Professor Tim O'Farrell
FREng, PhD, MSc, BSc
School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Chair in Wireless Communication
Communications Research Group
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+44 114 222 5193
Full contact details
School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
- Profile
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I received my BSc degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Birmingham and my MSc and PhD degrees in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Manchester.
I am the Chair Professor in Wireless Communication at the University of Sheffield and I am a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng).
In the field of wireless communications, I have made significant contributions to waveform and energy-efficiency design for radio access networks (RANs) and I have translated significant research into industry through standards, products, and practices.My research is focused on wireless communications systems, specialising in radio systems engineering, physical layer signal processing, and energy-efficient (EE) wireless networking.
As Co-Founder and CTO of Supergold Communication Limited, I accomplished strategic breakthroughs in determining the IEEE802.11g Wi-Fi standard. Also, I have developed standardised practices for measuring EE in RANs and produced software-tools for modelling RAN performance.
I have led 27 major research projects with a total research spend of approximately £29M. I led the UK Research Strategy Community Organisation in Communications, Mobile Computing and Networking within the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council portfolio (CommNet II, EP/N007824/1) and currently, I am the director of the UKRI National 6G Radio Systems Facility (EP/X030016/1).
- Qualifications
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- PhD Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Manchester
- MSc Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Manchester
- BSc Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Birmingham
- Research interests
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- Multiple-access (OFDMA, CDMA & MC-CDMA)
- Forward error correction coding and iterative decoding
- Adaptive coding and modulation
- MIMO and Massive MIMO techniques
- Spreading sequence design
- Wireless visible light communication
- Energy and spectrum efficient wireless networking
- MAC and packet scheduling techniques
- Radio access network planning and optimisation (2G, 3G, 4G & 5G)
- Large scale dynamic system level simulation (WCDMA, HSPA, LTE, LTE-Advance, 5G)
- Video quality of service
- Publications
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Journal articles
- Vector Coding Optical Wireless Links. Journal of Lightwave Technology, 1-11.
- Optimized Multi-Primary Modulation for Visible Light Communication. Journal of Lightwave Technology, 40(22), 7254-7264.
- Editorial : A decade of Green Radio and the path to “Net Zero” : a United Kingdom perspective. IEEE Transactions on Green Communications and Networking, 6(2), 657-664.
- Irregular vector turbo codes with low complexity. EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking, 2022.
- Concurrent Multiband Direct RF Sampling Receivers. IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, 1-1.
- Optical energy-constrained slot-amplitude modulation for dimmable VLC: suboptimal detection and performance evaluation. IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, 20(3), 1582-1595. View this article in WRRO
- Non-Iterative Downlink Training Sequence Design Based on Sum Rate Maximization in FDD Massive MIMO Systems. IEEE Access, 8, 108731-108747.
- Low-profile independently- and concurrently-tunable quad-band antenna for single chain sub-6GHz 5G new radio applications. IEEE Access, 7, 183770-183782. View this article in WRRO
- Direct antenna modulation for high-order phase shift keying. IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation. View this article in WRRO
- On the Local Delay and Energy Efficiency of Clustered HetNets. IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, 68(3), 2987-2999. View this article in WRRO
- Systems Analysis of a Pattern Reconfigurable Antenna for Capacity Improvement of Cell Edge Users in Cellular Networks. IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, 67(12), 11848-11857. View this article in WRRO
- Energy-Constrained Slot-Amplitude Modulation With Dimming Support. IEEE Photonics Technology Letters, 30(14), 1301-1304. View this article in WRRO
- Coded color shift keying with frequency domain equalization for low complexity energy efficient indoor visible light communications. Physical Communication, 31, 160-168.
- An Independently Tunable Tri-Band Antenna Design for Concurrent Multiband Single Chain Radio Receivers. IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, 65(12), 6290-6297. View this article in WRRO
- Performance Evaluation of Turbo Codes in High Speed Downlink Packet Access Using EXIT Charts. International Journal of Future Generation Communication and Networking, 10(8), 1-14.
- Bit-Error-Rate Performance of Quadrature Modulation Transmission Using Reconfigurable Frequency Selective Surfaces. IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters, 16, 2038-2041. View this article in WRRO
- A proxy acknowledgement mechanism for TCP variants in mobile ad hoc networks. Journal of Communications and Networks, 18(2), 238-245.
