Salah Abdeljabar

I’m Salah Abdeljabar, a PhD candidate in Wireless Communications and Networking at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). I work at the intersection of wireless communications, IoT, and network optimization, with hands-on deployments and collaborations bridging academic research and real-world impact.

Latest News

Sep 2026 Named to the KAUST CEMSE Dean’s List for the 2025-2026 academic year, my second consecutive year on the list.

Aug 2026 Shipped a retrieval-grounded course assistant for my IoT course, running hybrid keyword and vector search on a Cloudflare Worker.

Aug 2026 Taught a five-day hands-on IoT course as main instructor at the KAUST Academy KGSP Summer Enrichment Program.

Jul 2026 Mentored a high school researcher through SRSI 2026, building a camera-free Wi-Fi presence and position sensor from six ESP32-S3 boards.

Feb 2026 New project write-up on the LoRaWAN Gateway Mesh, an experimental evaluation of the RAK and ChirpStack mesh protocol on real hardware.

Jan 2026 Won the 3rd Saudi Aramco Digital Hackathon for an AI-enhanced sensing and sensor-fusion system.

Nov 2025 Won the 6G Summit Young Scholar Competition for the vision video When the Body Speaks.

Nov 2025 Recognized on the KAUST CEMSE Dean’s List for exceptional academic achievement.

Sep 2025 Gave an invited talk on DTN over informal public transport at the ICTP workshop in Trieste, Italy.

Sep 2025 Presented Super-LoRa at The Things Conference in Amsterdam, connecting the work to the LoRaWAN industry ecosystem.

Sep 2025 Selected as a finalist at Falling Walls Lab KAUST 2025 for a DTN concept that brings connectivity to remote areas.

Jun 2025 Won the IEEE ICC 4-Minute Thesis Competition for Super-LoRa.

Oct 2024 Our hybrid RF/FSO maritime link reached 20 Gbps to an island 19 km offshore, covered by Arab News.

Jul 2024 Awarded the ICTP-Arab Fund PhD Fellowship to work on DTN for rural connectivity at the Marconi Lab in Trieste.

Education

PhD, Electrical and Computer Engineering

KAUST, Saudi Arabia

Advisor: Prof. Mohamed-Slim Alouini

May 2023 - Present

MS, Electrical and Computer Engineering

KAUST, Saudi Arabia

Advisor: Prof. Mohamed-Slim Alouini

Aug 2021 - May 2023

Erasmus Exchange Program

Lund University, Sweden

Aug 2017 - Jan 2018

BSc, Electrical Engineering

The University of Jordan, Jordan

GPA 3.95/4.0 (ranked 1st)

Sep 2014 - May 2019

Experience

Graduate Research Assistant

Communication Theory Lab

KAUST, Saudi Arabia

Aug 2021 - Present

Research Fellow

Marconi Lab, ICTP

Trieste, Italy

Sep-Dec 2024 & 2025

Graduate Teaching Assistant

KAUST, Saudi Arabia

Jan 2023 - Present

Technical Consulting Engineer

ESTARTA Solutions (Cisco Systems)

Amman & Krakow

Jun 2019 - Jul 2021

Software Engineer

JO VISION

Amman

Feb-Jun 2019

Electrical Design Engineer

Dar Al-Handasah

Amman

May-Jul 2018

Projects (View all projects)

The course assistant answering a student question and citing the guide it came from A Grounded Course Assistant: Hybrid Retrieval RAG for the ESP32 Course
Retrieval-augmented assistant embedded in my IoT course site that answers only from the course’s own material, built on a Cloudflare Worker with hybrid keyword and vector search, a Postgres vector store, and a self-hosted AI gateway

LoRaWAN Gateway Mesh project image LoRaWAN Gateway Mesh: Experimental Evaluation and Protocol Analysis
Hands-on evaluation of the RAK and ChirpStack LoRaWAN Gateway Mesh protocol, focusing on real hardware testing, system design, and performance limitations

Super-LoRa project image Super-LoRa: Making Long-Range IoT Faster and Smarter
Super-LoRa is a novel design that multiplies data rates for long-range IoT while staying low-power and practical, validated on real software-defined radios and campus-wide experiments
[PDF]

DTN Public Transport project image DTN for Rural Connectivity via Public Transport Systems
Leveraging public transport as data mules to provide Internet-like connectivity in regions where fixed infrastructure is missing or too expensive to deploy
[PDF]

Hybrid RF/FSO Maritime project image Hybrid RF/FSO Maritime Connectivity: Connecting Remote Islands
Real-world deployment of hybrid Free Space Optics and Radio Frequency links to deliver 20 Gbps connectivity to a remote island 19 km offshore.
[PDF]

DTN Educational Divide project image DTN for Equitable Digital Learning in Rural Areas
DTN framework that delivers digital learning content to rural communities by leveraging transport-based data mules to bridge the educational divide
[PDF]

RIS-VLC sum-rate and fairness optimization project image RIS-Assisted VLC: Sum-Rate and Fairness Optimization
Optimization framework for RIS-assisted VLC that improves network sum-rate and user fairness.
[PDF]

TV White Space project image TV White Space IoT Deployment with Microsoft Research
Joint KAUST–Microsoft Research field deployment of TV White Space IoT radios, demonstrating long-range, low-power connectivity for real-world sensing applications

RIS-Assisted Outdoor VLC project image RIS-Assisted Visible Light Communication for Outdoor Applications
Using intelligent reflective surfaces to enable reliable outdoor visible light communication for UAVs, vehicles, and smart city applications
[PDF]