Kaveh Pahlavan

Kaveh Pahlavan, born in 1951 in Tehran, is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, a Professor of Computer Science, and director of the Center for Wireless Information Network Studies, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, Massachusetts.

His current area of research is wireless access and localization for body area networks and indoor geolocation and tracking for multi-Robot applications. His research background is on radio propagation modeling, modulation, coding and adaptive signal processing for digital communication over voice-band and fading multipath radio channels. He has contributed to numerous seminal technical and visionary publications and patents in voice-band modem, wireless LAN, wireless heterogeneous network, wireless indoor Geolocation and WiFi localization. He is author of several books in the area of wireless networks.

Education and career

He received his MS degree from the University of Tehran in 1975 and his PhD degree from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, Massachusetts in 1979. He started his career as an assistant Professor at Northeastern University, Boston, MA. Before joining WPI, he was the director of advanced development at Infinite Inc., Andover, Mass. working on voice and data communications. Since 2000 he is a visiting Professor at the University of Oulu, Finland. He is also the chief technical advisor of the Skyhook Wireless, Boston, Mass.

He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Wireless Information Networks and a member of the advisry board of the IEEE Wireless Communications Magazine. He is the founder of the IEEE Workshops on Wireless LAN, 1991, 1996, and 2001, and a steering committee member and co-founder of the IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC), 1991 (London, UK), 1992 (Boston, MA), 1993 (Yokohama, Japan), 1994 (Hague, Netherlands), 1995 (Toronto, Canada), 1996 (Taipei, Taiwan), 1997 (Helsinki, Finland), 1998 (Boston, MA), 1999 (Osaka, Japan), 2001 (London, UK), 2002 (Lisbon, Portugal), 2003 (Beijing, China), 2004 (Barcelona, Spain), 2005 (Berlin, Germany), 2006 (Helsinki, Finland), 2007 (Athens, Greece), 2008 (Cannes, France). He has also been a technical program committee member and co-founder of the IEEE International Symposium on Spread Spectrum Techniques and Applications (ISSTA), 1990 (UK), 1992 (Japan), 1994 (Finland), 1996 (Germany), 1998 (S. Africa), 2000 (US). For his contributions to the wireless networks he was the Westin Hadden Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at WPI during 1993-1996, was elected as a fellow of the IEEE in 1996, was awarded a Nokia fellowship in 1999, and was the first Fulbright-Nokia scholar at the University of Oulu, Finland in 2000.

He has been a consultant to many industries including CNR Inc, GTE Laboratories, Steinbrecher Corp., Simplex, Mercury Computers, WINDATA, SierraComm, and Codex/Motorola in Massachusetts; JPL, Savi Technologies, RadioLAN in California, Aironet in Ohio, Honeywell in Arizona; Nokia, LK-Products, Elektrobit, and TEKES in Finland, and NTT in Japan.

Career highlights

Founder of the US first academic research program in wireless LAN, WPI, 1985
Chief technical advisor of the WINDATA, Northborough, MA, one of the pioneer WLAN companies, 1988–1993
Co-founder of the IEEE International Symposium on Spread Spectrum Techniques and Applications (ISSTA), 1990.
Founder, Organizer, and Program Chairman of the IEEE workshop on Wireless Local Area Networks, 1991 (Worcester, MA), 1996 (Worcester, MA) and 2001 (Newton, MA)
Organizer and the TPC-Chair of the IEEE PIMRC, 1992 and 1998 (Boston, MA)
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Wireless Information Networks, 1994–present.
Member of the advisory board of the IEEE Wireless Communications Magazine, 1994–present
Founder of one of the world’s leading academic research programs in indoor geolocation, WPI, 1996
Selected as a member of the Evolution of Untethered Communications Committee, National Research Council, 1997
Visiting Professor as a Fulbright-Nokia fellow, University of Oulu, Finland, 2000
Visiting Professor of Telecommunication Lab and CWC, University of Oulu, Finland, 2001–present
Co-chair, the International Workshop on Utra Wideband Systems, Oulu, Finland, June 2–5, 2003
Chief technical advisor of the Skyhook Wireless, one of the pioneer opportunistic localization companies, Boston, MA, 2004–present
On sabbatical leave, Olin College, Needham, MA, Fall 2004
Co-chair, the International Workshop on Wireless Adhoc Network (IWWAN), Oulu, Finland, June 1–3, 2004
Co-chair, the Second International Conference on Mobile Adhoc Sensor Systems (MASS05), Washington, DC, Nov. 7-10, 2005
Founder and General Chair, the Invitational Workshop on Opportunistic RF Localization for Next Generation Wireless Devices, Worcester, MA, June 16–17, 2008 and June 13–14, 2010

Major Books

Networking Fundamentals – Personal, Local and Wide Area Communications, K. Pahlavan and P. Krishnamurthy, John Wiley and Sons, ISBN 0-470-99289-1, Hardcover, 638 pages, March 2009.

Wireless Information Networks – 2nd Edition, K. Pahlavan and Allen H. Levesque,Wiley – Interscience, ISBN 0-471-72542-0, Hardcover, 722 pages, September 2005.

Principles of Wireless Networks – A Unified Approach, K. Pahlavan and P. Krishnamurthy, Prentice Hall, ISBN 0-13-093003-2, Hardcover, 584 pages, January 2002.