Davide Villa

Ph.D. Candidate in Computer Engineering

Institute for the Wireless Internet of Things

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Northeastern University

Office: 641A6 EXP, 815 Columbus Ave, Boston, MA 02120
Mail: 409 Dana Research Center, 360 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA 02115

Email: villa.d@northeastern.edu

Biography

Davide is a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Engineering at the Institute for the Wireless Internet of Things at Northeastern University, under Prof. Tommaso Melodia. He received his B.S. in Computer Engineering and his M.S. in Embedded Computing Systems cum Laude from University of Pisa and Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies in 2015 and 2018, respectively. From 2018 till 2020, he worked as a Research Scientist in the embedded systems and networks group at Raytheon Technologies (former United Technologies Research Center) in Cork, Ireland. His research interests focus on 5G and beyond cellular networks, O-RAN, channel characterization, and software-defined networking for experimental wireless testbeds.

Research Interests

5G and beyond Cellular Networks
Software-defined Networking
O-RAN

Publications

Articles in Journals

F. Kaltenberger, T. Melodia, I. Ghauri, M. Polese, R. Knopp, T.T. Nguyen, S. Velumani, D. Villa, L. Bonati, R. Schmidt, S. Arora, M. Irazabal, N. Nikaein, "Driving Innovation in 6G Wireless Technologies: The OpenAirInterface Approach," arXiv:2412.13295 [cs.NI], pp. 1-30, December 2024. [pdf] [bibtex]
J. Groen, S. Di Valerio, I. Karim, D. Villa, Y. Zhang, L. Bonati, M. Polese, S. D'Oro, T. Melodia, E. Bertino, F. Cuomo, K. Chowdhury, "TIMESAFE: Timing Interruption Monitoring and Security Assessment for Fronthaul Environments," arXiv:2412.13049 [cs.NI], pp. 1-13, December 2024. [pdf] [bibtex]
J. Groen, S. D’Oro, U. Demir, L. Bonati, D. Villa, M. Polese, T. Melodia, K. Chowdhury, "Securing O-RAN Open Interfaces," IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, vol 23, no. 12, December 2024. [pdf] [bibtex]
D. Villa, M. Tehrani-Moayyed, C.P. Robinson, L. Bonati, P. Johari, M. Polese, T. Melodia, "Colosseum as a Digital Twin: Bridging Real-World Experimentation and Wireless Network Emulation," IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, vol. 23, no. 10, October 2024. [pdf] [bibtex]
M. Polese, L. Bonati, S. D’Oro, P. Johari, D. Villa, S. Velumani, R. Gangula, M. Tsampazi, C. Robinson, G. Gemmi, A. Lacava, S. Maxenti, H. Cheng, and T. Melodia, "Colosseum: The Open RAN Digital Twin," IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society, pp. 1-13, August 2024. [pdf] [bibtex]
D. Villa, I. Khan, F. Kaltenberger, N. Hedberg, R. Soares da Silva, S. Maxenti, L. Bonati, A. Kelkar, C. Dick, E. Baena, J. M. Jornet, T. Melodia, M. Polese, and D. Koutsonikolas, "X5G: An Open, Programmable, Multi-vendor, End-to-end, Private 5G O-RAN Testbed with NVIDIA ARC and OpenAirInterface," arXiv:2406.15935 [cs.NI], pp. 1-15, June 2024. [pdf] [bibtex]