- HetNets With Random DTX Scheme: Local Delay and Energy Efficiency. IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, 65(8), 6601-6613. View this article in WRRO
- Reverse glacier motion during iceberg calving and the cause of glacial earthquakes. Science, 349(6245), 305-308. View this article in WRRO
- Dynamics of glacier calving at the ungrounded margin of Helheim Glacier, southeast Greenland. Journal of Geophysical Research F: Earth Surface. View this article in WRRO
- A High-Resolution Sensor Network for Monitoring Glacier Dynamics. IEEE Sensors Journal, 14(11), 3926-3931. View this article in WRRO
- An enhanced color shift keying modulation scheme for high-speed wireless visible light communications. Journal of Lightwave Technology, 32(14), 2582-2592. View this article in WRRO
- Relay deployment in cellular networks: planning and optimisation. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas of Communications, 30(11), 1-10.
- Dynamic Cell Expansion with Self-Organizing Cooperation. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas of Communication, 31(5), 851-860.
- Pilot-aided estimation and equalisation of a radio-over-fibre system in wideband code division multiple access. IET Communications, 7(10), 999-1007. View this article in WRRO
- Energy efficient coordinated radio resource management: A two player sequential game modelling for the long-term evolution downlink. IET Communications, 6(14), 2239-2249.
- Small-Net vs. Relays in a heterogeneous low energy LTE architecture. Journal of Communications, 7(SPL.ISS. 10), 716-725.
- Guest Editorial. Journal of Communications, 7(SPL.ISS. 10), 713-715.
- Low energy indoor network: deployment optimisation. EURASIP JOURNAL ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS AND NETWORKING.
- Dynamic basestation antenna design for low energy networks. Progress In Electromagnetics Research C, 31, 153-168.
- Achieving service differentiation in IEEE 802.11e enhanced distributed channel access systems. IET Communications, 6(7), 740-750.
- Performance analysis of DSRC priority mechanism for road safety applications in vehicular networks. Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing, 11(7), 980-990.
- Throughput and Delay Analysis for p-Persistent CSMA with Heterogeneous Traffic. IEEE T COMMUN, 58(10), 2881-2891.
- Design and evaluation of a high data rate optical wireless system for the diffuse indoor channel using barker spreading codes and RAKE reception. IET COMMUN, 2(1), 35-44.
- Distributed MAC protocol for delay QoS provisioning in 3GRANs. ELECTRON LETT, 41(5), 257-259.
- Low-complexity medium access control protocols for QoS support in third-generation radio access networks. IEEE T WIREL COMMUN, 4(2), 743-756.
- Complementary sequence inverse keying for indoor wireless infrared channels. ELECTRON LETT, 40(4), 257-259.
- Application of complementary sequences in indoor wireless infrared communications. IEE P-OPTOELECTRON, 150(5), 453-464.
- Families of ternary sequences with aperiodic zero correlation zones for MC-DS-CDMA. ELECTRON LETT, 38(25), 1660-1661.
- Concordat: Towards better researchers. Engineering Science and Education Journal, 6(4), 167-170.
- Adaptive error control for broadcast DS/SSMA packet radio networks. Electronics Letters, 32(3), 161-161.
- Switched correlator receiver architecture for optical CDMA networks with bipolar capacity. Electronics Letters, 31(11), 905-906.
- Channel sense spread spectrum with overload detection against FFDS: A delay/throughput comparison. Electronics Letters, 30(22), 1872-1874.
- Performance analysis of an optical correlator receiver for SIK DS-CDMA communication systems. Electronics Letters, 30(1), 63-65.
- Analysis of DS/SSMA for indoor radio communication in a log-normal fading channel. Electronics Letters, 29(13), 1204-1204.
- Throughput analysis of a CDMA protocol with channel sensing and overload detection for fibre optic LANs. Electronics Letters, 29(20), 1782-1782.
- Visualizing environmental data at the EPA. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, 13(2), 34-38.
- New Signature Code Sequence Design Techniques For Cdma Systems. Electronics Letters, 27(4), 371-373.
