Ataher Sams

Building wireless systems with dual sensing and communication capability.

ISAC 6G / FR3 Signal Processing RF Systems Information Theory ML for Wireless
University of Illinois Chicago [email protected]
Ataher Sams
UIC · '26
🔍
Open to opportunities
I am actively seeking internship positions in wireless communications and RF systems — spanning system design, signal processing, sensing, ML for wireless, and 5G/6G research.
✉ Get in touch →

I'm a PhD student in Electrical Engineering at the University of Illinois Chicago, working with Dr. Besma Smida. My research sits at the intersection of wireless communication, information & estimation theory, signal processing, and RF system design — unified by a single question: how do we build wireless systems with dual sensing and communication capability, and what is the fundamental cost of having both?

I'm always happy to discuss research ideas, collaborations, or opportunities — feel free to reach out.

Research map

01 /03
THEORY
ISAC fundamental limits

Information- & estimation-theoretic bounds for joint sensing and communication without instantaneous CSIT — exploring bounds and deterministic–random and subspace tradeoffs.

02 /03
ANTENNAS & MULTI-BAND
FR3 Multi-band System and Reconfigurable Antennas

Mixed-domain waveform & reconfigurable antenna co-design for the fragmented 7–24 GHz FR3 band — adapting beam patterns on a single hardware platform.

03 /03
ML IN WIRELESS
Sample-efficient sensing

Estimators that work from very few measurements by leaning on geometric structure rather than large datasets — using the geometry of the problem, not data-hungry learning, to make reliable decisions where data is scarce.

Latest News

Jun 17, 2026PUBLICATION
Submitted a paper on sensing for reconfigurable pixel antenna to IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.
Jun 10, 2026PUBLICATION
Submitted a paper on ISAC to IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.
May 10, 2026PUBLICATION
Submitted a paper on ISAC to IEEE Information Theory Workshop 2026.
May 07, 2026AWARD
Received the CoE Graduate Student Award for Teaching Assistant Excellence from the College of Engineering at UIC.
May 08, 2026SERVICE
Selected to attend a luncheon with members of the College of Engineering Advisory Board at UIC.
Apr 13, 2026AWARD
Received the Chancellor's Student Service Award from the University of Illinois Chicago — university-wide recognition for outstanding leadership, campus involvement, and community service.
Jan 10, 2026TEACHING
TAing ECE 311: Communication Engineering (Instructor: Prof. Natasha Devroye).
Oct 27, 2025CONFERENCE
Presented paper on Reliability of Estimation Bounds in Low SNR regime at IEEE GLOBECOM, Taipei, Taiwan.
Nov 20, 2025AWARD
Received UIC Graduate Student Council Travel Award for Q2-2025.
Nov 08, 2025AWARD
Received IEEE Globecom 2025 Travel Grant from NSF.
Oct 27, 2025CONFERENCE
Presented ongoing research on Reconfigurable Pixel Antenna for ISAC at 2025 Asilomar Conference, California.
Aug 21, 2025TEACHING
TAing ECE 311: Communication Engineering (Instructor: Prof. Besma Smida).
Aug 15, 2025PUBLICATION
Paper accepted at 61st Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing at UIUC.
Aug 01, 2025PUBLICATION
Paper "On the Reliability of Estimation Bounds in Low-SNR Bistatic ISAC" accepted at IEEE Globecom 2025.
Jul 01, 2025SERVICE
Vice Chair, IEEE ComSoc Student Branch Chapter; President, Bangladeshi Students Association at UIC.
Jan 23, 2025PHD
Started collaboration with Rice University & Aalto University on mixed-domain wireless design for FR3 / 6G.
Jan 13, 2025TEACHING
TAing ECE 311: Communication Engineering (Instructor: Prof. Besma Smida).
Oct 28, 2024CONFERENCE
Presented at 2024 Asilomar Conference, California — fundamental bounds for low-SNR ISAC.
May 13, 2024PHD
Passed PhD Qualifying Exam (Communication & Signal Processing) on first attempt.
Aug 15, 2023PHD
Joined UIC as a PhD student under Dr. Besma Smida.

Research & Publications

Google Scholar Profile
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PROJECT 01

Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC)

with Dr. Besma Smida, Dr. Natasha Devroye, Dr. Daniela Tuninetti (University of Illinois Chicago) & Dr. Giorgio Taricco (Politecnico di Torino)

In practical downlink networks, instantaneous channel state information at the transmitter is often unavailable and it is costly to acquire, frequently delayed, and unreliable in multi-user or multi-target scenarios. This forces ISAC systems to rely instead on statistical channel knowledge, raising a fundamental question: what are the theoretical limits of integrated sensing and communication when the transmitter operates without full Channel State Information? We characterize these limits through an information and estimation-theoric lens, while also addressing a key gap in sensing benchmarks — the classical Cramér–Rao bound is only reliable at high SNR and unreliable in low-SNR regimes. To handle this, we explore the Ziv–Zakai bound for ISAC, which incorporates prior information and remains accurate across all SNR conditions.

