Large-Scale Phased Array Antenna Systems for Energy-Efficient Beam Steering from FR3 to THz Bands

Hamed Rahmani, Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at New York University.

Biography: Hamed Rahmani is an Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at New York University (NYU). He earned his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), an M.Sc. from Rice University, Houston, TX, and a B.Sc. from Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran. Before joining NYU, Dr. Rahmani held various industry and research positions. As a research scientist at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, he worked on high-speed electrical and optical interconnects. He also served as a senior RFIC design engineer at Qualcomm Inc., contributing to advanced 5G transmitters for cellular applications and RF front-end designs. In academia, he was an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University in New York, NY, and a visiting lecturer at Princeton University, where he taught graduate-level courses in analog and RF circuit design. Dr. Rahmani is the recipient of the prestigious NSF CAREER Award (2025) and numerous other honors, including the IEEE MTT-S Graduate Fellowship for medical applications and the Texas Instruments Distinguished Fellowship. His contributions have also been recognized with the 2023 Best Paper Award in the Journal of Microwave. He is a member of the Editorial Board of Nature Communications Engineering Journal and has served on the Technical Program Committee (TPC) for the Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC) since 2024, and the International Microwave Symposium (IMS) since 202. Also, he is a member of “MTT-26: RFID, Wireless Sensors and IoT” and an affiliate member of ” MTT-25: wireless power transfer and energy conversion” technical committees of the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society.

Abstract: High-speed wireless connectivity is a critical enabler for emerging applications in AI and high-performance computing, driving stringent demands on bandwidth, latency, and energy efficiency. In this talk, I will present innovative beamforming architectures and RF circuits that pave the way for programmable, broadband, and power-efficient front-ends spanning FR3 to mmWave and sub-THz frequencies. After outlining the challenges posed by large-scale phased arrays—including increasing propagation loss, device and interconnect limits at higher frequencies, routing congestion, and mutual coupling due to shrinking antenna spacing—I will introduce a new class of broadband programmable circuits that seamlessly cover the 6–20 GHz spectrum using a 400-MHz tunable moving filter. Building on these concepts, I will then describe a hybrid transmit array architecture for scalable D-band phased antenna arrays, highlighting how these advances collectively help unlock the full utility of next-generation wireless standards.