Category: news

NYU Tandon’s Shivendra Panwar Selected for Prestigious IEEE Distinguished Lectureship

Posted on

Shivendra Panwar, a professor of electrical and computer engineering and director of NYU Tandon’s Center for Advanced Technology in Telecommunications (CATT), has been named a Distinguished Lecturer by the IEEE Communications Society. 

The honor recognizes Panwar as one of the field’s most compelling speakers on cutting-edge topics in telecommunications and networking. As a Distinguished Lecturer, he’ll deliver talks around the world on a variety of subjects, including low-latency networks, fixed wireless access as “5G’s killer app,” and whether networks still need to deliver packets in sequence — a question that touches upon fundamental assumptions about how data travels across the internet. 

It’s a fitting recognition for someone whose career has been defined by asking the big questions. From his pioneering work on cooperative wireless communications to his research on full-duplex relaying and video transport, Panwar has consistently pushed the boundaries of what’s possible in network performance. 

The Distinguished Lecturer program allows the IEEE Communications Society chapters worldwide to bring leading experts directly to their communities. Panwar will be available for speaking engagements year round, sharing insights from decades at the forefront of telecommunications research.

The recognition adds to an already impressive list of honors. Panwar is an IEEE Life Fellow and a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. He’s won the IEEE Communications Society’s Leonard G. Abraham Prize, multiple Best Paper Awards (including ones from ICC 2016 and IEEE HPSR 2023), and NYU Tandon’s Excellence in Research Award in 2020. 

Beyond his technical contributions, Panwar is known for making complex networking concepts accessible — whether he’s explaining to students how packets race through switches or describing to policymakers how 5G will transform entire industries. That gift for clear communication, combined with deep technical expertise, makes him exactly the kind of ambassador the IEEE seeks for this role. 

The appointment runs through the end of 2027, giving Panwar plenty of time to spread the word about the fascinating challenges and opportunities in next-generation wireless networks.

Jack Keil Wolf Lecture: Model-Based Deep Learning for Sensing and Imaging: Efficient and Interpretable AI

Posted on

Speaker: Yonina Eldar, Aoun Chair Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Northeastern University and the Dorothy and Patrick Gorman Professorial Chair of Mathematics and Computer Science at the Weizmann Institute

Date & Time: January 23th 2026, Friday at 10 am

Zoom Link

Venue: 370 Jay Street, 8th Floor, Room 825, Brooklyn, NY 11201

Abstract: Deep neural networks have achieved unprecedented performance gains across numerous real-world signal and image processing tasks. However, their widespread adoption and practical deployment are often limited by their black-box nature – characterized by a lack of interpretability and a reliance on large training datasets.
In contrast, traditional approaches in signal processing, sensing, and communications have long leveraged classical statistical modeling techniques, which incorporate mathematical formulations based on underlying physical principles, prior knowledge, and domain expertise. While these models offer valuable insights, they can be overly simplistic and sensitive to inaccuracies, leading to suboptimal performance in complex or dynamic real-world scenarios.

This talk explores various approaches to model-based learning which merge parametric models with optimization tools and classical algorithms to create efficient, interpretable deep networks that require significantly smaller training datasets. We demonstrate the advantages of this approach through applications in image deblurring, image separation, super-resolution for ultrasound and microscopy, radar for clinical diagnostics, efficient communication systems, low-power sensing devices, and more. Additionally, we present theoretical results that establish the performance advantages of model-based deep networks over purely data-driven black-box methods.

Bio: Yonina Eldar is the Aoun Chair Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Northeastern University and the Dorothy and Patrick Gorman Professorial Chair of Mathematics and Computer Science at the Weizmann Institute where she founded and heads the Signal Acquisition Modeling Processing and Learning Lab (SAMPL) and the Center for Biomedical Engineering. She is also a Visiting Professor at MIT and Princeton, a Visiting Scientist at the Broad Institute, and an Adjunct Professor at Duke University and was a Visiting Professor at Stanford.  She is a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities  and of the Academia Europaea, an IEEE Fellow and a EURASIP Fellow. She received the B.Sc. degree in physics and the B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from Tel-Aviv University, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT. She has received many awards for excellence in research and teaching, including the Israel Prize (2025), Landau Prize (2024), IEEE Signal Processing Society Technical Achievement Award (2013), the IEEE/AESS Fred Nathanson Memorial Radar Award (2014) and the IEEE Kiyo Tomiyasu Award (2016). She received the Michael Bruno Memorial Award from the Rothschild Foundation, the Weizmann Prize for Exact Sciences, the Wolf Foundation Krill Prize for Excellence in Scientific Research, the Henry Taub Prize for Excellence in Research (twice), the Hershel Rich Innovation Award (three times), and the Award for Women with Distinguished Contributions. She was selected as one of the 50 most influential women in Israel, and was a member of the Israel Committee for Higher Education. She is the Editor in Chief of Foundations and Trends in Signal Processing, a member of several IEEE Technical Committees and Award Committees, and heads the Committee for Promoting Gender Fairness in Higher Education Institutions in Israel.

