Stefanos PapadakisView profile
Lecturer
Stefanos Papadakis serves as a Research Staff Scientist at the Telecommunications and Networks Laboratory (TNL) of the Institute of Computer Science at Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas (FORTH) and holds an Adjunct Lecturer position in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Crete. Since 2001, he has pioneered hardware and software prototyping at TNL-FORTH, currently leading the Software Defined Radio (SDR) group he established to drive vertical integration from physical layer design to application development. His educational foundation includes a Physics degree (2001) and M.Sc. (2004) and Ph.D. (2009) in Computer Science, all earned at the University of Crete. Teaching responsibilities encompass core courses CS-330: Introduction to Telecommunication Systems Theory and CS-435: Network Technology & Programming. Papadakis' research spans wireless innovation frontiers including software-defined/cognitive radios, spectrum sharing, heterogeneous networking, position location, radio propagation modeling, and emergency communications. His work emphasizes practical implementation, yielding functional prototypes across the entire communications stack. Notable contributions include GPU-accelerated SDR frameworks, robust spectrum virtualization techniques, and emergency response communication systems validated through international competitions. Analysis of his 15 most recent publications (2010-2016) reveals dominant themes in SDR optimization for IoT and critical communications, with significant focus on GPU parallelization, interference management in dense networks, and real-time spectrum sharing mechanisms. His experimental approach consistently bridges theoretical models with hardware validation, particularly in emergency response and heterogeneous network scenarios. Key recognitions include: Ericsson Award of Excellence in Telecommunications for position location research First place in PENED doctoral proposal competition Fourth place in IEEE DySPAN 2015 5G Spectrum Challenge Second place in Virginia Tech ShaRC 2016 with the 'Skynet' cognitive radio system Mentorship spans 16 undergraduate projects (11 completed), 8 M.Sc. students (3 completed theses), and 1 Ph.D. candidate. His research is sustained through major EU and national projects including REDComm (emergency communications), EU-MESH (metropolitan networks), RERUM (IoT security), and Heraklion smart city initiatives. The SDR group maintains critical infrastructure like the Heraklion metropolitan wireless network, FORTH campus network, and specialized mobile emergency nodes equipped with multi-radio SDR platforms, satellite transceivers, and high-performance computing resources.









