Wolfgang H. Gerstacker was born in Nürnberg, Germany, in 1966. He received the Dipl.-Ing. degree in electrical engineering from the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität (FAU) Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany, in 1991, the Dr.-Ing. degree for a thesis on equalization concepts for fast digital transmission over twisted pair lines in 1998, and the habilitation degree for work on digital transmission concepts for the EDGE mobile communications system in 2004 from the same university.
From 1992 to 1998, he was a Research Assistant at the Telecommunications Institute of FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg. From 1998 to 2002, he was a Consultant for mobile communications and an external lecturer in digital communications at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg. From 1999 to 2000, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, doing joint work with Prof. Desmond P. Taylor (sponsored by a fellowship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)). Since 2002, he has been with the Chair of Mobile Communications (now renamed to Institute for Digital Communications) of FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, currently as a Professor. From 2003 to 2008, he has been an external Guest Lecturer at the University of Kiel.
His research interests are in the broad area of digital communications and statistical signal processing and include THz communications, 5G and Beyond, machine learning for communications, satellite communications, and wireless sensor networks. He has conducted various projects with partners from industry including Alcatel-Lucent, Philips Semiconductors, Huawei, Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits (IIS), Hydrometer, Innovationszentrum für Telekommunikationstechnik (IZT), ST-Ericsson, Nokia, Qualcomm, and Com-Research.
Dr. Gerstacker was a recipient of several awards, including the Research Award of the German Society for Information Technology (ITG) in 2001, the EEEfCOM Innovation Award in 2003, the Vodafone Innovation Award in 2004, the Best Paper Award of EURASIP Signal Processing in 2006, and the ”Mobile Satellite & Positioning” Track Paper Award of VTC2011-Spring. He has been the Technical ProgramCo-Chair or General Co-Chair of several conferences including BlackSeaCom 2014, VTC2013-Fall, ACM NanoCom 2016, and BalkanCom 2019. He is a member of the Executive Editorial Committee of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS and an Editor of Computer Networks (Elsevier) and ITU Journal on Future and Evolving Technologies (ITU J-FET). He has served as a member of the Editorial Board for IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, Physical Communication (Elsevier), and EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking, and as a Guest Editor for several journals and magazines including the IEEE JOURNAL ON SELECTED AREAS IN COMMUNICATIONS, IEEE COMMUNICATIONS MAGAZINE, and IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY.