International Best Paper Awards / Competitions / Presentations:
M. Geis, S. Häger, C. Wietfeld, "Taming mmWave Connectivity Prediction with DRaGon: AI Propagation Modeling for Cluttered Industrial Environments," in IEEE Future Networks World Forum (FNWF), Bangalore, India, November 2025

S. Häger, M. Danger, K. Heimann, Y. Gümüs, S. Böcker, C. Wietfeld, "Custom Design and Experimental Evaluation of Passive Reflectors for mmWave Private Networks," in IEEE Int'l Symp. on Local and Metropolitan Area Networks (LANMAN), Boston, USA, July 2024

M. Danger, et.al., "Performance Evaluation of IRS-enhanced mmWave Connectivity for 6G Industrial Networks", in IEEE International Symposium on Measurements and Networking (M&N), Rome, Italy, July 2024.

T. Gebauer, M. Patchou, C. Wietfeld, "SEAMLESS: Radio Metric Aware Multi-Link Transmission for Resilient Rescue Robotics", In 2023 IEEE International Conference on Safety, Security, and Rescue Robotics (SSRR), Fukushima, Japan, November 2023.

M. Geis, B. Sliwa, C. Bektas, C. Wietfeld, "TinyDRaGon: Lightweight Radio Channel Estimation for 6G Pervasive Intelligence", In 2022 IEEE Future Networks World Forum (FNWF), Montreal, Canada, October 2022.

P. Jörke, T. Gebauer, and C. Wietfeld. 2022. From LENA to LENA-NB: Implementation and Performance Evaluation of NB-IoT and Early Data Transmission in ns-3. In Proceedings of the Workshop on ns-3 (WNS3 2022). ACM, New York, NY, USA.

J. Friedrich, J. Tiemann, C. Wietfeld, "Accurate Multi-Zone UWB TDOA Localization utilizing Cascaded Wireless Clock Synchronization", In 11th International Conference on Indoor Positioning and Indoor Navigation (IPIN), Lloret de Mar, Spain, December 2021

P. Jörke, C. Wietfeld, "How Green Networking May Harm Your IoT Network: Impact of Transmit Power Reduction at Night on NB-IoT Performance", In 2021 IEEE 7th World Forum on Internet of Things (WF-IoT), New Orleans, USA, Juni 2021.

B. Sliwa, C. Schüler, M. Patchou, C. Wietfeld, "PARRoT: Predictive ad-hoc routing fueled by reinforcement learning and trajectory knowledge", In 2021 IEEE 93rd Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC-Spring), Helsinki, Finland, April 2021.

