Beomhyeon Kim (integrated M.S./Ph.D. student) from the Department of Electrical Engineering at POSTECH (Co-authors: Donggeun Ahn, Byungkwan Lee; Advisor: Prof. Wonbin Hong) received the Silver Prize in the Communications & Networks category at the 32nd Samsung Humantech Paper Awards, organized by Samsung Electronics.

The award-winning paper, titled “AI-Assisted Optimization of Higher-Order MIMO Antennas for Arbitrary Mobile Terminal Scenarios,” proposes the first AI-based framework capable of monitoring antenna conditions within mobile devices in real time and dynamically optimizing antenna configurations under arbitrary user scenarios and environmental variations.

The research demonstrates the potential to increase the number of antennas in smartphones from the typical four up to eight, enabling stable performance across more than one million different smartphone usage environments. This approach significantly improves data transmission quality by efficiently adapting to diverse operating conditions and system variables.

The technology has attracted attention in the mobile communication device and antenna research community and is currently expanding toward commercialization and standardization. The research will also be demonstrated and presented at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2026, the world’s largest mobile communications exhibition.

The Samsung Humantech Paper Awards, hosted by Samsung Electronics and jointly supported by the Ministry of Science and ICT and JoongAng Ilbo, are among the largest academic paper competitions in Korea. This year, a record 3,172 papers were submitted, and the award recipients were selected through a rigorous three-stage evaluation process.