The Telecommunications research group at the University of Ferrara was born officially in 1996 when the first Professor of Telecommunications, Dr. Gianluca Mazzini, was hired by the Department of Engineering (now he is Associate Professor). Prior to that, for a number of years some Professors from the nearby University of Bologna had been teaching Telecommunications courses to engineering students in Ferrara, but no real research activity had been started locally. Dr. Michele Zorzi joined the group in 1998 as an Associate Professor (now he is Full Professor), and Dr. Velio Tralli joined the group in 1999 as an Assistant Professor (now he is Associate Professor).

Soon after arriving in Ferrara Michele started a number of research projects involving strong industrial contacts with major telecom companies, which came in addition to already active projects led by Gianluca. In the past five years, the group has enjoyed significant support for its research, and was able to grow very quickly. Its current size oscillates around a dozen people, including Ph.D. students, research engineers, and post-doctoral researchers, in addition to the three tenured faculty members. Through the years, more than 25 people have been part of this group.

The Telecommunications group is heavily involved in research activities at the National and International level, either directly or through affiliation to the National Inter-University Consortium for Telecommunications (CNIT) and the Consorzio Ferrara Ricerche. The research interests of the faculty members lie mainly in the wireless communications and networking area, and span from physical layer and channel modeling issues all the way up to transport and application layer research. A list of current projects can be found in the courses area of this site.

The group has strong relationships with other institutions such as the University of California at San Diego (UCSD), the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), the Catholic University of Leuven, the Technical University of Berlin, the University of Twente, as well as a number of Italian Universities. Collaborations include joint research projects as well as MS and PhD student exchange. The School of Engineering at the University of Ferrara offers a BS degree in Electrical and Telecommunications Engineering, as well as an MS degree in Technologies for Telecommunications and Electronics. More details on the course offering of the group can be found in the projects area of this site.

We are open to extending our collaborations. If you have any interest in establishing some relationship and/or to explore possibilities for PhD student exchange, we will be happy to hear from you. Feel free to drop an e-mail to any of us to get it started.

The Telecommunications group is mainly located on the third ("blue") floor of the Engineering Department building of the University of Ferrara, comprising the faculty offices and a 36 sqm lab (with 10 workstations). Space for PhD student offices as well as a DSP lab is also available on a different floor.