Articles in Conference Proceedings

O. T. Basaran, D. Villa, P. Johari, M. Polese, C. Fiandrino, F. Dressler, T. Melodia, "Gen-TWIN: Generative-AI-Enabled Digital Twin for Open Radio Access Networks," Proc. of IEEE Workshop on Digital Twins over NextG Wireless Networks (DTWin), London, UK, May 2025. [pdf] [bibtex]
H. Cheng, S. D'Oro, R. Gangula, S. Velumani, D. Villa, L. Bonati, M. Polese, T. Melodia, G. Arrobo, and C. Maciocco, "ORANSlice: An Open Source 5G Network Slicing Platform for O-RAN," Proc. of ACM Workshop on Open and AI RAN, Washington, DC, USA, November 2024. [pdf] [bibtex]
A. Saeizadeh, M. Tehrani-Moayyed, D. Villa, J. G. Beattie, Jr., I. C. Wong, P. Johari, E. W. Anderson, S. Basagni, T. Melodia, "AI-assisted Agile Propagation Modeling for Real-time Digital Twin Wireless Networks," Proc. of IEEE International Workshop on Computer Aided Modeling and Design of Communication Links and Networks (CAMAD), Athens, Greece, October 2024. [pdf] [bibtex]
D. Villa, I. Khan, F. Kaltenberger, N. Hedberg, R. Soares da Silva, A. Kelkar, C. Dick, S. Basagni, J. M. Jornet, T. Melodia, M. Polese, and D. Koutsonikolas, "An Open, Programmable, Multi-vendor 5G O-RAN Testbed with NVIDIA ARC and OpenAirInterface," Proc. of the 2nd IEEE Workshop on Next-generation Open and Programmable Radio Access Networks (NG-OPERA), Vancouver, BC, Canada, May 2024. Best Paper Runner-Up Award [pdf] [bibtex]
A. Sheshashayee, M. Bordin, P. Brach del Prever, D. Villa, H. Cheng, C. Petrioli, T. Melodia, S. Basagni, "Experimental Evaluation of the Performance of UAV-assisted Data Collection for Wake-up Radio-enabled Wireless Networks," Proceedings of IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC) Spring, Singapore, June 2024. [pdf] [bibtex]
D. Villa, D. Uvaydov, L. Bonati, P. Johari, J. M. Jornet, and T. Melodia, "Twinning Commercial Radio Waveforms in the Colosseum Wireless Network Emulator," Proc. of the 17th ACM Workshop on Wireless Network Testbeds, Experimental evaluation & CHaracterization (WiNTECH 2023), Madrid, Spain, October 2023. [pdf] [bibtex]
D. Villa, M. Tehrani-Moayyed, P. Johari, S. Basagni, T. Melodia, "CaST: A Toolchain for Creating and Characterizing Realistic Wireless Network Emulation Scenarios", Proc. of the 16th ACM Workshop on Wireless Network Testbeds, Experimental evaluation & CHaracterization (WiNTECH 2022), Sydney, Australia, October 2022. [pdf] [bibtex]
L. Bonati, P. Johari, M. Polese, S. D'Oro, S. Mohanti, M. Tehrani-Moayyed, D. Villa, S. Shrivastava, C. Tassie, K. Yoder, A. Bagga, P. Patel, V. Petkov, M. Seltser, F. Restuccia, A. Gosain, K.R. Chowdhury, S. Basagni, T. Melodia, "Colosseum: Large-Scale Wireless Experimentation Through Hardware-in-the-Loop Network Emulation," Proc. of IEEE Intl. Symp. on Dynamic Spectrum Access Networks (DySPAN), Virtual Conference, December 2021. [pdf] [bibtex]
D. Villa, CK Lin, A. Kuenzi, M. Lang, "On-demand updates after a node failure in a wireless network", Proc. of IEEE 31st Irish Signals and Systems Conference (ISSC), Letterkenny, Ireland, June 2020. [pdf] [bibtex]

Patents

P. Johari, T. Melodia, M. Polese, L. Bonati, D. Villa, "Smart and Real-time Digital Twins for Open, Programmable and Virtualized Wireless Network Systems", US Patent Application 63/593,233, October 2023.
A. Kuenzi, M. Lang, CK Lin, D. Villa, "Broadcast delivery techniques in a wireless network", US Patent 11,825,386 B2, November 2023. [link]
CK Lin, D. Villa, A. Kuenzi, M. Lang, A. Tiwari, "Robust multipath routing methods in wireless network", US Patent 11,729,696 B2, August 2023. [link]
CK Lin, D. Villa, A. Kuenzi, M. Lang, A. Tiwari, "Method and system for broadcasting data in wireless network", US Patent 11,716,176 B2, August 2023. [link]
CK Lin, D. Villa, A. Kuenzi, M. Lang, A. Tiwari, "Method and system for data transfer in a Bluetooth Low Energy network", US Patent 11,546,096 B2, January 2023. [link]
CK Lin, D. Villa, A. Kuenzi, M. Lang, "Adaptive multipath routing failure recovery in wireless network", US Patent 11,457,506 B2, September 2022. [link]
A. Kuenzi, M. Lang, CK Lin, D. Villa, "On-demand table and route update after a node failure in a wireless network", US Patent 11,451,469 B2, September 2022. [link]

Invited Talks

6G Graduate Students Panel, Brooklyn 6G Summit, NYC, NY, October 2024. [link]
"X5G: An Open, Programmable, Multi-vendor, End-to-end, Private 5G O-RAN Testbed with NVIDIA ARC and OpenAirInterface", 2nd RESTART Tech Camp on 5G and Open RAN, Milan, Italy, September 2024 [link]

Service

Technical Program Committee (TPC) Member
- IEEE ICC Workshop on 6G Connected Robotics for Collaborative Control, Sensing, and Communication (6GCRCC), 2025
- IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC), 2024, 2025
- IEEE International Workshop on Computer and Networking Experimental Research using Testbeds (CNERT), 2024

Peer Reviewer in IEEE, ACM and Elsevier journal and conferences
- IEEE Communications Magazine
- IEEE Access
- Computer Communications
- IEEE ICCCN
- IEEE WCNC
- IEEE LANMAN
- IEEE CNERT
- IEEE HPSR
- IEEE 6GCRCC
- ACM WiNTECH
- ACM HotMobile

Conference Organization
- Colosseum Young Gladiators school, 2025 [link]
- Colosseum Young Gladiators school, 2024 [link]
- Colosseum Young Gladiators school, 2023 [link]
- Colosseum Young Gladiators school, 2022 [link]
- Colosseum Young Gladiators school, 2021 [link]

Thesis

D. Villa, "Service-Guarantee Cross-Layered: A robust and reliable protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks", M.S. Thesis, University of Pisa & Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies & United Technologies Research Center, December 2018. [link]