Awards by Informationstechnische Gesellschaft (ITG) in the VDE

2025 - ITG Fellow Prof. Dr.-Ing. Christian Wietfeld
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Christian Wietfeld, Chair of Communication Networks at TU Dortmund University, was appointed ITG Fellow on 26 November 2025 during a ceremony in the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences in Berlin. This distinguished honor, awarded by the VDE’s Information Technology Society, recognizes his “outstanding achievements in the field of modern mobile communications and communication technology.”
In his laudatory address, ITG Chair Jörg-Peter Elbers emphasized Christian Wietfeld’s internationally acknowledged contributions to successive generations of mobile network technologies—from 3G and 5G to current developments in 6G. Over more than three decades in academia and industry, Wietfeld’s research has focused on wireless connectivity for complex and safety-critical systems, including transportation and logistics infrastructures, energy networks, and emergency response systems. The award further acknowledges his strong commitment to translating research findings into practical, deployable technologies, whether through standards development, technology transfer via spin-offs, or his long-standing leadership of the VDE/ITG Technical Committee on “Communication Networks and Systems.”. His teaching is also characterized by the way he uses current real-world examples to illustrate how scientific knowledge is applied in business and society.
2016 - Advancement Award Dr.-Ing. Christoph Ide
Dr.-Ing. Christoph Ide, former head of the research groups of the CNI and Alumni of SFB 876, received one of the prestigious junior awards by the Informationstechnische Gesellschaft (ITG) in the VDE for his thesis "Resource-Efficient LTE Machine-Type Communication in Vehicular Environments" in November 2016. The nationally fiercely contested award was handed over at a solemn celebration at the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften in Berlin on November 29, 2016. The research results of the DFG Sonderforschungsbereich SFB 876 "Datenanalyse unter Ressourcenbeschränkungen" are an excellent contribution to the development of future mobile radio-based traffic systems, which will support growing automation of the reliable, simultaneous and efficient communication between the single system components. This research also makes a valuable contribution to future 5G networks, especially in terms of the Internet of Things.
2013 ITG Awards 2013 for Dr.-Ing. Niklas Goddemeier, Dr.-Ing. Kai Daniel and Prof. Dr.-Ing. Christian Wietfeld
For their research in the field of networked robotic systems, Dr.-Ing. Niklas Goddemeier, Dr.-Ing. Kai Daniel and Prof. Dr.-Ing. Christian Wietfeld received the coveted ITG Awards 2013 by the Informationstechnische Gesellschaft in the VDE at Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften in Berlin on November 12, 2013.
The ITG Award is being advertised annually and awarded for outstanding publications, in this case for an article in the internationally well-known IEEE Journal on Selected Areas of Communications.
Role-Based Connectivity Management with Realistic Air-to-Ground Channels for Cooperative UAVs: Ad-hoc aerial sensor networks leveraging MUAVs (Micro Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) are ideally suited to cost-efficiently explore unknown or hostile environments for example in case of incidents producing harmful gases or radiation. In this manuscript we present results on the investigations of communication-aware steering algorithms for cooperative MUAV swarms. The mission objective is to achieve a maximum spatial exploration efficiency with the simultaneous ability to self-optimize the communication links by exploiting controlled mobility. While our previous work has mainly considered the performance of the Air-to-Air mesh network, in this paper we focus on the Air-to-Ground-link connectivity control. To achieve appropriate communication links to a central sensor data sink even while exploring larger search areas, an agent-based role management strategy is used to provide suitable multi-hop connectivity. The novel algorithms are investigated for static as well as dynamically changing environments. Key results include a detailed realistic aerial channel characterization and network dimensioning analysis considering numbers of MUAVs and density of ground stations vs. exploration speed and sensor data latency.
2014 VDE-Award for Master Graduate - M.Sc. David Öhmann
Once a year, the VDE Rhein-Ruhr e.V. awards junior engineers for excellent bachelor's and master's degrees. Also this year, the organization honored excellent degrees and continued its active dedication to young engineers. The solemn ceremony took place at the trade fair "E-world" in Essen on February 12, 2014, for the first time. For TU Dortmund, David Öhmann, whose master thesis "Kooperatives Verbindungsmanagement von heterogenen Funkzugangssystemen im Automobilumfeld" was supervised by the CNI and collaborated with BMW in Munich, has been awarded.
Other Awards
Awards by TU Dortmund
ComNets Awards
Spin-Off comnovo
Spin-Off Smart Robotic Systems
Nomination in the Competition "ZukunftErfinden 2015":
ADVANCEMENT AWARD „ARBEIT · SICHERHEIT · GESUNDHEIT 2013" BY BERUFSGENOSSENSCHAFTEN ROHSTOFFE UND CHEMISCHE INDUSTRIE:
WINNER OF THE TECHNOLOGY COMPETITION "E-ENERGY":
AWARD WINNER OF THE FUNDING COMPETITION "SIMOBIT":
WINNING TEAM OF THE ROHDE&SCHWARZ NATIONAL CASE STUDY COMPETITION "HDTV - GET IT NOW!":
Award of competition "Intelligent systems for industry"
2026: ComNets 6G research team wins first price in competition "Intelligent systems for industry".



