About Me
Iām Abhi Adhikari, a fifth-year PhD candidate in Electrical Engineering at Columbia University. My research focuses on millimeter-wave (mmWave) sensing and communication for beyond-5G wireless systems. I have collaborated with researchers at Nokia Bell Labs, IBM Research, NOAA, and Lockheed Martin on projects spanning software-defined radar, channel modeling, backscatter sensing and communication, and interference mitigation for weather instruments and satellite receivers.
My technical interests center on system design at the intersection of wireless technology, data science/AI, and scientific discovery, with the goal of advancing wireless research in new directions.
During my PhD, I explored the use of high-capacity mmWave communications as a potential fiber alternative in areas of New York City with limited broadband access. This work led to a large-scale measurement campaign studying 5G mmWave propagation through different types of urban building glass. We found that older buildings often lack UV coatings, resulting in up to 20 dB additional attenuation, and demonstrated that mmWave links can support data rates of up to 1 Gbps inside schools such as Hamilton Grange Middle School (published at ACM MobiHoc ā22, with the dataset available via NIST).
More recently, in collaboration with Nokia Bell Labs, we collected over 1,200 link measurements across Upper and Lower Manhattan and seven buildings around the Columbia campus. This work modeled around-corner propagation with approximately 5 dB lower RMSE than existing 3GPP models and demonstrated the ability to track signals from rooftop base stations for potential cellular V2X applications.
I received my B.S. in Computer Engineering (magna cum laude) from Drexel University in 2021 and plan to complete my PhD at Columbia University in May 2026. My technical expertise includes software-defined radio, mmWave systems, wireless system design, and data science/AI integration.