Dhairya J. Shah

I am Dhairya, a 3rd year Ph.D. student in Computer Science at the School of Computing, National University Singapore (NUS).

I am part of the WEISER Research Group at NUS, advised by Prof. Ambuj Varshney.

My research interests are at the intersection of wireless networking, embedded systems and on-device AI. My work focuses on developing ultra low-power communication (transceivers) and sensing architectures which address the energy and spectrum challenges of wireless embedded systems. These are enabled by radio-frequency (RF) and optical media, with applications ranging from health monitoring to XR devices.

During my PhD, I interned at Nokia Bell Labs, UK working on multi-modal sensory LLMs. Previously, I was a research intern at SENS Lab, EPFL working on mmWave communication and sensing. I graduated from VJTI (University of Mumbai, India) with a Bachelor of Technology in ECE (University Rank 1).

News

Oct 06, 2026	AudioCast was awarded an IMWUT Distinguished Paper Award!
Aug 07, 2026	M² wins Best Demo Honourable Mention at ACM/IEEE ISLPED ‘26 Low-Power Circuit Design Contest!
Jul 29, 2026	I was awarded the NUS Research Achievement Award for AY 25/26!
Jun 24, 2026	M² wins Best Poster Runner-Up at ACM MobiSys’26!
Jun 17, 2026	Presented HILO at IEEE RFID ‘26 in Santa Fe, NM, USA.
Mar 04, 2026	M² was accepted as Full Paper at ACM MobiSys ‘26 and awarded Featured Paper (Top 10/302).
Dec 25, 2025	Passed my PhD Qualifying Exam -> officially a doctoral candidate now!
Oct 18, 2025	Presented AudioCast at ACM UbiComp ‘25 held in Espoo, Finland.
May 20, 2025	Started summer internship at Nokia Bell Labs, UK working on on-device AI.
Nov 20, 2024	Presented LiFi-AR, PixelGen and GateHaul at ACM MobiCom ‘24 held in Washington DC, USA.

Older News

Selected Publications

Microwatt Microwave (M²) Oscillator: Going Beyond the Delegation Architecture of Low-power Wireless Communication

Pramuka Sooriya Patabandige^*, Dhairya Shah^*, C. Rajashekar Reddy, Spanddhana Sara, Prabal Dutta, and Ambuj Varshney

ACM MobiSys ’26 Full Paper 🏅 Featured Paper (10/302) 🏅 Best Poster Runner-Up 🏅 ISLPED ’26 Circuit Design Contest: Honorable Mention

DOI Bib PDF

@inproceedings{m2_mobisys26,
  author = {Sooriya Patabandige, Pramuka and Shah, Dhairya and Reddy, C. Rajashekar and Sara, Spanddhana and Dutta, Prabal and Varshney, Ambuj},
  title = {Microwatt Microwave (M²) Oscillator: Going Beyond the Delegation Architecture of Low-power Wireless Communication},
  year = {2026},
  publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
  address = {New York, NY, USA},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3745756.3809248},
  doi = {10.1145/3745756.3809248},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 24th Annual International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications and Services (MobiSys '26)},
  pages = {941--959},
  series = {ACM MobiSys '26}
}

HILO: Enabling Low-power, Dual-Band Communication using Tunnel Diode Oscillators

Dhairya Shah^*, C. Rajashekar Reddy^*, Pramuka Medaranga, and Ambuj Varshney

IEEE RFID ’26 Full Paper

Bib PDF

@inproceedings{hilo_rfid26,
  author = {Shah, Dhairya and Reddy, C. Rajashekar and Medaranga, Pramuka and Varshney, Ambuj},
  title = {HILO: Enabling Low-power, Dual-Band Communication using Tunnel Diode Oscillators},
  year = {2026},
  booktitle = {2026 IEEE International Conference on RFID (RFID)},
  series = {IEEE RFID '26}
}

AudioCast: Enabling Ubiquitous Connectivity for Embedded Systems through Audio-broadcasting Low-power Tags

C. Rajashekar Reddy^*, Dhairya Shah^*, Nobel Ang, and Ambuj Varshney

ACM IMWUT ’25 Full Paper 🏅 Distinguished Paper Award

Abs DOI Bib PDF Code

Wireless connectivity challenges hinder the deployment of embedded systems. We introduce AudioCast to address two critical issues: spectrum scarcity-induced contention and high power consumption in transmitters. The widespread availability of broadcast radio receivers (for example, FM radios using the 88-108 MHz spectrum) and access to underutilized lower-frequency spectrum motivate the design of AudioCast. The lower-frequency spectrum offers superior radio-wave propagation characteristics, exhibiting at least 10x lower path loss than the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz Industrial, Scientific, and Medical (ISM) bands while avoiding congestion and interference. These properties enable reliable and long-distance communication, even for weakly radiated signals. AudioCast builds on these properties and the unique negative resistance of a tunnel diode.AudioCast rethinks the architecture of radio transmitters using a tunnel diode oscillator to generate carrier signals and self-modulate them with baseband signals. This results in frequency-modulated transmissions at an overall power consumption below 200 μW. Unlike related systems based on the backscatter mechanism, AudioCast does not require an externally generated carrier or rely on ambient signals. We argue that AudioCast represents an example of a new class of transmitters which we conceptualize as Beyond-Backscatter transmitters. Through experiments, we demonstrate that AudioCast achieves a transmission range of up to 130 m in line-of-sight and tens of meters in non-line-of-sight conditions respectively. These transmissions are decodable by ubiquitous commodity FM receivers in cars, homes, and phones. We evaluate AudioCast through theoretical analysis, benchtop experiments, and urban/indoor field deployments. Additionally, we prototype and demonstrate novel applications, including low-power voice transmissions and hand gesture communication, enabled by AudioCast’s range and power efficiency.
@article{audiocast_imwut25, author = {Reddy, C. Rajashekar and Shah, Dhairya and Ang, Nobel and Varshney, Ambuj}, title = {AudioCast: Enabling Ubiquitous Connectivity for Embedded Systems through Audio-broadcasting Low-power Tags}, year = {2025}, issue_date = {June 2025}, publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery}, address = {New York, NY, USA}, volume = {9}, number = {2}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3729471}, doi = {10.1145/3729471}, journal = {Proc. ACM Interact. Mob. Wearable Ubiquitous Technol.}, series = {ACM IMWUT '25}, month = jun, articleno = {27}, numpages = {32}, keywords = {Beyond-backscatter transmitters, Embedded systems, FM-broadcast spectrum} }

TunnelSense: Low-Power, Non-Contact Sensing Using Tunnel Diodes

Lim Chang Quan Thaddeus^*, C. Rajashekar Reddy^*, Yuvraj Singh Bhadauria, Dhairya Shah^*, Manoj Gulati, and Ambuj Varshney

IEEE RFID ’24 Full Paper

DOI Bib PDF

@inproceedings{tunnelsense_rfid24,
  author = {Thaddeus, Lim Chang Quan and Reddy, C. Rajashekar and Bhadauria, Yuvraj Singh and Shah, Dhairya and Gulati, Manoj and Varshney, Ambuj},
  booktitle = {2024 IEEE International Conference on RFID (RFID)},
  title = {TunnelSense: Low-Power, Non-Contact Sensing Using Tunnel Diodes},
  series = {IEEE RFID '24},
  year = {2024},
  volume = {},
  number = {},
  pages = {154-159},
  keywords = {Power demand;Tracking;Resonant frequency;Voltage;Receivers;Transceivers;Sensors},
  doi = {10.1109/RFID62091.2024.10582671}
}

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