NI Donates Nearly $1 Million in Hardware and Software to NYU WIRELESS to Accelerate 5G Research

AUSTIN, Texas, and BROOKLYN, New York – April 11, 2017 – NI (Nasdaq: NATI) and NYU WIRELESS today announced that NI has made a sizable donation to the university research team to further mmWave communications, channel measurement and channel emulation research for 5G communications and beyond. As part of the donation, NI will equip NYU WIRELESS labs with hardware and software from its flexible software defined radio (SDR) solutions, which researchers in both industry and academia are already using to help usher in the next generation of 5G wireless communications.

The gift brings together two powerhouses in the race to create wireless technology that can deliver broadband speeds over the air. An important aspect of this partnership is the tight pairing of NI’s hardware and software, which reduces the time to ramp up an SDR system so the NYU WIRELESS group can go beyond simulations to build and evaluate concepts. Thus, NYU WIRELESS has identified system-level bottlenecks and solved problems that are critical in achieving high-throughput wireless systems.

In the last year, the FCC, 3GPP and other standardization bodies for 5G fixed and mobile networks have earmarked mmWave frequencies. Only in the last few years has the mmWave radio spectrum — driven by research at NYU WIRELESS — become widely accepted as holding potential for the next generation of wireless networks. The technology is developing at a rapid pace and is in the midst of many innovations. Because much of the work around mmWave is still in its infancy, many research institutions and companies lack access to the mmWave SDRs and test and measurement equipment necessary to transition this technology from concept and simulation in the lab to a real-world environment.

5G will have a transformational impact on society by enhancing broadband access, connecting billions of devices and creating new applications and services in industries such as smart cities and infrastructures, medicine and transportation.

“The NYU WIRELESS students and faculty were pioneers of early mmWave research,” said James Kimery, director of RF research and SDR marketing at NI. “Our goal with this donation is to help advance this research to solve the challenging problems the industry faces migrating to mmWave for 5G and beyond.”

“NYU WIRELESS and NI have had a long and productive working relationship as NI was a founding sponsor of our wireless center in 2012,” said Professor Theodore (Ted) Rappaport, founding director of NYU WIRELESS and the David Lee/Ernst Weber Professor of Electrical Engineering at NYU Tandon. “We are very pleased that NI continues to recognize the quality of our team and the impact our center is making through contributions to the global research community, particularly through our pioneering work on mmWave wireless communications and 5G technologies. We are extremely excited about the donation and our continuing role as a lead user for NI. We look forward to providing NI with feedback on its products and using them for further breakthroughs in the massively broadband future of mmWave wireless communications.”

“mmWave wireless prototyping demands platforms with enormous baseband processing power along with advanced antenna array systems,” said Sundeep Rangan, director of NYU WIRELESS and NYU Tandon associate professor of electrical and computer engineering. “These systems have been extremely difficult to develop in university labs. With NI’s SDR solutions, NYU WIRELESS will now be uniquely capable of rapid prototyping and experimentation to push the envelope in mmWave channel sounding, emulation and communication system design and drive the development and commercialization of mmWave technology in partnership with our network of 18 affiliate sponsors.”

For more information on NI SDR solutions and 5G, visit www.ni.com/5g.
 

About NI
NI (ni.com) empowers engineers and scientists with a software-centric platform that incorporates modular hardware and an expansive ecosystem. This proven approach puts users firmly in control of defining what they need to accelerate their system design within test, measurement and control. NI’s solution helps build high-performance systems that exceed requirements, quickly adapt to change and ultimately improve the world.

About NYU WIRELESS
NYU WIRELESS is a multi-disciplinary academic research center that offers an unprecedented and unique set of skills. Centered at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, and involving more than 200 faculty and students throughout the entire NYU community, NYU WIRELESS offers its faculty, students and affiliated sponsors from industry a world-class research environment that is creating the fundamental theories and techniques for next-generation mass-deployable wireless devices across a wide range of applications and markets. This center combines NYU Tandon, NYU School of Medicine and NYU Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, and offers a depth of expertise with unparalleled capabilities for the creation of new wireless circuits and systems as well as new health care solutions for the wireless industry. For more information, visit nyuwireless.com.

About the NYU Tandon School of Engineering
The NYU Tandon School of Engineering dates to 1854, the founding date for both the New York University School of Civil Engineering and Architecture and the Brooklyn Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute (widely known as Brooklyn Poly). A January 2014 merger created a comprehensive school of education and research in engineering and applied sciences, rooted in a tradition of invention and entrepreneurship and dedicated to furthering technology in service to society. In addition to its main location in Brooklyn, NYU Tandon collaborates with other schools within NYU, the country’s largest private research university, and is closely connected to engineering programs at NYU Abu Dhabi and NYU Shanghai. It operates Future Labs focused on start-up businesses in downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn and an award-winning online graduate program. For more information, visit engineering.nyu.edu.

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