Bangalore, March 12 2015: Indians scientists and engineers have what it takes to contribute significantly to the evolving standards for 5G, feels Arogyaswami Paulraj, Emeritus Professor of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University (US) and the inventor of MIMO technology that underpins wireless communication today.
5G -- the fifth generation of the technology that drives mobiles mobile phones -- is still 4 years away from rollout and it is important that the interests of India, one of the world's largest markets for cellular communication be reflected in the standards, he added. Over $ 500 million would be spent at arriving at such standards.
Prof Paulraj was delivering a public lecture on the past present and future of mobile communications, at the Visvesvaraya Industrial and Technological Museaum, earlier this week, under the joint aegis of the museum and the Bangalore section of IEEE.
Starting with the seminal work of Dr J C Bose in the early 1900s to the research of Prof. Thomas Kailath at MIT in the 1950s on 'spread spectrum', to Prof Paulraj's own patents in MIMO ( Multiple In, Multiple Out) in the 1990s, wireless communication has seen key contributions by Indians. However, for the first 30 years of mobile communication from 1986 to 2016, India has largely been a user of the technology. For the next 30 years, we must be builders of technology, Prof Paulraj said.
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Cell towers need regulation
Answering a question from the audience, Dr Paulraj said, while mobile cell towers were not
inherently unsafe, the high density and placement of such towers in India could well be
" a real danger".
"The deployment of cell towers in some parts of the country are not safe", he added.
Some of these towers radiating anything up to 20 watts of energy into homes, raised some
serious regulatory issues he felt.
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