Palestrantes

Following the forest fires that devastated most of the Portuguese forest landscape in 2017, coupled to the emergency communications system recovery failures, this keynote addresses the current research work on radio wave propagation phenomena in rural areas, particularly under wildfire environments. The most recent developments on the development of a simulation framework to enhance the quality, performance and the resilience of the emergency radio communication systems during a wildfire event, will be presented. To this extent, on-going research work includes several numerical and experimental studies that contribute for the better understanding of the propagation effects on radio signals under fire environments. Initial measurement results from a detailed measurement campaign carried out at the Laboratory for Forest Fire Studies from Association for the Development of Industrial Aerodynamics (ADAI), University of Coimbra, clearly demonstrate the generation of air ionization (plasma) due to the combustion process, yielding significant excess loss in real wildfire scenarios. This is of particular importance in the development of a radio propagation tool to obtain coverage maps based on relevant models for propagation in rural areas, particularly in highly dense forest areas, taking into account the topography and the obstruction in the radio path and the integration of fire models. The development of a comprehensive radio coverage tool will allow the identification of radio exclusion zones in real time as the fire front develops, being essential for ground forces in decision making. This builds up on more than 23 years of research work on attenuation in vegetation media, in which prediction models contributed to ITU-R 833-9 recommendation.

Rafael F. S. Caldeirinha (AMIET’98 SMIEEE’00 SMIEEE’15 FIET’15 SMURSI’19) was born in Leiria, Portugal, in 1974. He received the BEng (Hons) degree in Electronic and Communication Engineering from the University of Glamorgan, UK, in 1997. In 2001, he was awarded a Ph.D in Radiowave Propagation by the same University for his research work in vegetation studies at frequencies from 1 to 62.4 GHz. He received the Agregado (Habilitation) academic title in 03/2020 by the University of Aveiro (Portugal), for this contribution to radiowave propagation in vegetation media. He is currently Head of the Antennas & Propagation (A&P-Lr) research group at Instituto de Telecomunicações, Leiria, Portugal, and Coordinator Professor in Mobile Communications at the School of Technology and Management (ESTG) of the Polytechnic Institute of Leiria (IPLeiria), Portugal.

His research interests include studies of radiowave propagation through vegetation media, including wildfires, radio channel sounding and modeling and frequency selective surfaces, for applications at micro- and millimeter-wave frequencies. Prof. Caldeirinha has authored or co-authored more than 170 papers in conferences and international journals and 4 contributions to ITU-R Study Group, which formed the basis of the ITU–R P.833–5 (2005) recommendation.

He is Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation journal; Associate Editor of the IET on Microwaves, Antennas and Propagation journal; Member of the editorial board of the International Journal of Communication Systems, IJCS (New York, Wiley); Program chair of WINSYS International Conference between 2006 and 2012; Appointed Officer for Awards and Recognitions of the IEEE Portugal section in 2014; Chair of the IEEE Portugal Joint Chapter on Antennas & Propagation – Electron Devices – Microwave Theory & Techniques since 2016; Regional Delegate of European Association for Antennas and Propagation (EurAAP) for Andorra, Portugal and Spain since March, 2017; and a Senior Member of IEEE and URSI and Fellow Member of IET.