HomePage - Prof. Daniel Benevides da Costa

News: I currently have multiple available postdoctoral positions (immediate hiring) at the Department of Electrical Engineering - KFUPM. For those interested applicants, please send the CVs to daniel.costa@kfupm.edu.sa. 

NOTE: It is expected at least 3-4 first-author publications in high-quality IEEE Transactions/Letters.

Research Interests

• Channel Modeling and Characterization

• Massive Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (m-MIMO) Systems

• Cognitive Radio

• Cooperative and Relay Communications

• Energy Harvesting

• Physical Layer Security

• Green Communications

• Fluid Antenna Systems/Movable-Antenna Systems

• Millimeter-Wave (mmWave) and Terahertz (THz) Communications

• Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) Schemes

• Rate-Splitting Multiple Access (RSMA) Schemes

• Massive Machine-Type Communications (mMTC)

• Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communications (URLLC)

• Cell-Free Massive MIMO Systems

• Large Intelligent Surfaces (active devices) and Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (nearly-passive devices)

• Holographic MIMO

• Integrated Sensing and Communication

• Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI)

• Free-Space Optical Wireless Communications

• Visible Light Communications (VLC)

• Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Networks

• Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTNs)

• Molecular Communications

• Blockchain

• Metaverse/Digital Twin

• Open RAN

• Other Topics Related to Beyond 5G Networks

Biography

Prof. Daniel B. da Costa was born in Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil, in 1981. He received the B.Sc. degree in Telecommunications from the Military Institute of Engineering (IME), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 2003, and the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering, Area: Telecommunications, from the University of Campinas, SP, Brazil, in 2006 and 2008, respectively. His Ph.D thesis was awarded the Best Ph.D. Thesis in Electrical Engineering by the Brazilian Ministry of Education (CAPES) at the 2009 CAPES Thesis Contest. From 2008 to 2009, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with INRS-EMT, University of Quebec, Montreal, QC, Canada. From 2010 to 2022, he was with the Federal University of Ceará. In 2019, Prof. da Costa was on sabbatical leave. From January 2019 to April 2019, he was Visiting Professor at Lappeenranta University of Technology (LUT), Finland, with financial support from Nokia Foundation. He was awarded with the prestigious Nokia Visiting Professor Grant in 2018 and 2021. From May 2019 to August 2019, he was with King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia, as a Visiting Faculty, and from September 2019 to November 2019, he was a Visiting Researcher at Istanbul Medipol University, Turkey. From 2021 to 2022, he was Full Professor at the National Yunlin University of Science and Technology (YunTech), Taiwan. He was the Founder and the Head of the Intelligent Wireless Communications (IWiCom) Research Group, the first research group created under the umbrella of the Future Technology Research Center. From March 2022 to January 2024, he was Principal Researcher at the Digital Science Research Center - Technology Innovation Institute (TII), Abu Dhabi, UAE. From January 2024 to December 2025, he was Distinguished University Professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM), Saudi Arabia. He is currently RDIA Chair Professor of Wireless Communications at KFUPM and has also served as Acting Director of the Interdisciplinary Research Center for Communication Systems and Sensing (IRC-CSS).

During the last 10 years, Prof. da Costa was strongly involved in the editorial board of several journals. Currently, he is Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Communications Letters and Specialty Chief Editor of the Frontiers in Communications and Networks - Wireless Communications Section. He has also been involved on the Organizing Committee of several conferences. From 2017 to 2022, he was the Latin American Chapters Coordinator of the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society. Also, he acted as a Scientific Consultant of the National Council of Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), Brazil and he was a Productivity Research Fellow of CNPq - Levels 2, 1D, and 1C. From 2012 to 2017, he was Member of the Advisory Board of the Ceará Council of Scientific and Technological Development (FUNCAP), Area: Telecommunications. He served as Vice-Chair Americas in the IEEE Cognitive Networks Technical Committee (TCCN) during the biennium 2019-2020. He was also Director of the TCCN Newsletter in the biennium 2019-2020 and he was the Chair of the Special Interest Group (SIG) on "Energy Harvesting Cognitive Radio Networks" in IEEE TCCN. He was also the Vice-Chair of the Propagation Committee of the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society from 2023 to 2025. He is currently the Vice-Chair of the SIG on REconFigurabLE Intelligent Surfaces for Signal Processing and CommunicatIONS (REFLECTIONS) in Signal Processing and Computing for Communications Technical Committee (SPCC) and. He was a member of the NSERC Electrical and Computer Engineering Evaluation Group (term: 2022-2025).

Prof. da Costa is the recipient of seven (7) conference paper awards. He received the Exemplary Reviewer Certificate of the IEEE Wireless Communications Letters in 2013 and 2019, the Exemplary Reviewer Certificate of the IEEE Communications Letters in 2016, 2017, and 2019, the Certificate of Appreciation of Top Associate Editor for outstanding contributions to IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology in 2013, 2015 and 2016, the Exemplary Editor Award of IEEE Communications Letters in 2016, the Exemplary Editor Award of IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society in 2021, the Outstanding Associate Editor Award of IEEE Access in 2017, and the Certificate of Appreciation for notable services and contributions to IEEE Access in 2018 and 2019. 

Prof. da Costa has been listed as World's Top 2% Scientist by Stanford/Elsevier since 2021, in two categories - single-year impact and career-long impact, and has been ranked among 1% Top Scientists in the world in the broad field of Electronics and Electrical Engineering since 2022 - Source: Research.com. According to ScholarGPS scientific ranking, he has been ranked 3rd in Saudi Arabia in the field of Wireless Communications. Notably, considering only the prior five years, he has also been ranked 82nd worldwide and the 2nd in Saudi Arabia, reflecting the sustained impact of the recent research efforts. Prof. da Costa is the recipient of the Open RAN & 6G Challenge Award by Research, Development and Innovation Authority (RDIA), Saudi Arabia, in recognition of exceptional contributions to advancing innovation in Open RAN & 6G Technologies and, in 2025, he was honored with the Best Research Award by the Electrical Engineering Department at KFUPM, recognizing his outstanding contributions and impactful research achievements. He is also the recipient of the KFUPM President's Award 2026. He is a Distinguished Speaker of the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society. He is a Senior Member of IEEE, Member of IEEE Communications Society, and IEEE Vehicular Technology Society.