NYU Tandon’s Center for Advanced Technology in Telecommunications secures New York State re-designation after generating $208 million in economic impact

Posted on

Tandon’s CATT generates one of the highest economic impacts among all 15 Centers for Advanced Technology, creating new jobs and spurring economic development.

NYU Tandon School of Engineering’s Center for Advanced Technology in Telecommunications (CATT) was re-designated by New York State, building on a four-decade legacy of advancing industry-university collaborative research, technology transfer, and faculty entrepreneurship.

Empire State Development’s Division of Science, Technology and Innovation (NYSTAR) competitively awards Center for Advanced Technology (CAT) designations to universities that demonstrate exceptional abilities to drive economic growth through industry partnerships.

Since 1983, CATT has exemplified this mission. Between 2022 and 2023, it generated over $208 million in total economic impact and created 99 new jobs, leading all 15 CATs across the state.

“NYSTAR’s Centers for Advanced Technology are vital to our strategic efforts to grow New York’s economy and the state’s greater innovation ecosystem,” said Empire State Development President, CEO and Commissioner Hope Knight. “By investing in the industries of tomorrow, New Yorkers benefit today through dynamic partnerships that help to create new jobs, generate more revenues, and encourage more companies to establish a footprint in communities all throughout the state.”

Shivendra (Shiv) Panwar — CATT’s director for the past thirty years and a professor in NYU Tandon’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Department — was recently named a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors and holds over 25 patents spanning packet switching, media streaming, and cybersecurity.

“For over two decades, I’ve watched CATT evolve from supporting basic telecommunications research to tackling the most pressing challenges in 5G, cybersecurity, and more,” said Panwar. “CATT’s wireless work provided the foundation for what evolved into NYU WIRELESS, now the nation’s leading 6G research center. What makes CATT special is our ability to work with everyone from two-person startups to Fortune 500 companies, helping them navigate from initial concept to market-ready solutions. This re-designation ensures we can continue serving as that vital translator between the research happening in our labs and the practical needs of New York’s technology industry.”

While focused on New York, the center’s influence extends beyond the State. Wireless signal propagation models developed at CATT now power cellular network designs across the United States and Europe, for example. CATT’s work helped NASDAQ launch the first nationwide real-time financial trading system.

The center’s startup legacy includes Comverse Technology, which went public and created more than 500 jobs, and System Management Arts, demonstrating CATT’s ability to nurture ideas from laboratory to market.

CATT’s researchers have pioneered breakthrough technologies including Massive MIMO and millimeter wave systems that enable today’s 5G networks, while developing digital forensic tools that enhance cybersecurity across industries.

Today, CATT leverages its $1 million in annual state funding with similar industry investment to work with 20 to 30 companies simultaneously, including startups and telecommunications leaders. Drawing on expertise from over 50 researchers across NYU, Columbia University, and partner institutions, the center focuses on three critical areas — wireless technology, cybersecurity, and AI/data science — ultimately supporting NYSTAR in advancing technology innovation and commercialization in New York State.

About Empire State Development

Empire State Development is New York’s chief economic development agency, and promotes business growth, job creation, and greater economic opportunity throughout the state. With offices in each of the state’s 10 regions, ESD oversees the Regional Economic Development Councils, supports broadband equity through the ConnectALL office, and is growing the workforce of tomorrow through the Office of Strategic Workforce Development. The agency engages with emerging and next generation industries like clean energy and semiconductor manufacturing looking to grow in New York State, operates a network of assistance centers to help small businesses grow and succeed, and promotes the state’s world class tourism destinations through I LOVE NY. For more information, please visit esd.ny.gov, and connect with ESD on LinkedIn, Facebook and X.

About ESD’s Division of Science, Technology and Innovation (NYSTAR)

Empire State Development’s Division of Science, Technology and Innovation — known as NYSTAR — advances technology innovation and commercialization in New York State. NYSTAR offers programs that assist companies from start-up through maturity, leveraging the state’s unparalleled investment in world-class technology assets and expertise. It provides about $80 million annually in funding to support over 80 centers that provide direct assistance to New York State companies — a network of vital assets for enabling technology — and manufacturing-led growth and job creation. NYSTAR and its partners are proud to contribute to New York’s leadership in the global innovation economy. For more information, visit esd.ny.gov/nystar.

