Bridging theory and practice in 5G and 6G technologies: Meet Amira Alloum

Most of the engineers interviewed for this profile series told us that Qualcomm Technologies was the obvious best place for them to have a career. From early in their academic lives — studying things like signal processing and compression algorithms — they aspired to join Qualcomm Technologies, where communications theory becomes practice; and practice becomes products and standards.

Dr. Amira Alloum’s path was not as direct, although it does seem that she, like many people at Qualcomm Technologies, was destined for it — she just got started with Qualcomm Technologies by competing with it.

For example, early in her career, Alloum contributed to a DVB-SH standard in part by referencing a Qualcomm Technologies engineer’s Ph.D. thesis. She used these findings to enable the company she was working for at the time to develop proposals that maintained the legacy solution in the standard and competed with Qualcomm Technologies’ contributions.

Today, as the Wireless R&D site lead at Qualcomm France S.A.R.L., she is responsible for advancing long-term 5G/6G research and innovation. She has a track record of delivering solutions and leading collaborative projects with international telecom industries and European research centers.

Alloum has also become a leader in applied error-correcting coding. She has contributed to 3GPP RAN1 5G standards, DVB-SH standards and LTE Modem, as well as to post-quantum security for cloud services , XR and 5G-IoT.

The OnQ Team (OnQ): How did you find your way to Qualcomm Technologies after competing with it?

Amira Alloum (AA): Qualcomm Technologies was my dream job all along. My first interaction with Qualcomm Technologies was during my post-doctoral fellowship at INRIA, funded by Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs. I contributed to the DVB-SH standard by developing a soft decision decoding algorithm for the legacy Reed-Solomon error-correcting code, which competed with Qualcomm Technologies' Raptor code. Eventually, both codes were kept in the DVB-SH, and Reed Solomon code was not excluded.

Later, I collaborated with Qualcomm Technologies in the 3GPP RAN1 channel coding working group, contributing to the 5G physical layer channel coding specification. My work involved using a quasi-maximum list decoder, known as the Ordered Statistics Decoder, to evaluate the performance of all code constructions competing for the 5G standard. We revealed each code construction's ultimate capabilities to guarantee further fairness in the evaluation.

After I finally started working at Qualcomm Technologies, I ended up working with the same engineer whose Ph.D. thesis I had once relied on during my post-doctoral fellowship.

OnQ: Why did you get into engineering in the first place?

AA: I pursued engineering to exercise my passion for applied mathematics. And I followed my father's advice, who praised engineering as a universal language that could open the gates of the world.

OnQ: What are you working on now?

AA: Our team develops projects that amplify Qualcomm Technologies’ wireless research contributions. These efforts support our key industrial and academic partners in harnessing the disruptive potential of 5G/6G technologies.

In parallel, I also pursue research in error-correcting codes, addressing solutions satisfying latency, reliability and scalability requirements of challenging 5G/6G use cases, such as XR, ambient IoT and multi-hop networks.

OnQ: What are you proudest of?

AA: I’m proud to have contributed to the 5G channel coding specification through a collaboration with Texas A&M University and Ghent University. I was one of just four researchers who co-authored a paper that was incorporated into a 3GPP contribution that challenged major companies with hundreds of delegates at the 3GPP standards body. Our work significantly influenced the discussions and decisions about 5G channel coding.

I also take pride in my team’s remarkable achievements across a range of fields and applications, including XR, NTN, 5G Broadcast and automotive.

We also established the Lannion 5G/6G Research Center in France. It has a state-of-the-art prototyping laboratory and functions as a European Innovation Platform actively engaged with the European tech ecosystem. It incorporates Qualcomm Technologies’ solutions into collaborative projects and supports university initiatives.

OnQ: Do you have any advice for young engineers on innovating and collaborating?

AA: Envisioning a purposeful and rewarding outcome has always worked for me. Start from visualizing the solution and work towards that. Then, find people to collaborate with who share your core values, passion and ultimate goals. It’s like any good relationship and it is an infinite game.