Inventor of the Year award 2026 winners
For over 30 years, our annual Inventor of the Year award has recognized Ericsson researchers and engineers for their outstanding contributions to our growing patent portfolio. With more than 60,000 granted patents, our inventors have established Ericsson as a technology leader in the telecommunications industry. The value created by these patents allows us to keep investing in research to further shape the future of global connectivity. Meet this year’s winners.
Angelo Centonza
Angelo delivers inventions at the cutting edge of innovation in 6G architectures and interfaces, rooted in his experience as a 3GPP delegate. In addition to his deep expertise covering interoperability within the radio access network (RAN), core network, and user equipment, Angelo makes highly strategic contributions in AI for the RAN, helping optimize mobility, coverage, and capacity across the network. Angelo is a trusted advisor to the Intellectual Property (IP) team, helping to realize the full potential of Ericsson’s inventions. Angelo also collaborates with a broad network of co-inventors and team members to help drive patent work at Ericsson.
Claes Tidestav
Claes is recognized for his significant contributions in the areas of multi-antenna and mobility. Claes focuses on producing high-quality inventions that turn into commercial assets, including as a main inventor of Layer 1/Layer 2 Triggered Mobility, a key 5G Advanced feature that reduces the interruption time of a user equipment performing a handover. Claes has been a longtime 3GPP delegate and actively works with the IP team to identify inventions relevant to the 3GPP standard. Beyond his expertise in 3GPP, Claes has been a pioneer inventor of several important user equipment implementation patents. Claes further fosters Ericsson’s IP culture, for example by serving on patent boards for over 10 years and by supporting fellow researchers in identifying new inventions.
Split RAN Architecture Team: Miguel Berg, Per-Erik Eriksson, Chenguang Lu, Elmar Trojer
This team has explored and pushed split architecture research to its limits, branching into successful offshoots that include a flagship platform for Ericsson indoor solutions (the Radio Dot), and a Lower Layer Split (LLS) architecture for the Open-RAN (O-RAN). The Radio Dot was developed on a tiny budget in less than 18 months. The Radio Dot is a shining example of research being transformed into a product, creating an entirely new market for Ericsson. In addition, team members work as delegates and back-office support for O-RAN standardization, with the O-RAN LLS a key standardized interface between today’s radio units and distributed units. They consistently generate valuable ideas to facilitate an open interface architecture in the RAN, which enables highly flexible deployments supporting vendor interoperability, lower cost hardware, and cloud-based solutions. This team has demonstrated a strong ability both to explain the technology and to master patent concepts, making the members highly effective technical liaisons across research, product delivery, standardization, and IP protection.