About the New York University Tandon School of Engineering

The NYU Tandon School of Engineering is home to a community of renowned faculty, undergraduate and graduate students united in a mission to understand and create technology that powers cities, enables worldwide communication, fights climate change, and builds healthier, safer, and more equitable real and digital worlds. The school’s culture centers on encouraging rigorous, interdisciplinary collaboration and research; fostering inclusivity, entrepreneurial thinking, and diverse perspectives; and creating innovative and accessible pathways for lifelong learning in STEM. NYU Tandon dates back to 1854, the founding year of both the New York University School of Civil Engineering and Architecture and the Brooklyn Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute. Located in the heart of Brooklyn, NYU Tandon is a vital part of New York University and its unparalleled global network. For more information, visit engineering.nyu.edu.

Jack Keil Wolf Lecture: Internet For All – High-Speed Broadband for Every Home in the United States

Posted on

 

Speaker: Henning Schulzrinne, Levi Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University

Date & Time: April 24th, 2025, Thursday at 11 am

Venue: 370 Jay Street, 8th Floor, Brooklyn, NY 11201

Zoom Link

Abstract: Since 2010, the U.S. government has created a number of programs to build out internet access in high-cost areas, along with attempts to make internet access available to low-income households, schools, libraries and health clinics. The 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) allocated $42.5 billion for broadband deployment as the BEAD (Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment), with the goal of providing 100 Megabit or faster high-quality internet access to every household and small business in the 56 states and territories within four years of selecting providers. (This amount is roughly four times the total NSF budget.) NTIA (National Telecommunications and Information Administration), located within the Department of Commerce, administers the BEAD project. I served two years on the BEAD policy team. In this talk, I will discuss:
·      Why subsidize rural broadband? What has been tried before?
·      What are the difficult policy choices in getting to 100% deployment?
·      What roles do bespoke software, “big data,” and data analysis play in administering complex grant programs?
·      How do government teams work in practice?

Bio: Prof.  Henning Schulzrinne, Levi Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University, with Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, Massachusetts.  MTS at AT&T Bell Laboratories; associate department head at GMD-Fokus (Berlin); now CS and EE departments at Columbia University.  Chair of Computer Science 2004 to 2009; Engineering Fellow, Technical Advisor and Chief Technology Officer of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) 2010-2017; technology fellow for Sen.  Wyden in 2019-2020; now broadband advisor at NTIA.  Protocol standards co-developed by him, including RTP, RTSP and SIP, are now used by almost all Internet telephony and multimedia applications.  Fellow of the ACM and IEEE.

NYU Tandon School of Engineering receives $10 million from National Telecommunications and Information Administration

Posted on
pi_radio_NTIA

NYU Tandon, collaborating institutions and industry partners have been awarded nearly $10 million to develop next generation communications technology.

The project, dubbed SALSA (Spectrally Agile Large-Scale Arrays), is funded by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to advance U.S. leadership in open, secure communications infrastructure.

SALSA aims to create advanced wireless systems that operate in the “upper mid-band” spectrum — a region of frequencies relatively unused in cellular systems today that offers an optimal balance of coverage and data capacity. SALSA will develop an advanced radio frequency integrated circuit (RFIC) operating in these bands.

The RFIC will be designed for the Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) framework to enable deployment in emerging commercial networks. The award comes through the NTIA’s Public Wireless Supply Chain Innovation Fund, established under the CHIPS and Science Act to promote O-RAN development and domestic manufacturing of telecommunications equipment, seen as crucial for economic competitiveness and national security.

“SALSA focuses on the upper mid-band — a sweet spot in wireless communications,” said Sundeep Rangan, the project’s lead investigator. Rangan is the Associate Director of the NYU WIRELESS research center and a professor of electrical and computer engineering at NYU Tandon. “The upper mid-band frequencies provide an optimal balance of bandwidth and coverage, making them ideal for future high-data-rate applications. The spectrally agile features of the SALSA RFIC will enable coordination between cellular operators, satellites, and federal systems, ensuring robust communications even in adverse conditions. The scale of this investment — which we believe represents one of the largest federal commitments to O-RAN — underscores this work’s importance.”

“This project represents a pivotal moment in wireless technology development that builds on NYU Tandon’s leadership in advancing cellular networks,” said Juan de Pablo, NYU’s Executive Vice President for Global Science and Technology and Executive Dean of NYU Tandon. “We’re creating new technologies that will democratize advanced wireless networks making them more open, efficient and secure- helping ensure that the next generation of wireless innovation serves the broader public good while strengthening America’s technological leadership.”

The SALSA project is structured around four major tasks: developing specialized wireless chips, building modular radio platforms, integrating with open network standards, and analyzing system performance.

NYU Tandon will oversee a team of academic and industry partners to achieve those objectives. Pi-Radio — a startup spun out of NYU Tandon that received sponsorship from NYU WIRELESS, the Center for Advanced Technology in Telecommunications, and the NTIA — will lead development of the physical radio platform – including packaging, antennas, and system integration.

