Telecommunications and Multimedia

About Centre

The Centre for Telecommunications and Multimedia (CTM) welcomes close to 200 members, including at least 100 integrated researchers who carry out scientific work in the fields of communications, Artificial Intelligence, and computer science and engineering.

The Centre’s activities cover several Research and Development (R&D) domains:

Communications and Electronics
- Radio Frequency Technologies
- Optoelectronics
- Microelectronics
- Wireless Communication Networks
Computer Perception
- Computer Vision applied to Medical Imaging
- Computer Vision applied to Digital Media
- Computer Audio applied to Music

With multidisciplinary teams that include dozens of PhDs, CTM is strongly committed to both European and national research projects, as well as consultancy projects with industry.

Centre Areas

Engenharia de Rádio e Eletrónica

The Radio and Electronics Engineering area aims to develop solutions for future communication, computing, and sensing systems, based on expertise in microwaves, integrated photonics, digital and analogue electronics, and signal processing. These solutions are applied in radio/optical communications, human sensing, and embedded computing. In this context, research is focused on three complementary strands: the development of antennas and reconfigurable devices, exploring heterogeneous architectures and neuromorphic computing to enhance efficiency and adaptability to operational conditions; the pursuit of sustainable approaches, including antennas and electronic circuits based on 3D printing and materials that promote economic and environmental sustainability; and the integration of multi-modal communication and sensing, combining radio and video to enhance system performance and robustness.

Redes Sem Fios

WiN (Wireless Networks) is a research area focused on R&D in wireless communication networks, with the vision of connecting all objects and people to the Internet, even in extreme scenarios. The mission of the area is to develop autonomous communication systems – that is, systems that are intelligent, self-managed, scalable, and capable of understanding the context in which they operate. To fulfil this mission, our research focuses on the following key topics: simulation, self-configuration, cross-layer optimisation, radio resource management, mobility management, and Digital Twins.

Flagship Projects

AI4LUNGS

CONVERGE

CONVERGE is an Horizon Europe project started on February 2023 and the main objective is the development of an innovative toolset aligned with the motto “view-to-communicate and communicate-to-view”. This toolset is a world-first and consists of vision-aided large intelligent surfaces, vision-aided fixed and mobile base stations, a vision-radio simulator and 3D environment modeler, and machine learning algorithms for multimodal data including radio signals, video streams, RF sensing, and traffic traces. CONVERGE will also provide the scientific community with open datasets of experimental and simulated data obtained with the toolset in the RIs, meet scientific and industrial requirements by addressing relevant 6G verticals, enhance the competitiveness of the involved companies, extend the European influence to world-wide recognized RIs, enable the creation of new RIs, contribute to the development of new environment-friendly tools, and help European Union to address its societal challenges.

See more projects

Team Members

Team Leaders

Vítor Grade Tavares earned his undergraduate and MSc degrees from the University of Aveiro, Portugal, and the Ph.D. degree from the Computational NeuroEngineering Laboratory, University of Florida, Gainesville, USA, in 2001, all in electrical engineering. He is currently an Assistant Professor at University of Porto and Senior Researcher at INESC-TEC, Porto. In 2010 he was a Visiting Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, USA. His research interests include low-power, mixed-signal and neuromorphic integrated-chip design and biomimetic computing, CMOS RF integrated circuit design for wireless sensor networks, and transparent electronics. He has coordinated several national projects, and also locally coordinated European projects. Most recent awards include co-recipient for the student best-paper award of the IEEE ICUWB 2014 and first place on TSMC design context in 90nm LP MS/RF in 2009. He was also awarded with a certificate of appreciation for contributions towards the advancement of IEEE and the Engineering Professions as Chair of the Education Society Chapter - Portugal section, which he co-founded.

I have received a Master degree in Electrical and Computers Engineering from University of Porto, in 2011. Since then I have been participating in several european and national R&D projects focused on auto-configuration of wireless networks and Smart Grids. In 2016 I was integrated in the coordination council of the Centre for Telecommunications and Multimedia.