NYU Tandon's Hamed Rahmani part of international team winning 2023 IEEE Best Paper Award

NYU Tandon’s Hamed Rahmani is among a team of authors recognized at a June 2025 ceremony with the 2023 Best Paper Award from the IEEE Journal of Microwaves for a comprehensive review paper on microwave-enabled wearable technologies, published as part of the journal's special 70th Anniversary issue in December 2023.

The paper, "Microwave-Enabled Wearables: Underpinning Technologies, Integration Platforms, and Next-Generation Roadmap," was a collaborative effort with 32 other international researchers from the IEEE Microwave Theory and Technology Society's Technical Committee on Wireless Power Transfer and Energy Conversion and its Technical Committee on RFID, Wireless Sensors and IoT.

The review addresses a fundamental challenge in wearable technology: how to power next-generation devices without batteries while enabling wireless communication and sensing capabilities. Rahmani's research directly connects to this vision through his focus on wireless integrated circuits and systems that can enable truly autonomous wearable and implantable devices.

"Future wearable technologies need intelligence as a built-in part into them," explained Rahmani, who is an Assistant Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, and serves on the faculty of NYU WIRELESS and the Center for Advanced Technology in Telecommunications. "Intelligence would show itself in multiple forms from sensing, from communication, and from processing. My research is focused on closing the gap from existing hardware technologies to the requirements of these future systems."

Rahmani's research philosophy centers on integration and integrated technologies, recognizing that diverse application requirements demand a unified approach to chip design. This interdisciplinary perspective (spanning electromagnetic waves, antenna design, energy conversion, and power management) aligns with the paper's systematic approach to unifying previously disparate research areas into a coherent roadmap for the field.

"Because the requirements, the application requirements are so diverse, we cannot necessarily say that what we require from these chips in terms of functionalities should look alike," he explained. This perspective directly informed the paper's comprehensive scope, which addresses everything from wireless power transmission and passive communication systems to advanced sensing capabilities.

The international collaboration emerged from the IEEE's 70th anniversary initiative. "It is bringing many areas of expertise into this vision and is looking at it from a systematic perspective rather than a standalone view," Rahmani said about the collaborative effort.

This recognition builds on Rahmani's growing list of accolades, including the NSF CAREER Award he received in 2024. Since joining NYU Tandon in 2023, his work has focused on exploring how wireless power transmission, passive communication systems, and advanced sensing can work together to create truly autonomous wearable devices.