The emerging world of millimeter wave and sub-THz wireless communications and sensors
Speaker: Professor Theodore Rappaport
Faculty Host: Professor Shivendra Panwar
Abstract
Over the past several years, there have been significant advances in low cost CMOS semiconductor processes in the millimeter wave bands above 30 GHz, and global spectrum regulators have agreed upon several GHz of license-free wireless personal area network (PAN) spectrum centered around 60 GHz. Standards bodies such as IEEE 802.11ad and WiGig are forming new standards that will support multi Gigabit/second wireless personal area networks in the next couple of years, and early equipment has just recently been released. This presentation reviews some of the recent progress and events that give strong indication that massively broadband wireless communications at millimeter wave frequencies will be a reality in the coming years, and provides recent research results at The University of Texas in the areas of on-chip millimeter wave antennas and RF propagation modeling and channel sounding for vehicle-to-vehicle networks, peer to peer networks, and future cellular and backhaul systems that will likely operate at sub-THz frequencies.
About the Speaker
Theodore (Ted) S. Rappaport is the William and Bettye Nowlin Chair in Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin and is the founding director of the Wireless Networking and Communications Group (WNCG) at the university's Austin campus, a center he founded in 2002. Prior to joining UT Austin, he was on the electrical and computer engineering faculty of Virginia Tech where he founded the Mobile and Portable Radio Research Group (MPRG), one of the world's first university research and teaching centers dedicated to the wireless communications field. Prof. Rappaport has been a pioneer in the fields of radio wave propagation, wireless communication system design, and 60 GHz/millimeter wave communications.
In 2006, Rappaport was elected to serve on the Board of Governors of the IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc), and he was elected to the Board of Governors of the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society (VTS) in 2008. Also in 2008, he received the Industry Leadership award from the Austin Wireless Alliance and the IEEE Communications Society WTC Recognition Award. In 1999, his work received the IEEE Communications Society Stephen O. Rice Prize Paper Award. In 1989, he founded TSR Technologies, Inc., a cellular radio/PCS software radio manufacturer that he sold in 1993 to what is now CommScope, Inc. In 1995, he founded Wireless Valley Communications Inc., a site-specific wireless network design and management firm that he sold in 2005 to Motorola, Inc. He received B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Purdue University in 1982, 1984, and 1987, respectively, and is an Outstanding Electrical Engineering Alumnus from his alma mater.