experts from different cities and companies and gives them the chance to share their unique experience, discuss their tasks or find resources or teams for complex projects. Moreover, we offer travel grants to participants who want to visit our school. From earlier schools, we can tell that one part of our participants joined the teams of partner companies, while another got into ITMO and are now part of the university’s labs. Moreover, some companies, like YADRO and Buro 1440, that took part in our earlier schools have now expanded their collaboration format with ITMO and became partners of specializations in our educational programs,” says Stanislav Glybovski, one of the school’s organizers and head of ITMO’s Scientific and Educational Center of Radiophysics.”

ITMO Wireless and more

The annual conference-school is just one of ITMO’s many educational projects in the field of wireless technologies. For instance, the university delivers the Wireless Technologies Bachelor’s program, where students learn to design high-frequency devices for modern communication, medical diagnostics, and navigation systems. Starting from their fifth semester, students choose their specialization: Physics of Wireless Systems (with YADRO) or Navigation Systems (with Buro 1440).

ITMO also operates the Master’s program Wireless Technologies, where students study radio physics and equipment, computer modelling and prototyping of radio modules, antennas, and systems for digital processing of signals and images. Within the program, students can choose one of four tracks:

• Antennas and Radio Modules for Communication and Positioning Systems, 
• MRI Devices and Methods, 
• Radiophysics of Metamaterials and Metasurfaces, 
• Promising Telecommunication Systems (with YADRO).

Even before graduation, students can join major research projects in the field. For instance, scientists from ITMO’s School of Physics and Engineering developed a room where you can charge an unlimited number of devices wirelessly and the first Russian wireless technology for charging low-power devices for IoT and smart homes. Also among the researchers’ achievements is the development of a medical AI-based system that can detect cardiac fibrosis in minutes based on MRI data. At the moment, the team is working on the first domestic serial 1.5 tesla MRI device in collaboration with the Research Institute for Engineering Physics and Automation (Rosatom).