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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