Professor Onur Günlü Receives the “2026 IEEE Communications Society & Information Theory Society Joint Best Paper Award”

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Onur Günlü, Head of the Institute of Communications Engineering in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology (ETIT) at TU Dortmund University, received the “2026 IEEE Communications Society & Information Theory Society Joint Best Paper Award.
The award recognizes his paper, "Secure Integrated Sensing and Communication," published in the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Information Theory (JSAIT) in 2023. Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) allows future wireless networks to use the same radio signals both to transmit data and to sense their surroundings. This efficiency also raises a new security challenge: How can confidential information be protected when the target being sensed can receive the same signals and potentially use them to eavesdrop?
The paper addresses this challenge through an information-theoretic model and investigates the fundamental trade-offs between secure data transmission and sensing accuracy. The results provide important theoretical foundations for developing secure andonur gunlu privacy-preserving 6G systems.
Presented annually by the IEEE Communications Society and the IEEE Information Theory Society, the award honors outstanding publications at the intersection of communications and information theory. The selection considers research quality, originality, practical relevance, timeliness, and presentation. At the Institute of Communications Engineering, these topics feed directly into research, teaching, and student theses on secure wireless systems.



