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Erik G. Larsson

Professor, Head of Division

Prof. Erik G. Larsson's current research focuses on techniques for efficient, robust and secure wireless connectivity in 6G, and techniques for distributed machine learning over networks.

Erik G. Larsson is Professor and Head of the Division for Communication Systems in the Department of Electrical Engineering (ISY) at Linköping University (LiU) in Linköping, Sweden. He joined LiU in September 2007. He has previously held positions at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, University of Florida, George Washington University (USA), and Ericsson Research (Stockholm). He received his Ph.D. from Uppsala University in 2002. In the spring of 2015 he was a Visiting Fellow at Princeton University, USA, for four months.
His main professional interests are within the areas of wireless communications and signal processing. He has published some 200 journal papers on these topics, he is co-author of the two Cambridge University Press textbooks Space-Time Block Coding for Wireless Communications (2003) and Fundamentals of Massive MIMO (2016) and he holds many issued and pending patents on wireless technology.
He served as Associate Editor for several major journals, including the IEEE Transactions on Communications (2010-2014) and IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing (2006-2010). During 2015-2016 he served as chair of the IEEE Signal Processing Society SPCOM technical committee. He served as chair of the steering committee for the IEEE Wireless Communications Letters during 2014-2015, and as member of the steering committee for the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications during 2019-2022. He was the General Chair of the Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems and Computers in 2015, and the Technical Chair in 2012. He was a member of the IEEE Signal Processing Society Awards Board during 2017-2019, and a member of the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine editorial board during 2018-2022.
He received the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine Best Column Award twice, in 2012 and 2014, the IEEE ComSoc Stephen O. Rice Prize in Communications Theory in 2015, the IEEE ComSoc Leonard G. Abraham prize in 2017, the IEEE ComSoc Best Tutorial Paper Award in 2018, and the IEEE ComSoc Fred W. Ellersick Prize in 2019, and the IEEE SPS Donald G. Fink Overview Paper Award in 2023. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, and a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (KVA).
He won the 2021 "gyllene moroten" (golden carrot) best teacher award from LinTek, the Engineering College student union at LiU.

Teaching (recent):

Research:

- enabling technology for 6G wireless
- statistical inference and signal processing
- network science
- decentralized learning

  • Current research sponsors: The Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation; Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (SSF); ELLIIT; Security-Link; Swedish research council (VR); H2020-SNS-6GTandem.

  • Previous research sponsors: Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences (KVA) rådsforskartjänst, 2007-2012, SSF Framtidens forskningsledare (2008-2013), U.S. National Science Foundation (theoretical foundations program), Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU), Wireless@KTH. My group was partner in FP7-SENDORA (2008-2010), FP7-LOLA (2010-2012), FP7-SAPHYRE (2010-2012), FP7-MAMMOET (2014-2016) and H2020-REINDEER (2021-2024). We were also partner in H2020-ITN-5G-Wireless (2015-2018). I held a distinguished young researcher grant from the Swedish Research Council (VR) from 2013-2018.

Current Ph.D. students (as main advisor):

Graduated Ph.D. students (as main advisor, at LiU):

