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Abhay Kumar Sah

Assistant Professor

Email : abhaysah[at]ece.iitr.ac.in
Phone: 01332-284943
Room No. : S 311
My Website

Wireless Communication, 5G and beyond Systems, Next-generation Massive MIMO Systems such as Cell-Free Systems, mmWave and THz Communications, Hybrid RF/VLC Systems, Intelligent Wireless Systems.

FromToDesignationOrganisation
Mar 2020PresentAssistant ProfessorIndian Institute of Technology Roorkee
Sep 2019Mar 2020Lead ArchitectRadisys India Pvt. Ltd. Bangalore
Jan 2018Sep 2019Senior Software EngineerSamsung R&D Institute Bangalore
DegreeSubjectUniversityYear Studied
Ph.D.Electrical EngineeringIndian Institute of Technology Kanpur2017
B.Tech.Electronics & Communication EngineeringJaypee Institute of Engineering & Technology, Guna (M.P.)2010
Award Institute Year Awarded
MathWorks Research Award The MathWorks, Inc. 2023
Samsung Citizen Award Samsung R&D Institute Bangalore 2019
Samsung Spot Award Samsung R&D Institute Bangalore 2018
Best PhD Thesis (Top-15) Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE), New Delhi 2018
DST Inspire Faculty Fellowship Department of Science and Technology, New Delhi 2017
TCS Research Fellowship Tata Consultancy Services 2013
Best Teaching Assistant Award Dept. of Electrical Engineering, IIT Kanpur 2012
VC Gold Medal Jaypee University of Engineering & Technology, Guna 2012
Certificate of Excellence District Magistrate, Katihar 2018
Merit Award (10th) District Magistrate, Katihar 2003
FromToDesignationOrganisationLevel
Feb 2021Dec 2021MemberDepartmental Faculty Search Committee (DFSC) 
Aug 2021PresentMemberDepartmental Academic Program Committee (DAPC) 
Aug 2021PresentFaculty In-charge (FIC)Communication System Lab 
Aug 2021PresentFaculty In-charge (FIC)Placement & Internship (PIC) 
Aug 2023PresentFaculty In-charge (FIC)SDR Lab
  • Senior Member, IEEE.
  • Member, TSDSI.
  • Member, National Working Group-20.
  • Co-Chair, COMSOC, IEEE, UP-Section.
  • Member, IEEE Communication Society.
  • Review Editor, Communication Theory, Frontiers in Communications and Networks
Title Course Code Course Semester
5G Standards and 6G Wireless Technologies ECL-556 B.Tech. (Final Year) + M.Tech. + Ph.D. Spring (2024-25)
Wireless Communication: Advanced Concepts and Applications ECL-558 B.Tech. (Final Year) + M.Tech. + Ph.D. Spring (2024-25)
Fundamental of Communication Systems ECC-201 B.Tech. (Second Year) Spring (2024-25)
Advanced Wireless Communication ECL-620 B.Tech. (Final Year) + M.Tech. + Ph.D. Spring (2024-25)
Wireless Technologies: 5G and Beyond ECL-618 B.Tech. (Final Year) + M.Tech. + Ph.D. Spring (2024-25)
Topic Scholar Name Status of PhD Registration Year
Wireless Communication Santosh Kumar Singh Ongoing 2020
Wireless Communication Himanshu Kumar Shekhar Ongoing 2021
Wireless Communication Hari Shankar O K Ongoing 2021
Wireless Communication Debajit Choudhury Ongoing 2021
Wireless Communication Shweta Rai Ongoing 2022
Wireless Communication Chaitanya Bhardwaj Ongoing 2023
Wireless Communication Shaifali Gupta Ongoing 2023
Wireless Communication Hari Kishan Repala Ongoing 2023
Title Place Date Delivered
The Building Blocks of 5G Physical Layer Downlink Data Processing UPW LSA, Department of Telecommunications (DoT), UP [online] Apr 2024
The Fundamentals of Cell-Free Architecture for 6G Networks Department of ECE at NIE, Mysore Feb 2024
Cell free 6G APs Ghaziabad Jan 2024
6G Wireless Communication Networks: Foundations and Trends MNIT, Jaipur Dec 2023
Random Access in Massively Connected Wireless Networks MNIT, Jaipur Dec 2023
Beamforming and Beamcombining Techniques for Cell-Free systems Dept. of ECE, IIT Roorkee Jun 2023
Implementation of Beamforming Algorithm Dept. of ECE, IIT Roorkee Jun 2023
Pilot Assignment and Channel Estimation in Cell-Free Systems Dept. of ECE, IIT Roorkee Jun 2023
User Activity Detection: Grant Based vs Grant-Free Dept. of ECE, IIT Roorkee Jun 2023
An Introduction to 5G Communication Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore Apr 2023
Deep Learning for beyond 5G Networks TRAI Dehradun Feb 2023
Signal Detection in Cell-free Massive MIMO Systems IIT Ropar Feb 2023
Cell-free Massive MIMO Systems VIT Vellore Jan 2023
An introduction to deep neural networks NIT Trichy Dec 2022
DNN for beyond Massive MIMO Systems NIT Trichy Dec 2022
An Introduction to MIMO Systems NIT Delhi Nov 2022
MATLAB Session on Error Performance of OFDM System EICT Academy, IIT Roorkee Aug 2022
MATLAB Session on PAPR Performance of OFDM System EICT Academy, IIT Roorkee Aug 2022
Motivation as backbone of 5G communication, Multi-carrier modulated system EICT Academy, IIT Roorkee Aug 2022
OFDM system & its Realization Challenges EICT Academy, IIT Roorkee Aug 2022
The Downlink Signal Processing in 5G System MLRIT Hyderabad (AICTE Sponsored FDP) Feb 2022
An Introduction to Cell-Free Massive MIMO Systems NIT Delhi Oct 2021
Intelligent Massive MIMO for beyond 5G Systems IIIT Bangalore Aug 2021
Intelligent Massive MIMO Samsung R&D Institute Bangalore (Via MS Teams) Feb 2021
MASSIVE MIMO: The key enabler for 5G & beyond 5G systems NIT Jalandhar (Via Google Meet) Jan 2021
Massive MIMO: Its Journey, Reality, and Future IIT Kanpur (Via Zoom) Dec 2020
MATLAB Examples Addressing Key Realization Issues for 5G Systems Dept. of Electronics Engg., ZHCET, Aligarh Muslim University Feb 2019
Technologies Enabling 5G Communications Dept. of Electronics Engg., ZHCET, Aligarh Muslim University Feb 2019
Low Complexity Detection in Massive MIMO Systems: A MATLAB Implementation IIT Kanpur Jan 2017

