Chair of Communications

The Chair of Communications was founded in 1962 by establishing regular studies of electrical engineering at the Technical Faculty in Banja Luka, when the first generation of students was enrolled at the Department of Electronics and Telecommunications. The most significant initial contribution was provided by professors Aleksandar Damjanović, Tomislav Tomić, Georgije Lukatela, Milan D. Savić, Ilija Stojanović, Velimir Jovanović and others. Valuable support in realization of academic, science and research activities was provided by faculties of electrical engineering in Belgrade and Zagreb, and later from the Faculty of Electronic Engineering in Niš and Faculty of Technical Sciences in Novi Sad.

The development of telecommunication technologies is of essential significance for the progress of any society, because audio-visual communications are based on the existence of telecommunication networks and systems. The possibility of equipment and devices networking and the whole range of latest wireless technologies have significantly improved the traditional means of communication.

The chair’s activities include education as part of the study process of I., II. and III. study cycle, and research activities in wide field of wired and wireless telecommunication technologies. The contents of courses and the study process are adapted to the needs of telecommunication market for narrow expertise and to different interests of future engineers. The focus of the chair’s educational and research activities are network architectures and communication protocols base on IP technologies, wireless sensor networks and mobile positioning techniques, design and implementation of radio networks, electroacoustics and audio signal processing etc.

The chair’s activities also include research in the following fields:

conventional wired and wireless telecommunications,
next generation wireless communication systems,
positioning in wireless telecommunication networks,
speech communication,
nanoscale and molecular communications,
sensor networks and Internet of things protocols and applications.

Teachers and assistants of the chair have recently been engaged in significant number of science and research projects realized in cooperation with various companies, and as participants in WUS, TEMPUS and FP7 projects.

The Chair of Communications has three laboratories: laboratory for radio communications, laboratory for microwave technique and electromagnetic compatibility and laboratory for multimedia telecommunications. In the past few years, with financial support of Ministry for science and technology of Republic of Srpska and company “Čajavec”, key lab instruments was installed (specter analyzers, RF network analyzer, impendence analyzer, logic analyzer, audio analyzers, signal generators, climate chamber etc.), thus creating the conditions for science and research work and quality lab exercises in radio communications (up to 1.5 GHz).

Recently established laboratory for microwave technique and electromagnetic compatibility currently has at its disposal the equipment enabling the lab exercises in microwave technique. By installing the Faraday cage, the main condition for creating the laboratory for electromagnetic compatibility is fulfilled.

The laboratory for multimedia telecommunications is created in 2003 with financial aid from “Telecom”. Lab equipment enables research in the field of multimedia signal processing (algorithms, standards, transmission, service quality), as well as simulation of different network surroundings and transmission technologies of modern telecommunication systems.

Recently, the chair was provided with an anechoic chamber in which a part of lab exercises in electroacoustics is planned. The research areas in this domain are automatic speech recognition, namely whisper (continual speech, isolated words), automatic speech emotion recognition, automatic speaker recognition, testing of robust systems for automatic speech emotion recognition, traffic noise testing etc.

Dr. Gordana Gardašević, full professor