Aggelos Bletsas

Professor

ECE

Phone:(848) 445-3127 (CoRE-530) and (848) 932-0929 (WINLAB)
Email:aggelos.bletsas@rutgers.edu
Office:CoRE 530 and WINLAB

Aggelos Bletsas (IEEE Fellow) received the Diploma degree (Hons.) in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, in 1998, and the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Media Arts & Sciences (Media Lab) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, USA, in 2001 and 2005, respectively. He has worked with Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL), Cambridge, MA, USA and the RadioCommunications Laboratory (RCL), Department of Physics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. He joined Technical Univ. of Crete in 2009 as Assistant Professor, promoted to Associate Professor in 2014 and Full Professor in end of 2018.

In January 2024 he joined as Full Professor the Department of ECE, Rutgers University, The State University of New Jersey.

His research interests span the broad area of scalable wireless communications and sensor networking, with emphasis on ultra-low power/cost environmental sensing, backscatter radio & RFID, wireless localization and ambiently-powered inference networks. He has offered contributions relevant to wireless, batteryless, backscatter sensors for precision agriculture that cost a few Euros, consume a few microwatts and can be read with commodity receivers and smartphones.

Prof. Bletsas is currently 2022-2024 IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc) Distinguished Lecturer (DL) and 2023-2025 IEEE RFID Council (CRFID) Distinguished Lecturer (DL). He was co-recipient of the IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc) 2008 Marconi Prize Paper Award in Wireless Communications, and various Best (Student) Paper and Poster Awards, e.g., in IEEE RFID-TA 2011, IEEE ICASSP 2015, IEEE RFID-TA 2017, MOCAST 2018, IEEE WCNEE 2021 and IEEE RFID 2023. Prof. Bletsas received the 2012-2013 Technical Univ. of Crete Research Excellence Award. In December 2020, his students won the Second Prize in the 2020 IEEE ComSoc "Communications Technology Changing the World" Student Competition. His students were winners for two consecutive years of the 2009-2011 and 2011-2012 best Diploma Thesis contest among all Greek Universities on "Advanced Wireless Systems", awarded by IEEE VTS/AES joint Greek Chapter. He has served as an Associate Editor for IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS from 2015 to 2021 and IEEE WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS from 2011 to 2016. Since June 2022 he is serving as Area Editor for IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS and has been serving as a Technical Program Committee (TPC) member for major IEEE conferences. One of his research proposals has received grade A from European Research Council (ERC). He is regularly listed in the Top 2% Scientists worldwide annual list, compiled by Stanford University and has been included in the Highly Cited Greek Scientists, as well as 45 Highly Cited Greek Scientists under 45 lists. One of his papers is being ranked 1st (for several years) in the Google Scholar list of Classic Papers in Computer Networks and Wireless Communication.

Education

Ph.D., Media Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 2005

M.Sc., Media Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 2001

Diploma, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH), 1998

Honors

IEEE Fellow

Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc) (2022-2024)

Distinguished Lecturer of the Council of RFID (CRFID) (2024-2025)

Google Scholar has included 2006 Ph.D. thesis paper as CLASSIC in the Computer Networks & Wireless Communication list, ranking it first (1st)

Area Editor, Antennas, Channel Models & Localization (ACML), IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications (TWC) (2022-present)

Best Poster Award, audience vote, 17th Annual International Conference on RFID, June 2023, Seattle, USA

Best Paper Award at IEEE International Workshop on Wireless Communications and Networking in Extreme Environments (WCNEE), July 2021

Second Prize in the 2020 IEEE ComSoc "Communications Technology Changing the World" Student Competition. Project: “Recycling Radio Waves for the Wide Adoption of Precision Agriculture”, Role: student team advisor.

Best Student Paper Award at International Conference on Modern Circuits and Systems Technologies (MOCAST) on Electronics and Communications, May 2018, Thessaloniki, Greece (M. Ouroutzoglou)

Best Student Paper Award at IEEE International Conf. on RFID Technologies & Applications (RFID-TA) 2017, Sept. 2017, Warsaw, Poland (G. Vougioukas)

Best Student Paper Award, IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), April 2015, Brisbane, Australia (P. Alevizos, Y. Fountzoulas)

2013 Technical Univ. of Crete (TUC) Annual Outstanding Faculty Research Award

Paper Distinction at IEEE Sensors Conf. 2013 (SENSORS), Nov. 2013

2013 Best Diploma Thesis Award from IEEE AES/VTS joint Greek Chapter for best 2011-2012 Diploma Thesis in “Advanced Wireless Systems” among all Greek Universities/Research Institutions (Konstantinos Alexandris)

2012 Best Diploma Thesis Award from IEEE AES/VTS joint Greek Chapter for best 2009-2011 Diploma Thesis in “Advanced Wireless Systems” among all Greek Universities/Research Institutions (Eleftherios Kampianakis)

Second Best Student Paper Award, IEEE RFID Technologies & Applications Conference (RFID-TA) 2011, Sitges, Spain (J. Kimionis)

European Research Council (ERC) evaluation A (“Excellent”), ERC Starting Grant 2009 call

Paper Distinction at IEEE Int. Symp. on Wireless Commun. Systems (ISWCS) 2009, Siena Italy

2008 IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc) G. Marconi Prize Best Paper Award

Research Interests

Scalable wireless communication and networking

Wireless sensor networks

Signal processing for communication

RF and bioelectric energy harvesting

Radio hardware/software implementations for wireless transceivers and synthesis of low-cost sensor networks