Global Patents

  1. S.K. Vankayala, R. Gundeti, Abhay Kumar Sah, A. Nigam, G.S.V. Umakishore, A. Kaithara, Joseph, S. Yoon, “Method and system for hierarchical decoding of data packets in cellular communication system” (WO2021080383A1).
  2. S.K. Vankayala, Abhay Kumar Sah, A. Nigam, G.S.V. Uma, and T. Mittra, “Method and apparatus for enabling optimized decoding of data packet in harq based communication” (WO2021075888A1).
  3. S.K. Vankayala, R. Gundeti, Abhay Kumar Sah, I. Kommineni, A. Nigam, S. Shetty, and G.S.V. Uma, “Methods and systems for optimizing computation of log-likelihood ratio (LLR) for decoding modulated symbols” (US20230042213A1).
  4. S.K. Vankayala, S. Madhurapantula, A. Nigam, A. Bhat, Abhay Kumar Sah, and Sudharsan Parthasarthy, “Method and system for channel quality status prediction in wireless network using machine learning” (US20220278728A1).
  5. S.K. Vankayala, J. Akhtar, Abhay Kumar Sah, N. Srinivasan, G.S.V. Uma, and R. Gundeti, “Methods and Systems for Detecting Primary Synchronization Signal (PSS) in a Wireless Network” (US20200313783A1).
  6. S.K. Vankayala, J. Akhtar, Abhay Kumar Sah, N. Srinivasan, G.S.V. Uma, and R. Gundeti, “Methods and Systems for Detecting Primary Synchronization Signal (PSS) in a Wireless Network” (EP3949181A4).