- Delay/Throughput Performance Analysis Of The Code-Division Multiple-Access (CDMA) Protocol In Optical Fibre Lans. Fibre Optics '89.
- A system‐level performance evaluation of a reconfigurable filtenna in the presence of in‐ and out‐of‐band blockers. IET Communications.
- Near Capacity Irregular Turbo Code. Indian Journal of Science and Technology, 8(23). View this article in WRRO
Chapters
- The Deployment of Sustainable 5G Networks, Reference Module in Earth Systems and Environmental Sciences Elsevier
- Toward Green Evolution of Cellular Networks by High Order Sectorisation and Small Cell Densification, Advances in Wireless Technologies and Telecommunication (pp. 1-28). IGI Global
- Green Communication Concepts, Energy Metrics and Throughput Efficiency for Wireless Systems, Green Communications (pp. 19-42). John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
Conference proceedings papers
- Direct IF Sampling Receivers for 5G Millimeter-Wave Communications Systems. 2023 IEEE 34th Annual International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC), 5 September 2023 - 8 September 2023.
- Accurate Energy Efficiency Prediction in Sub-6GHz Radio Access Networks Based on Pathloss Modeling Using Kriging Methods. 2023 IEEE International Conference on Communications Workshops (ICC Workshops), 28 May 2023 - 1 June 2023.
- The Volume Spectral and Energy Efficiency of Ultra-Dense IoT Networks with Clustered Users. 2022 20th International Symposium on Modeling and Optimization in Mobile, Ad hoc, and Wireless Networks (WiOpt), 19 September 2022 - 23 September 2022.
- Machine Learning-Assisted Optimization of a Metasurface-Based Directly Modulating Antenna. 2022 IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation and USNC-URSI Radio Science Meeting (AP-S/URSI), 10 July 2022 - 15 July 2022.
- The Spectral and Energy Efficiency of Ultra-Dense IoT Networks. 2022 IEEE 8th International Conference on Network Softwarization (NetSoft), 27 June 2022 - 1 July 2022.
- The effect of ADC resolution on concurrent, multiband, direct RF sampling receivers. 2021 IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM), 7 December 2021 - 11 December 2021.
- Metasurface Direct Antenna Modulators in non-Line of Sight Channels for the Internet of Things. 2020 IEEE 31st Annual International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications, 31 August 2020 - 3 September 2020.
- Direct Antenna Modulator for m-QAM Applications. 2020 14th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP), 15 March 2020 - 20 March 2020.
- Tri-band Single Chain Radio Receiver for Concurrent Radio. 2020 2nd 6G Wireless Summit (6G SUMMIT), 17 March 2020 - 20 March 2020.
- Planar Frequency-Tunable Quad-Band Antenna with Independently Controllable Bands. 2019 IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation and USNC-URSI Radio Science Meeting, 7 July 2019 - 12 July 2019. View this article in WRRO
- Tuning Range Enhancement of a Frequency-Agile Tri-band Slot Antenna. 2019 IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation and USNC-URSI Radio Science Meeting, 7 July 2019 - 12 July 2019. View this article in WRRO
- Performance Evaluation of Generalized Optical Spatial Modulation with Dimming Support. 2018 IEEE Globecom Workshops (GC Wkshps), 9 December 2018 - 13 December 2018.
- An Energy Efficiency Evaluation Framework for Radio Access Networks. 2018 International Conference on Information and Communication Technology Convergence (ICTC), 17 October 2018 - 19 October 2018.