  • Zakir Hussain Shaik (M.Sc., IIIT Hyderabad, India, 2019)
    Dissertation title: Distributed Signal Processing for Cell-Free Massive MIMO
    Now with Nokia, France.
  • Unnikrishnan Kunnath Ganesan (Lic. Eng., LiU 2022; Ph.D. LiU 2024)
    Dissertation title: Beyond Boundaries: Evolving Connectivity with Massive MIMO
    Now with Chalmers, Gothenburg, Sweden
  • Ziya Gulgun (Lic. Eng. LiU 2021; Ph.D. LiU 2023)
    Dissertation title: GNSS and Massive MIMO: Spoofing, Jamming and Robust Receiver Design for Impulsive Noise
    Now with Ericsson, Kista, Sweden.
  • Ema Becirovic (Lic. Eng. LiU 2020; Ph.D. LiU 2022)
    Dissertation title: Signal Processing Aspects of Massive MIMO
    Now with FOI, Sweden.
  • Giovanni Interdonato (Lic. Eng. LiU 2018; Ph.D. LiU 2020)
    Dissertation title: Cell-Free Massive MIMO: Scalability, Signal Processing and Power Control
    Now with the University of Cassino, Italy.
  • Marcus Karlsson (Lic. Eng. LiU 2016, Ph.D. LiU 2018)
    Dissertation title: Blind Massive MIMO Base Stations: Downlink Transmission and Jamming
    Now with FOI, Linköping, Sweden.
  • Hei Victor Cheng (Lic. Eng. LiU 2016; Ph.D. LiU 2018)
    Dissertation title: Optimizing Massive MIMO: Precoder design and power allocation
    Now Assistant Professor at Aarhus University, Denmark.
  • Christopher Mollen (Lic. Eng. LiU 2016; Ph.D. LiU 2018)
    Dissertation title: High-End Performance with Low-End Hardware
    Now with Ericsson Research, Kista, Sweden.
  • Antonios Pitarokoilis (Lic. Eng., 2013; Ph.D. LiU 2016)
    Dissertation title: Phase noise and wideband transmission in massive MIMO
    Now with Ericsson Research, Kista, Sweden.
  • Hien Q. Ngo (Lic. Eng., 2012; Ph.D. LiU 2015)
    Dissertation title: Massive MIMO: Fundamentals and System Design.
    Now lecturer at Queens University, Belfast, UK.
  • Mirsad Cirkic (Lic. Eng., LiU 2011; Ph.D. LiU 2014)
    Dissertation title: Efficient MIMO Detection Methods
    Now with Sematic AB, Linköping.
  • Johannes Lindblom (Lic. Eng., LiU 2010; Ph.D. LiU 2014)
    Dissertation title: The MISO Channel as a Model for Non-Orthogonal Spectrum Sharing
    Now with FOI, Linköping.
  • Reza Moosavi (Lic. Eng., LiU 2011; Ph.D., LiU 2014).
    Dissertation title: Improving the Efficiency of Control Signaling in Wireless Multiple Access Systems
    Now with Ericsson, Global AI Accelerator, Stockholm, Sweden.
  • T.V.K. Chaitanya (Lic. Eng., LiU 2011; Ph.D., LiU 2013).
    Dissertation title: HARQ Systems: Resource Allocation, Feedback Error Protection, and Bits-to-Symbol Mappings
    Now with Sony, Lund, Sweden.
  • Erik Axell (Lic. Eng., LiU 2009; Ph.D., LiU 2012).
    Dissertation title: Spectrum Sensing Algorithms Based on Second-Order Statistics
    Now with FOI, Linköping, Sweden.

Graduated Lic. Eng. students:

Publications

Erik G. Larsson, Nicolo Michelusi, Unified Analysis of Decentralized Gradient Descent: a Contraction Mapping Framework (2025)  https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.14353

Chung-Hsuan Hu, Zheng Chen, Erik G Larsson,  Energy-Efficient Federated Edge Learning With Streaming Data: A Lyapunov Optimization Approach, IEEE Transactions on Communications 73:1142-1156 (2025)  https://doi.org/10.1109/TCOMM.2024.3443731  https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.12046

Daniel Pérez Herrera, Zheng Chen, Erik G Larsson,  Faster Convergence With Less Communication: Broadcast-Based Subgraph Sampling for Decentralized Learning Over Wireless Networks, IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society 6:1497-1511 (2025)  https://doi.org/10.1109/OJCOMS.2025.3540133

Sara Willhammar, Hiroki Iimori, Joao Vieira, Lars Sundstrom, Fredrik Tufvesson, Erik G Larsson,  Achieving Distributed MIMO Performance with Repeater-Assisted Cellular Massive MIMO, IEEE Communications Magazine 63:114-119 (2025)  https://doi.org/10.1109/MCOM.001.2400332