RFID

Internet of Plants

Time/frequency metrology

Inference algorithms

Selected Publications

Selected Publications https://scholar.google.gr/citations?user=ZG4Ep2cAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao

V. Papageorgiou, A. Nichoritis, P. Vasilakopoulos, G. Vougioukas and A. Bletsas, "Design and Implementation of Ambiently Powered Internet-of-Things-That-Think with Asynchronous Principles", IEEE Internet of Things Journal (JIoT), Vol. 10, No. 17, pp. 15283-15300, Sept. 2023. [Conference version received best paper award, IEEE WCNEE 2021]

I. Vardakis, G. Kotridis, S. Peppas, K. Skyvalakis, G. Vougioukas and A. Bletsas, "Intelligently Wireless Batteryless RF-Powered Reconfigurable Surface: Theory, Implementation & Limitations", IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications (TWC), Vol. 22, No. 6, pp. 3942-3954, Jun. 2023.

G. Vougioukas, N. Ntantidakis, E. Karatarakis, G. Apostolakis and A. Bletsas, "Batteryless Backscatter Sensor Networks-Part II: Lessons from Scalable Deployment", IEEE Communications Letters (CL), invited paper, Vol. 27, No. 3, pp. 768-772, Mar. 2023.

P. Alevizos, G. Vougioukas and A. Bletsas, "Batteryless Backscatter Sensor Networks - Part I: Challenges with (Really) Simple Tags", IEEE Communications Letters (CL), invited paper, Vol. 27, No. 3, pp. 763-767, Mar. 2023.

G. Vougioukas and A. Bletsas, "DoA Estimation with a Single Antenna and a Few Low-Cost Backscattering Tags", IEEE Transactions on Communications (TCOM), Vol. 70, No. 10, pp. 6849 - 6860, Oct. 2022.

K. Skyvalakis, E. Giannelos, E. Andrianakis and A. Bletsas, "Elliptical DoA Estimation & Localization", IEEE Journal of Radio Frequency Identification (J-RFID), Vol. 6, pp. 394-401, 2022.

M. Ouroutzoglou, G. Vougioukas, G.N. Karystinos and A. Bletsas, "Multistatic Noncoherent Linear Complexity Miller Sequence Detection For Gen2 RFID/IoT", IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications (TWC), Vol. 20, No. 12, pp. 8067-8080, Dec. 2021. [Conference version included among best student paper award finalists, IEEE RFID-TA 2019]

E. Giannelos, E. Andrianakis, K. Skyvalakis, A. Dimitriou and A. Bletsas, "Robust RFID Localization in Multipath with Phase-Based Particle Filtering and a Mobile Robot", IEEE Journal of Radio Frequency Identification (J-RFID), Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 302-310, June 2021. [Invited paper from IEEE RFID 2021]

G. Vougioukas and A. Bletsas, "Switching Frequency Techniques for Universal Ambient Backscatter Networking", IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (JSAC), Special Issue on Wireless Transmission of Information and Power, Vol. 37, No. 2, pp. 464-477, Feb. 2019. [Conference version received best student paper award, IEEE RFID-TA 2017]

A. Bletsas, P.N. Alevizos and G. Vougioukas, "The Art of Signal Processing in Backscatter Radio for μWatt (or less) Internet-of-Things (IoT)", IEEE Signal Processing Magazine (SPM), Special Issue on Internet-of-Things (IoT), Vol. 35, No. 5, pp. 28-40, September 2018.

P.N. Alevizos, A. Bletsas and G.N. Karystinos, "Noncoherent Short Packet Detection and Decoding for Scatter Radio Sensor Networking", IEEE Transactions on Communications (TCOM), Vol. 65, No. 5, pp. 2128-2140, May 2017.

C. Konstantopoulos, E. Koutroulis, N. Mitianoudis and A. Bletsas, "Converting a Plant to a Battery and Wireless Sensor with Scatter Radio and Ultra-Low Cost",

IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation & Measurement (IM), Vol. 65, No. 2, pp. 388-398, Feb. 2016.

N. Kargas, F. Mavromatis and A. Bletsas, "Fully-Coherent Reader with Commodity SDR for Gen2 FM0 and Computational RFID", IEEE Wireless Communications Letters (WCL), Vol. 4, No. 6, pp. 617-620, Dec. 2015.

[Software code available online, for coherent Gen2 RFID reception and a single RF card with USRP2]

N. Fasarakis-Hilliard, P.N. Alevizos and A. Bletsas, "Coherent Detection and Channel Coding for Bistatic Scatter Radio Sensor Networking", IEEE Transactions on Communications (TCOM), Vol. 63, No. 5, pp. 1798-1810, May 2015.

J. Kimionis, A. Bletsas and J. N. Sahalos, "Increased Range Bistatic Scatter Radio", IEEE Transactions on Communications (TCOM), Vol. 62, No. 3, pp. 1091-1104, March 2014.

G. Vannucci, A. Bletsas and D. Leigh, "A Software-Defined Radio System for Backscatter Sensor Networks", IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications (TWC), Vol. 7, No. 6, pp. 2170-2179, June 2008.

A. Bletsas, H. Shin, M.Z. Win, "Cooperative Communications with Outage-Optimal Opportunistic Relaying", IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications (TWC), Vol. 6, No. 9, pp. 3450-3460, September 2007. [2008 IEEE Communications Society Marconi Prize Paper Award in Wireless Communications]