- White Light Constrained Multi-Primary Modulation for Visible Light Communication. 2017 IEEE GLOBECOM WORKSHOPS (GC WKSHPS) View this article in WRRO
- Multiband Tunable MIMO Antenna. Loughborough Antennas & Propagation Conference 2018 (LAPC 2018)
- A low-complexity array of directly phase modulating antennas. 12th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP 2018)
- 5G Reconfigurable Antennas. 12th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP 2018)
- A low-loss reconfigurable Frequency Selective Surface based antenna for Direct Antenna Modulation. Loughborough Antennas & Propagation Conference (LAPC 2017) View this article in WRRO
- Concurrent, Multi-Band, Single-Chain Radio Receiver for High Data-Rate HetNets. 2017 IEEE 86th Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC-Fall), 24 September 2017 - 27 September 2017. View this article in WRRO
- Tunable, concurrent multiband, single chain radio architecture for low energy 5G-RANs. 2017 15th International Symposium on Modeling and Optimization in Mobile, Ad Hoc, and Wireless Networks (WiOpt), 15 May 2017 - 19 May 2017. View this article in WRRO
- Concurrent, Tunable, Multi-Band, Single Chain Radio Receivers for 5G RANs. 2017 IEEE 85th Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC Spring), 4 June 2017 - 7 June 2017. View this article in WRRO
- Frequency selective surface loaded antenna for direct antenna modulation. 2017 11th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EUCAP), 19 March 2017 - 24 March 2017. View this article in WRRO
- Direct Antenna Modulation with Frequency Selective Surfaces. 5th Colloquium on Antennas, Wireless and Electromagnetics (CAWE 2017)
- Tuneable dual-band antenna for sub 1 GHz cellular mobile radio applications. 2016 Loughborough Antennas & Propagation Conference (LAPC), 14 November 2016 - 15 November 2016. View this article in WRRO
- Demonstration of RF Digitising Concurrent Dual-Band Receiver for Carrier Aggregation over TV White Spaces. 2016 IEEE 84th Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC-Fall), 18 September 2016 - 21 September 2016. View this article in WRRO
- Analysis of forward error correction schemes for colour shift keying modulation. 2015 IEEE 26th Annual International Symposium on Personal, Indoor, and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC), 30 August 2015 - 2 September 2015.
- Non-saturated throughput analysis for a QoS differentiated p-persistent CSMA protocol with the capture effect. 2015 IEEE 26th Annual International Symposium on Personal, Indoor, and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC), 30 August 2015 - 2 September 2015.
- A comparative study of energy efficiency between MIMO and SISO based LTE RANs. 2015 IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), 8 June 2015 - 12 June 2015.
- Energy efficiency in 5G access networks: Small cell densification and high order sectorisation. 2015 IEEE International Conference on Communication Workshop (ICCW), 8 June 2015 - 12 June 2015.
- Performance Evaluation of Spatial Complementary Code Keying Modulation in MIMO Systems. 2015 IEEE 81st Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC Spring), 11 May 2015 - 14 May 2015.
- Higher Order Colour Shift Keying Modulation Formats for Visible Light Communications. 2015 IEEE 81st Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC Spring), 11 May 2015 - 14 May 2015.
- Analysis of the use of beam reconfigurable antennas in a homogeneous cellular network deployment. 2014 Loughborough Antennas and Propagation Conference (LAPC), 10 November 2014 - 11 November 2014.
- A dynamic basestation antenna with reconfigurable azimuth beamwidth. 8th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation, EuCAP 2014 (pp 1889-1892)
- A dynamic basestation antenna with reconfigurable azimuth beamwidth. The 8th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP 2014), 6 April 2014 - 11 April 2014.
- Efficiency metrics for wireless communications. IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications, PIMRC (pp 2825-2829)
- Energy consumption of 4G cellular networks: A london case study. IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference
- View this article in WRRO
- A robust wide-area wireless sensor network for GNSS monitoring of flowing glaciers. 2012 Loughborough Antennas & Propagation Conference (LAPC), 12 November 2012 - 13 November 2012.