National Patents

  1. Abhay Kumar Sah and Santosh K. Singh, “CSIRS design method for channel estimation and pre-coding processes in multi-connected cell-free network” (To file).
  2. Abhay Kumar Sah and Debajit Choudhury, “Method and Apparatus for Automatic Modulation Selection and Recognition for the Modern Radio Access Networks” (202411081569)
  3. Abhay Kumar Sah and Santosh K. Singh, “A grant-free random access method for cell-free networks” (202311045133).
  4. S.K. Awasthi and Abhay Kumar Sah, “A system and method for estimating the location of a base station using RSSI available on the mobile station” (202211054392).
  5. S.K. Vankayala, Abhay Kumar Sah, and G.S.V. Uma, “Hierarchical Coordinated Multi-point Processing for Uplink in 4G/5G/VRAN Systems” (201941043247).
  6. Abhay Kumar Sah, S.K. Vankayala, and G.S.V. Uma, “Power Efficient and Low Complexity Receiver for a Wireless Communication and its Operating Method Thereof” (202041013448/482643).
  7. S.K. Vankayala, R. Gundeti, Abhay Kumar Sah, I. Kommineni, A. Nigam, S. Shetty, and G.S.V. Uma, “A Novel Iterative Method for LLR” (202041014792/475774).
  8. S.K. Vankayala, Abhay Kumar Sah, A. Nigam, G.S.V. Uma, and T. Mittra “Method for Optimal HARQ Chase Combining for 4G/5G/VRAN/CRAN Systems” (201941042232).
  9. S.K. Vankayala, S. Madhurapantula, A. Nigam, A. Bhat, Abhay Kumar Sah, and Sudharsan Parthasarthy, “Base Station CQI prediction using ML” (201941047831/483330).
  10. Abhay Kumar Sah, S. K. Vankayala, Uma Kishore Godavarti, and Ashok K. Reddy Chavva, “Method and system for combining incoming signals” (202041004871). 
  11. S.K. Vankayala, J. Akhtar, Abhay Kumar Sah, N. Srinivasan, G.S.V. Uma, and R. Gundeti, “Methods and Systems for Detecting Primary Synchronization Signal (PSS) in a Wireless Network” (201941013045).
  12. Abhay Kumar Sah and A.K. Chaturvedi, “Low Complexity Detection in Multiple Input Multiple Output Systems” (201811029113/518912).
  13. Abhay Kumar Sah and A.K. Chaturvedi, “A Neighborhood Search based Large Multiple Input Multiple Output Detector” (201811029143/478273).

Journal Publications (in reverse chronology):