Erik G Larsson,  Massive Synchrony in Distributed Antenna Systems, IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing 72:855-866 (2024)  https://doi.org/10.1109/TSP.2024.3358618

Research

Illustration RadioWeaves - The emerging physical-layer infrastructure for 6G wireless communications

RadioWeaves – physical-layer infrastructure for 6G wireless communication

RadioWeaves is an emerging physical-layer wireless access infrastructure, in which a fabric of distributed radio devices and computing resources serve as a massive distributed antenna array.
Resource allocation and energy efficiency.

Resource Allocation and Energy Efficiency in Wireless Networks

The demand for wireless data traffic increases exponentially. To keep up with the growth, an ambitious but necessary goal for the next generation wireless networks is to deliver 1000x higher data rates per km2 than today.
Chart over Energy Efficient Digital Signal Processing.

Energy-Efficient Digital Signal Processing

Energy efficiency in signal processing hardware is vital for several reasons, in particular to reduce the environmental impact, to increase stand-by times, to make batteries smaller and lighter, and to simplify the cooling of circuits.
Physical layer security and privacy.

Physical layer security and privacy (PLS)

Physical Layer Security is a security approach that operates directly on wireless signals, leveraging the unique characteristics of the propagation channel and hardware as sources of entropy to ensure confidentiality, integrity, and authentication.
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Popular science description of the activities at Communication Systems

Today's society relies more and more on fast and secure communications infrastructure. This is a trend that will continue. Information technology, and especially perhaps mobile communications, has changed people's lives.

News

The participants at 2022 IEEE SPS - EURASIP Summer School

Focus on the super-fast 6G networks of the future

Hardly has 5G become a reality, when the question of what 6G will be like is asked? That was the starting point when the 2022 IEEE SPS - EURASIP Summer School was arranged at Linköping University.
Presentation by Gunnar Tornmalm, Scania.

Industry collaboration is the key to success

A collaborative relationship between academia and industry generates successes that benefit both the business sector and society as a whole. Researchers and business partners recently met up at LiU for ELLIIT, a strategic research field.
Erik G. Larsson, Division of Communication Systems, Department of Electrical Engineering

Erik G. Larsson elected to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

Erik G. Larsson is one of three newly elected members to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (KVA). Larsson is professor at Linköping University and head of the Division of Communication Systems in the Department of Electrical Engineering.
Erik G Larsson draws formulas on a sheet of glass.

Twelve million crowns from Horizon 2020

Two projects at Linköping University have received funding from the EU’s Horizon 2020 initiative. One is about equipment for monitoring air pollution; the other concerns interruption-free wireless communication.
cyber security

LiU students present cybersecurity report

Digitalisation is making us increasingly dependent on being online, which means that we are increasingly vulnerable to cyberattacks. LiU students Emmy Englund and Linnéa Tullin have written an in-depth report on cybersecurity in Sweden.
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Swedish-Chinese collaboration in 5G technology

People say that 5G will be upon us in 2020, offering 1000 times more traffic at rates of hundreds of Mbit/s. There are many research projects in 5G under way, but probably only one of them is a Swedish-Chinese collaboration.

Read more

transparent image, place holder

Popular science description of the activities at Communication Systems

Today's society relies more and more on fast and secure communications infrastructure. This is a trend that will continue. Information technology, and especially perhaps mobile communications, has changed people's lives.

About the Division

AI-generated image describing the research at Communication systems.

Communication Systems (KS)

The Division of Communication Systems conducts research and education in communications engineering, statistical signal processing and network science.

About the Department

Department of Electrical Engineering (ISY)

At ISY, we conduct research and education in the field of Electrical Engineering. A strong emphasis is placed on research- and industrial collaborations.

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