Professor Tim O'Farrell

FREng, PhD, MSc, BSc

Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering

Chair in Wireless Communication

Communications Research Group

Headshot of Tim O'Farrell
Profile picture of Headshot of Tim O'Farrell
t.ofarrell@sheffield.ac.uk
+44 114 222 5193

Full contact details

Professor Tim O'Farrell
Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering
Profile

I received my BSc degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Birmingham and my MSc and PhD degrees in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Manchester.

I am the Chair Professor in Wireless Communication at the University of Sheffield and I am a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng).

In the field of wireless communications, I have made significant contributions to waveform and energy-efficiency design for radio access networks (RANs) and I have translated significant research into industry through standards, products, and practices.

My research is focused on wireless communications systems, specialising in radio systems engineering, physical layer signal processing, and energy-efficient (EE) wireless networking.

As Co-Founder and CTO of Supergold Communication Limited, I accomplished strategic breakthroughs in determining the IEEE802.11g Wi-Fi standard. Also, I have developed standardised practices for measuring EE in RANs and produced software-tools for modelling RAN performance.

I have led 27 major research projects with a total research spend of approximately £29M. I led the UK Research Strategy Community Organisation in Communications, Mobile Computing and Networking within the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council portfolio (CommNet II, EP/N007824/1) and currently, I am the director of the UKRI National 6G Radio Systems Facility (EP/X030016/1).

Qualifications
  • PhD Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Manchester
  • MSc Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Manchester
  • BSc Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Birmingham
Research interests
  • Multiple-access (OFDMA, CDMA & MC-CDMA)
  • Forward error correction coding and iterative decoding
  • Adaptive coding and modulation
  • MIMO and Massive MIMO techniques
  • Spreading sequence design
  • Wireless visible light communication
  • Energy and spectrum efficient wireless networking
  • MAC and packet scheduling techniques
  • Radio access network planning and optimisation (2G, 3G, 4G & 5G)
  • Large scale dynamic system level simulation (WCDMA, HSPA, LTE, LTE-Advance, 5G)
  • Video quality of service
Publications

Journal articles

Chapters

Conference proceedings papers

Datasets

Preprints

  • Singh R, O'Farrell T, Bui TC, Biagi M & David JPR (2019) Performance Evaluation of Frequency Domain Equalisation Based Colour Shift Keying Modulation Schemes Over Diffuse Optical Wireless Channels, arXiv. RIS download Bibtex download
  • Jafari AH & O'Farrell T (2017) Performance Evaluation of Spatial Complementary Code Keying Modulation in MIMO Systems, arXiv. RIS download Bibtex download
  • Abukharis S, Alzubi JA, Alzubi OA, Alamri S & O'Farrell T (2016) Packet Error Rate Performance of IEEE802.11g under Bluetooth Interface, arXiv. RIS download Bibtex download
  • Sholiyi A, Alzubi JA, Alzubi OA, Almomani O & O'Farrell T (2016) Near Capacity Irregular Turbo Code, arXiv. RIS download Bibtex download
Professional activities and memberships
  • Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering
  • Director of CommNet
  • External Examiner at KCL
Research students
Student Degree Status Primary/Secondary
Abukharis S H S PhD Graduated Primary
Arbi A S PhD Graduated Primary
Singh R PhD Graduated Primary
Turyagyenda C  PhD Graduated Primary
Wang S PhD Graduated Primary