  1. Debajit Choudhury and Abhay Kumar Sah, “Beamforming Design for Active STAR-RIS-aided CF-mMIMO Networks under Non-Linear Hardware Impairments and Electromagnetic Interference”, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications. (Under revision)
  2. Hunny Saini, Santosh K. Singh, and Abhay Kumar Sah, “Minimizing Churn Rate in Network-Controlled D2D Communications under Multiple QoS Constraints”, IEEE Transactions on Communications. (Under revision)
  3. Debajit Choudhury and Abhay Kumar Sah, “Joint Transmit and Reflect Beamforming for Hybrid-RIS aided Massive MIMO System under Hardware Impairments”, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications. (Under revision)
  4. Debajit Choudhury and Abhay Kumar Sah, “Analyzing Energy Efficiency Trade-offs in RIS aided Cell-Free Massive MIMO Networks”, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Communications. (Under review)
  5. Debajit Choudhury and Abhay Kumar Sah, “Energy Efficient Joint Beamforming Design for Hardware-Impaired STAR-RIS Assisted CF-mMIMO Systems”, IEEE Transactions on Communications. (Accepted)
  6. Santosh K. Singh and Abhay Kumar Sah, “Distributed Beam combining in Cell-Free Massive MIMO Networks”, IEEE Transactions on Communications. (Accepted).
  7. Hari Shanker O K and Abhay Kumar Sah, “Multi-User Pairing for NOMA Enabled VLC System”, IEEE Communications Letters, vol. 28, no. 5, pp. 1072-1076, May 2024.
  8. Santosh K. Singh, Yallammagari Chakravarthy and Abhay Kumar Sah, “An Interference Aware User-Group Pilot Assignment for Cell-Free Massive MIMO Systems”, IEEE Wireless Communications Letters, vol. 12, no. 7, pp. 1169-1173, July 2023.
  9. Gupta, K. Lakshmanan, and Abhay Kumar Sah, “Beam alignment for mmWave using non-stationary bandits”, IEEE Communications Letters, vol. 22, no. 10, pp. 2619-2622, Nov. 2020.
  10. Shyam Gadhai, Abhay Kumar Sah, A.K. Singh, R. Budhiraja, and A.K. Chaturvedi, “New Block-based Spatial Modulation”, IEEE Communications Letters, vol. 22, no. 10, pp. 2016-2019, Oct. 2018.
  11. Pushpender Mann, Abhay Kumar Sah, R. Budhiraja, and A.K. Chaturvedi, “Bit-level Reduced Neighborhood Search for Low-complexity Detection in Large MIMO Systems”, IEEE Wireless Communications Letters, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 146-149, Apr. 2018.
  12. Abhay Kumar Sah and A.K. Chaturvedi, “Sequential and Global Likelihood Ascent Search based Detection in Large MIMO Systems”, IEEE Transactions on Communications, vol. 66, no. 2, pp. 713-725, Feb. 2018.
  13. Saksham Agarwal*, Abhay Kumar Sah*, and A.K. Chaturvedi, “Likelihood Based Tree Search for Low Complexity Detection in Large MIMO Systems”, IEEE Wireless Communications Letters, vol. 6, no. 4, pp. 450-453, Aug. 2017. (* equal contribution)
  14. Abhay Kumar Sah and A.K. Chaturvedi, “An Unconstrained Likelihood Ascent based Detection Algorithm for Large MIMO Systems”, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, vol. 16, no. 4, pp. 2262-2273, Apr. 2017.
  15. Abhishek*, Abhay Kumar Sah*, and A.K. Chaturvedi, “An MMP based Approach for Detection in Large MIMO Systems using Sphere Decoding”, IEEE Wireless Communications Letters, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 158-161, Apr. 2017. (* equal contribution)
  16. Abhay Kumar Sah and A.K. Chaturvedi, “Quasi-Orthogonal Combining for Reducing RF Chains in Massive MIMO Systems”, IEEE Wireless Communications Letters, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 126-129, Feb. 2017.
  17. Abhay Kumar Sah and A.K. Chaturvedi, “Stopping Rule based Iterative Tree Search for Low-Complexity Detection in MIMO Systems”, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 169-179, Jan. 2017.

Conference Publications (in reverse chronology):