Papers
[*]
Broadcast ISAC Without Instantaneous Transmit CSI: An Ergodic Rate-BCRB Framework
A. Sams, B. Smida, N. Devroye, D. Tuninetti, G. Taricco
SUBMITTED - JOURNAL
[*]
Sensing-Assisted Broadcast ISAC without Instantaneous CSIT
A. Sams, B. Smida, N. Devroye, D. Tuninetti, G. Taricco — IEEE Information Theory Workshop 2026
SUBMITTED
[2]
On The Reliability of Estimation Bounds in Low-SNR Bi-Static ISAC
A. Sams, B. Smida — IEEE GLOBECOM 2025, Taipei, Taiwan
[1]
On Estimation of Angles of Arrival in Monostatic ISAC Without Instantaneous Transmit CSI
A. Sams, S. Di Bari, B. Smida, N. Devroye, D. Tuninetti, G. Taricco — 61st Allerton Conference, UIUC, 2025
PROJECT 02

FR3 Multi-Band System and Reconfigurable Antenna

with Dr. Besma Smida (University of Illinois Chicago) · Dr. Ashutosh Sabharwal (Rice University) · Dr. Risto Wichman & Dr. Pasi Ylä-Oijala (Aalto University)

The FR3 band (7–24 GHz) is a promising candidate for 6G, offering wide bandwidth; but this very breadth introduces a problem: fragmented band, propagation loss, antenna aperture, and hardware behavior vary significantly across the band, making conventional single-band MIMO architectures ineffective. Sensing and communication signals must also coexist with incumbent services already occupying parts of this spectrum, further constraining system design. This project develops a framework that exploits the fragmented, frequency-partitioned structure of FR3 rather than fighting it, using reconfigurable antenna architectures to adaptively reshape beam patterns and enable efficient multi-band operation within a single hardware platform.

Papers
[*]
Increasing DoA Estimation DoF with Reconfigurable Antenna Arrays
A. Sams, B. Smida
ONGOING - JOURNAL
[1]
Optimizing ISAC MIMO Systems with Reconfigurable Pixel Antennas
A. Sams, Y. Hsiao, M. Talha, B. Smida, A. Sabharwal — Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers, 2025
PROJECT 03

Deep Learning for Sensing

with Dr. Besma Smida (UIC)

Classical subspace methods like MUSIC give robust direction-of-arrival estimates but break down at low SNR and with few snapshots — exactly the regime ISAC systems must operate in. Rather than throwing data-hungry learning at the problem, this project develops hybrid schemes whose decisions are grounded in the geometric structure of the signal subspace rather than learned purely from data. The aim is sample-efficient estimators that recover performance from very limited, noisy measurements while preserving the interpretability of classical methods.

Papers
[*]
Sample-Efficient Direction-of-Arrival Estimation
A. Sams, M. Talha, B. Smida
IN PROGRESS
Undergraduate Research
Prior research conducted during BSc at BUET, Bangladesh — spanning computer vision, generative models, and deep learning.
[C3]
SignBD-Word: Video-Based Bangla Word-Level Sign Language and Pose Translation
A. Sams, A. H. Akash, S. M. M. Rahman — 14th Int'l Conf. on Computing Communication and Networking Technologies (ICCCNT), Delhi, India, 2023
[J1]
HQ-finGAN: High-Quality Synthetic Fingerprint Generation Using GANs
A. Sams, H. H. Shomee, S. M. M. Rahman — Circuits, Systems, and Signal Processing, vol. 41, pp. 6354–6369, 2022
[C2]
GAN-Based Realistic Gastrointestinal Polyp Image Synthesis
A. Sams, H. H. Shomee — IEEE 19th Int'l Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI), Kolkata, India, 2022
[C1]
License Plate Detection and Recognition System for All Types of Bangladeshi Vehicles Using Multi-step Deep Learning Model
H. H. Shomee, A. Sams — Digital Image Computing: Techniques and Applications (DICTA), Gold Coast, Australia, 2021

Education

UIC
University of Illinois Chicago
Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Fall 2023 — Ongoing
Research advisor: Dr. Besma Smida
Qualifying exams passed: Communication Systems, May 28–30, 2024
Active member of IEEE ComSoc Student Branch Chapter and Bangladeshi Students Association.
BUET
Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET)
BSc in Electrical Engineering
Dept. of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Graduated 2022
Research advisor: Dr. S. M. Mahbubur Rahman
Undergraduate thesis on video-based Bangla Sign Language dataset and pose translation — awarded "Special Innovation Category" at AI for Bangla 2.0 (2023).