- Implementation trade-offs of fountain codes in LTE and LTE-A. 2012 7th International ICST Conference on Communications and Networking in China, CHINACOM 2012 - Proceedings (pp 419-424)
- Throughput and delay analysis of a qos differentiated p-persistent CSMA protocol with multirate. IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference
- Optimising femtocell placement in an interference limited network: Theory and simulation. IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference
- Two-tier cellular networks with frequency selective surface. Proceedings of the 14th IEEE International Conference on High Performance Computing and Communications, HPCC-2012 - 9th IEEE International Conference on Embedded Software and Systems, ICESS-2012 (pp 740-747)
- Dynamic cell expansion: Traffic aware low energy cellular network. IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference
- Integrated cross-layer energy savings in a smart and flexible cellular network. 2012 1st IEEE International Conference on Communications in China Workshops, ICCC 2012 (pp 79-84)
- Energy efficiency evaluation of SISO and MIMO between LTE-femtocells and 802.11n networks. IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference
- Long term evolution downlink packet scheduling using a novel proportional-fair-energy policy. IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference
- Capacity-energy-cost tradeoff in small cell networks. IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference
- Energy efficiency and spectral efficiency trade-off of a novel interference avoidance approach for LTE-femtocell networks. IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference
- Power-capacity-tradeoff for low energy interference limited cellular networks. IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference
- Green cellular network: Deployment solutions, sensitivity and tradeoffs. 2011 Wireless Advanced, WiAd 2011 (pp 42-47)
- Scalability of two-way relay channel network coding in a relay enhanced LTE cell. 11th International Symposium on Communications and Information Technologies, ISCIT 2011 (pp 168-173)
- SFBC MIMO energy efficiency improvements of common packet schedulers for the long term evolution downlink. IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference
- A new adaptive differentiated p-persistent CSMA protocol that reduces the effect of the transmission errors on the system throughput performance. IWCMC 2011 - 7th International Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Conference (pp 2181-2185)
- Throughput and delay analysis for a differentiated p-Persistent CSMA protocol with the capture effect. IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference
- Practical network coding for two way relay channels in LTE networks. IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference
- Energy efficient architectures and techniques for green radio access networks. 2010 5th International ICST Conference on Communications and Networking in China, ChinaCom 2010
- A characterisation of HSDPA capacity using EXIT chart techniques. NGMAST 2009 - 3rd International Conference on Next Generation Mobile Applications, Services and Technologies (pp 204-208)
- Sensorless speed measurement of induction machines using short time fourier transformation. SPEEDAM 2008 - International Symposium on Power Electronics, Electrical Drives, Automation and Motion (pp 1114-1119)
- Performance analysis of PDC-OCDMA system with APD mismatch. Communications in Computer and Information Science, Vol. 20 CCIS (pp 306-313)
- Utran radio resource management for MPEG4 video transmission using perceptual video quality methods. IEE Conference Publication(503) (pp 674-677)
- MPEG-2 video streaming over IEEE 802.11 gwlan in the presence of Bluetooth interference. IEE Conference Publication(503) (pp 579-583)
- Maximising spectral-efficiency in 3rd generation radio-access-networks using low-complexity multiple-access-control protocols. Third International Conference on 3G Mobile Communication Technologies
- Analysis and simulation of AM-AM/PM nonlinear distortion due to direct laser modulation in radio over fibre systems. International Topical Meeting on Microwave Photonics MWP-02, 8 November 2002 - 8 November 2002.
- Infrared wireless communications. 11th IEEE International Symposium on Personal Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications. PIMRC 2000. Proceedings (Cat. No.00TH8525)
- The performance of an optimum digital matched filter detector using structured code sequences for CDMA applications. [Proceedings] Singapore ICCS/ISITA `92
- Throughput Analysis of a Slotted Cdma Scheme with One Persistent Carrier Sensing and Collision (overload) Detection. IEEE Second International Symposium on Spread Spectrum Techniques and Applications
- Delay/throughput performance of CDMA embedded in a one-persistent channel sense and collision (overload) detection protocol. [Proceedings] Singapore ICCS/ISITA `92
Datasets
- Dataset for "Direct Antenna Modulation for high-order Phase Shift Keying" in IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation.
- Data for LAPC2017 Conference Paper: A low-loss reconfigurable Frequency Selective Surface based antenna for Direct Antenna Modulation.
- An Independently Tunable Tri-band Antenna Design for Concurrent Multi-band Single Chain Radio Receivers.
Preprints
- Performance Evaluation of Spatial Complementary Code Keying Modulation in MIMO Systems, arXiv.
- Vector Coding Optical Wireless Links. Journal of Lightwave Technology, 1-11.
- Professional activities and memberships
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- Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering
- Director of CommNet
- External Examiner at KCL
- Research students
Student Degree Status Primary/Secondary Abukharis S H S PhD Graduated Primary Arbi A S PhD Graduated Primary Singh R PhD Graduated Primary Turyagyenda C PhD Graduated Primary Wang S PhD Graduated Primary