  1. Debajit Choudhury and Abhay Kumar Sah, “Fog Intensity Aware Beamforming Design in RIS assisted Terahertz Massive MIMO Communications”, IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), Montreal, Canada, June 2025. (Under Review)
  2. Debajit Choudhury and Abhay Kumar Sah, “An Improved Sparse Channel Estimation in RIS-assisted mmWave MIMO Systems”, National Conference on Communications, New Delhi, India, March 2024. (Under Review)
  3. Hari Shankar O K, Vanya Tiwari, and Abhay Kumar Sah, “SWIPT-NOMA Enabled Hybrid VLC/RF System for Dynamic Indoor Workspaces”, IEEE International Conference on Advanced Networks and Telecommunications Systems (ANTS), Guwahati, India, December 2024. (Accepted)
  4. Santosh K. Singh, Rohit Saini, and Abhay Kumar Sah, “Alternating Minimization Based Hybrid Precoder for Cell-free Massive MIMO Networks”, 19th EAI International Conference on Body Area Networks (BODYNETS), Varanasi, India, December 2024. (Accepted)
  5. Santosh K. Singh*, Lokesh Patidar*, and Abhay Kumar Sah, “Designing 5G PHY Layer Compliant Cell-Free Massive MIMO Simulator using Sounding Signal”, IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM) Workshop, Cape Town, South Africa, December 2024. (Accepted) (*equal contribution)
  6. Sruthi Ramachandran*, Hari Shankar O K*, and Abhay Kumar Sah, “An Element Selection based Phase-Shift Optimization in RIS-aided Vehicular Network”, IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM), Cape Town, South Africa, December 2024. (Accepted) (*equal contribution)
  7. Santosh K. Singh, Ankit Kumar, Aryan Dhiman, and Abhay Kumar Sah, “Self-Interference Cancellation in a Full-Duplex MIMO Relay under Non-Linear Hardware Impairments”, IEEE International Conference On Electrical Electronics Communication and Computers (ELEXCOM), Roorkee, India, Aug. 2023.
  8. Hunny Saini, Santosh K. Singh, Abhay Kumar Sah, and S.K. Vankayala, “Churn Rate Aware Interference Management for Device-to-Device Communications in SDNs”, IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), Rome, Italy, May 2023.
  9. K. Singh, Abhay Kumar Sah, S.K. Vankayala, S. Parthasarthy, G.S.V. Uma, and S. Yoon, “Beam-combining in 5G-Open RAN Systems”, National Conference on Communications (NCC), Guwahati, India, Feb. 2023.
  10. Abhay Kumar Sah, Santosh. K. Singh, S.K. Vankayala, S. Parthasarthy, G.S.V. Uma, and S. Yoon, “Low-cost Beam-combining Architecture for RUs in mmWave Massive MIMO based 5G-CRAN System”, IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Dec. 2022.
  11. Yatharth Bansal and Abhay Kumar Sah, “An Untrained DNN Denoiser for Uplink Channel Estimation in Multicell Massive MIMO System”, IEEE 33rd Annual International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC), Kyoto, Japan Sep. 2022.
  12. Sahaj Kumar Jha, Abhay Kumar Sah, and Sonia Aïssa, “Beam Combining in Massive MIMO System under Non-Linear Hardware Impairments”, IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC), Austin, TX, USA, Apr. 2022.
  13. K. Vankayala*, R. Gundeti, K.G. Shenoy, Abhay Kumar Sah, Swaraj K., and S. Yoon, “A Framework for Exploiting Hard and Soft LLRs for Low Complexity Decoding in VRAN Systems”, Proc. IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC), Nanching, China, Mar. 2021.
  14. Parthasarthy*, Abhay Kumar Sah, and S.K. Vankayala, “Analysis of Downlink NOMA in Full Duplex-Half Duplex Mixed Cell PPP System with Interference”, Proc. IEEE International Conference on Advanced Networks and Telecommunications Systems (ANTS), New Delhi, India, Dec. 2020.
  15. K. Vankayala*, Javed Akhtar, Ashok Krishnan, and Abhay Kumar Sah, “Accelerated Detection Schemes for PSS in 5G-NR”, Proc. IEEE 3rd 5G World Forum (5GWF), Bangalore, India, Sep. 2020.
  16. Shyam Gadhai, Abhay Kumar Sah, R. Budhiraja, and A.K. Chaturvedi, “Generalized Block-Based Spatial Modulation and Space Shift Keying”, Proc. 20th IEEE International Workshop on Signal Processing Advances in Wireless Communications (SPAWC 2019), Cannes, France, Jul. 2019.
  17. Abhishek, Abhay Kumar Sah, and A.K. Chaturvedi, “Improved Sparsity Behaviour and Error Localization in Detectors for Large MIMO Systems”, Proc. IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM), Washington DC, USA, Dec. 2016.
  18. Abhay Kumar Sah and A.K. Chaturvedi, “Beyond Fixed Neighborhood Search in the Likelihood Ascent Algorithm for MIMO Systems”, Proc. IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, May 2016.
  19. Vipul Gupta, Abhay Kumar Sah, and A.K. Chaturvedi, “Iterative Matrix Inversion Based Low Complexity Detection in Large/Massive MIMO Systems”, Proc. IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, May 2016.
  20. Abhay Kumar Sah and A.K. Chaturvedi, “Improving the Reliability of Receivers for 5G Networks”, Proc. Eighth International Conference on Communication Systems and NETworkS (COMSNETS), Bangalore, India, Jan. 2016. (Short Paper)
  21. Abhay Kumar Sah and A.K. Chaturvedi, “Reduced Neighborhood Search Algorithms for Low Complexity Detection in MIMO Systems”, Proc. IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM), San Diego, California, USA, Dec. 2015.
  22. Abhay Kumar Sah and A.K. Chaturvedi, “An Upper Bound on the Performance of K-best Detection for MIMO Systems”, Proc. IEEE Signal Processing and Communications (SPCOM), 22-25 July 2014.
  23. Ravi Kumar, Rajiv Saxena, Abhay Sah, Saroj Gupta, and Tapesh Chandgothia, “Performance of Dynamic MIMO Systems in Presence of Nakagami Fading Channel”, Proc. IEEE Computational Intelligence, Communication Systems and Networks (CICSyN), Liverpool, UK, 28-30 July 2010.
Faculty List