ERC funding for research that could reduce the energy consumption of next-generation wireless networks by 50%

European Research Council awards prestigious Synergy Grant to the DISRUPT team, aiming to pioneer revolutionary digital Radio-Frequency (RF) power solutions to tackle the growing energy demands of future wireless networks.

University College Dublin (UCD) researchers Professor Anding Zhu and Professor Bogdan Staszewski are part of the international DISRUPT project team, which was today announced as a recipient of a prestigious European Research Council (ERC) Synergy Grant.

Led by TU Delft, in partnership with UCD and Fraunhofer IAF, the groundbreaking DISRUPT project has secured nearly €10 million in funding to develop a fully digital RF power architecture that aims to cut the energy consumption of next-generation wireless networks - such as 5G and 6G - by as much as 50 percent.

A total of €684 million in ERC Synergy Grant funding was announced to support 66 exceptional research teams across Europe and beyond. These competitive grants aim to foster deep collaboration among top researchers, allowing them to pool expertise and resources to tackle the most complex scientific challenges.

“Collaboration is at the heart of the ERC Synergy Grants,” said Professor Maria Leptin, President of the European Research Council. “In our latest round, teams of researchers will join forces to address the most complex scientific problems together - this time, they are more international than ever. The competition was fierce, with many outstanding proposals left unfunded. With more funds, the ERC could fully capitalise on this wealth of first-class science. Such scientific endeavours are what Europe needs to be at the real forefront.”

DISRUPT: A Fully Digital RF Power Paradigm

DISRUPT (Digital RF Power) is an ambitious and transformative research project aiming to address the growing ecological impact of wireless communications. The current carbon footprint of global wireless networks is comparable to that of aviation, accounting for 2–3% of worldwide CO₂ emissions. Without major innovation, this figure is expected to rise sharply as 5G and 6G communication systems continue to scale.

The project brings together four world-leading researchers:

• Prof. Leo de Vreede (TU Delft, The Netherlands) - expert in digital transmitter architectures

• Prof. Rüdiger Quay (Fraunhofer IAF and professor at University of Freiburg, Germany) - specialist in GaN semiconductor technology

• Prof. Bogdan Staszewski (UCD, Ireland) - pioneer in digital PLLs and transceivers

• Prof. Anding Zhu (UCD, Ireland) - expert in digital predistortion.

Their shared goal is to develop a revolutionary, fully digital transmitter architecture that replaces the most energy-intensive components in wireless infrastructure: the analog-dominated base stations, which are responsible for over 70% of network energy consumption.

Professor Anding Zhu, Full Professor at UCD School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and Head of the RF & Microwave Research Group at UCD, said, “Receiving the ERC Synergy Grant is a tremendous recognition of the bold and interdisciplinary vision behind DISRUPT. This €10 million grant empowers us to push the frontiers of wireless technology by combining advanced materials science, semiconductor device innovation, and RF system architecture in a truly transformative way.”

Professor Bogdan Staszewski is a Full Professor in Electronic Circuits at UCD School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and co-founder of (opens in a new window)Equal1 Labs, a startup company with a mission to build the world's first practical single-chip CMOS quantum computer. He added, “I extend my sincere gratitude to the European Research Council for their confidence in our team’s scientific vision and capabilities. I personally regard this grant as a natural progression of my earlier ERC Starting Grant - now taking on an even greater challenge as we advance our research to radio-frequency power levels thousands of times higher.”

A DISRUPTive Approach to Energy-Efficient Wireless Transmission

The project adopts a radically new approach: co-integrating advanced CMOS (Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor) with a yet-to-be-developed segmented III-Nitride (III-N) semiconductor platform. This integration will enable a fully digital RF transmitter, built from thousands of ultra-fast, low-threshold III-N FET devices arranged in switch-bank arrays. These devices will be individually controlled with picosecond precision by a CMOS driver layer mounted above via ultra-high-density flip-chip interconnects.

This unique digital structure will enable the direct generation of high-power, wideband, coherent RF signals, with precise control over amplitude and phase. The platform will also pioneer novel energy efficiency enhancement techniques and enable seamless integration of digital signal processing, clock generation, error correction, and AI-based signal optimisation.

The DISRUPT project aims to deliver record-breaking digital transmitters for applications in 5G and 6G, and will work closely with industry partners to ensure early-stage technology transfer and long-term societal impact. The team’s vision is to set a new global benchmark for energy-efficient wireless infrastructure, empowering future mobile networks to meet soaring data demands while minimising environmental cost.

Professor Leo de Vreede, TU Delft, said, “We are extremely grateful that the ERC offered this opportunity to realise our DISRUPTive research ideas and, as such, contribute to society. It is like a dream coming true.”

Professor Rüdiger Quay from Fraunhofer IAF added, “It is a great honour that with the ERC Synergy Grant, the long-term devotion to deeply scaled RF semiconductor technologies in Europe is recognised. I am thankful to have such capable coworkers both in Freiburg and in DISRUPT”.

The research team is complemented with four highly talented junior scientists to gain even more momentum and handle the workload and complexity of the project adequately, namely: Dr Morteza Alavi (TU Delft), Dr Prof. Masoud Babaie (TU Delft), Dr Chang Gao (TU Delft), TU Delft and Dr Thomas Fritzsch (Fraunhofer IZM).

The ERC Synergy Grants are part of the EU’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme. See the full list of ERC Synergy Grant recipients from this round (opens in a new window)here.