Academic Projects

PhD Course Projects UIC
ECE 522 · Advanced Microwave Engineering
Pixel Antenna Design for Reconfigurable Frequency, Pattern, and Reflection Control
HFSS
CS 594 · Energy Efficient Deep Learning
Energy Efficient Patent Classification on Text-attributed Graph
Python
ECE 508 · Convex Optimization
Solution of Real-world Convex Problems
Python
ECE 421 · Intro to Antenna and Propagation
Multiband Quasi Yagi Type Antenna
Ansys HFSS
ECE 418 · Statistical Signal Processing
Compressive Sensing; Acoustic Echo Cancellation using Adaptive Filters
MATLAB
ECE 432 · Digital Communications
GAN for Channel Estimation in Massive MIMO with One-Bit ADCs
MATLABPython
BSc Course Projects BUET
EEE 416 · Microprocessor & Embedded System Lab
IoT Weather Sensor (Arduino and STM32cube Implementation)
ProteusArduinoSTM32CubeIDE
EEE 304 · Digital Electronics Laboratory
Tetris Game Implementation in Verilog and Proteus
VerilogProteusArduino
EEE 310 · Communication Systems I Laboratory
Text Transmission Through Laser (Li-Fi)
Arduino
EEE 206 · Energy Conversion Laboratory
Application of Three Phase Linear Induction Motor
Lab Experiment

Teaching & Service

Teaching

Lecturer — Computer Science
Brac University, Bangladesh
Spring 22, Fall 22
Lecturer — Dept. of TMDM
Bangladesh University of Textiles
Summer 22

Professional Roles

Vice Chair ('25–'26)
IEEE ComSoc Student Branch Chapter at UIC
President ('25–'26) · VP Media ('24–'25)
Bangladeshi Students Association at UIC
📋
Focus Group Graduate Student Member
College of Engineering Strategic Plan (CoE)

Reviewer

Conference Reviewer

IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT)
IEEE Global Communications Conference (Globecom)
IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC)
IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC)
Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers
Int'l Conference on Electrical, Computer and Energy Technologies (ICECET)
Int'l Symposium on Wireless Technology and Applications (ISWTA)
Int'l Symposium on Computer & Informatics (ISCI)

Journal Reviewer

IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications
IEEE Transactions on Green Communications and Networking

TPC Reviewer

IEEE International Mediterranean Conference on Communications and Networking (MEDITCOM)

Conferences & Talks

2025 IEEE Global Communications Conference (Globecom 2025)
Taipei, Taiwan
Presented our work on reliability of traditional estimation bounds in low SNR scenarios for Bistatic ISAC systems, at the beautiful city of Taipei, Taiwan.
IEEE Globecom 2025 Taipei
Asilomar 2025 presentation
2025 Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers
Pacific Grove, California, USA
Presented our ongoing work on Reconfigurable Pixel Antenna for Integrated Sensing and Communication, showcasing how pattern reconfigurability provides higher sensing performance and hardware efficiency.
2024 Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers
Pacific Grove, California, USA
Presented our ongoing work on estimation bounds for Integrated Sensing and Communication, which necessitates the use of a better sensing metric specially in low SNR scenarios, at the beautiful Asilomar conference grounds.
Asilomar 2024 presentation

Awards & Grants

Research Funding

🏛️
National Science Foundation (NSF)
This research is supported in part by NSF awards 1900911 and 2427158.

Travel Grants

✈️
IEEE Globecom 2025 Travel Grant — NSF
Awarded to travel to Taipei, Taiwan to present "On The Reliability of Estimation Bounds in Low-SNR Bi-Static ISAC."
✈️
UIC Graduate Student Council Travel Award
Awarded to travel to California to present "Optimizing ISAC MIMO Systems with Reconfigurable Pixel Antennas."

Academic Awards

2026
🏫
CoE Graduate Student Award for Teaching Assistant Excellence — UIC
Awarded by the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Chicago in recognition of exceptional contributions as a Teaching Assistant.
2026
🎖️
Chancellor's Student Service Award — UIC
University-wide recognition for outstanding leadership, campus involvement, and community service contributions.
2023
🔬
Basic Research Fund — BUET
Competitive research funding awarded by Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology to support academic research activities.
🏅
Bangladesh Math Olympiad
Regional: Champion (2008, 2010, 2014); 1st Runner-Up (2011, 2013); 2nd Runner-Up (2015)
National: 2nd Runner-Up (2008, 2011)
2023
🤖
AI for Bangla 2.0
Winner — "Special Innovation Category" for BSc thesis on video-based Bangla Sign Language dataset and pose translation.
2021
📐
Analytical Olympiad — BracU
2nd Runner-Up
2015
🔭
Divisional Science Olympiad
6th place — Chattogram Division
📜
Board Talent-pool Scholarship
JSC (2012) · SSC (2014) · HSC (2016)
Awarded across all three national exam levels.