In 2023, NYU Tandon and Pi-Radio received one of the first grants awarded from the Public Wireless Supply Chain Innovation Fund. That award supported the development of an initial version of the system in the upper mid-band. The current project will build on this highly successful project to create an RFIC-based version with much lower cost and power and greater scale suitable for commercial systems.

Princeton University’s Professor Kaushik Sengupta and NYU Tandon Assistant Professor Hamed Rahmani bring considerable expertise in advanced RFICs and will lead the development of the proposed radio micro-chip itself.

Rutgers University’s WINLAB will provide critical testing facilities for the project – first at their indoor ORBIT lab in New Jersey, and later supporting outdoor trials at the COSMOS testbed in New York City. WINLAB also runs one of the largest O-RAN testing and integration centers that will be leveraged for this project.

Nokia, a global leader in wireless network infrastructure and NYU WIRELESS affiliate member, will evaluate SALSA technology for cellular networks. The evaluation results will be used for future product design requirements for commercialization.

Analog Devices, a global semiconductor leader and also an Industrial Affiliate member of NYU WIRELESS, will provide specialized radio hardware that helps connect the project’s wireless technology to O-RAN, making it compatible with equipment from different manufacturers.

Quotes:

Chuck Schumer, United States Senator: “This $9.9 million federal investment, funded by the CHIPS and Science Act I shepherded through Congress, not only supports NYU Tandon and its academic partners, but also shows the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s commitment to developing more wireless infrastructure in New York and across the United States. I’m proud to support the federal funding needed for projects focused on developing O-RAN, advanced microchips and wireless systems for more resilient cellular wireless networks.”
Hope Knight, President, CEO and Commissioner, Empire State Development: “This federal award to NYU Tandon and its partners reaffirms New York State’s position as the epicenter of next-generation wireless innovation. The SALSA project, which brings together world-class academic institutions, startups, and industry leaders, demonstrates how New York’s complete innovation ecosystem is advancing Open RAN technology and 6G networks. From research excellence to advanced manufacturing at New York facilities, this collaboration showcases why our state continues to lead in developing the telecommunications technology of tomorrow.”
Aditya Dhananjay, Co-founder and President, Pi-Radio: “Pi-Radio (an NYU-spinoff small business) is excited to work with the amazing RF team at NYU and Princeton to develop these FR3 front-end chips, and take the critical next step of “chip to system” translation to enable real-world systems in cellular, satellites, and defense. This important commercialization work would not have been possible without support from the New York State Center for Advanced Technologies in Telecommunications (CATT), NYU WIreless, and the NTIA.”
Bryan Goldstein, Corporate Vice President, Aerospace, Defense and Communications, Analog Devices, Inc. (ADI): “Congratulations to NYU Tandon and the broader team for winning the NTIA award to continue development of new technologies for energy efficient, secure Large-Scale Array Open RAN radio units. The team’s progress during the last 18 months demonstrates the value of this effort. This award will help bring the technology to the next level, and ADI is excited to continue contributing to the project’s success.”
Hamed Rahmani, Assistant Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, NYU Tandon School of Engineering: “This project presents an exciting opportunity to explore the hardware challenges of radio systems in the upper mid-band. The unique properties of this frequency band offer a balance between coverage and bandwidth, which could be crucial for the next generation of cellular applications. Our focus will be on developing broadband and energy-efficient techniques to help realize this vision, with the hope that our results will contribute to the commercialization of the FR3 band.” Directing the Research in Advanced Integrated Circuits and Systems (RAISE) lab, Rahmani’s research is focused on integrated circuits and systems to enable a broad range of communication, imaging, and sensing technologies.
Kaushik Sengupta, Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Princeton University: “At Princeton, we are excited to partner with NYU and the team to work on addressing the upper mid-band. We cannot take commercial chips out there, and build effective and efficient systems. It just won’t work. To realize this vision, we need carefully designed custom wireless chips, and it is critical to make them energy efficient.” Sengupta directs one of the leading research groups in the field of wireless integrated circuits and systems.
Ivan Seskar, Chief Technologist at Rutgers University/WINLAB and Program Director of the COSMOS testbed: “At WINLAB, we are excited to evaluate FR3 technology using the newly developed RFIC-based system and its integration into the O-RAN ecosystem. This collaboration not only brings novel bands to 5G/6G but also paves the way for innovative advancements in wireless technology and the development of next-generation wireless systems.”
Peter Vetter, President of Bell Labs Core Research, Nokia: “For 100 years, Bell Labs has been pioneering technological advancements, from the inception of the Bell Telephone System to the emerging 6G landscape. Nokia Bell Labs continues to drive U.S. technology leadership. We are proud to collaborate with our esteemed university partners, NYU, Princeton, and Rutgers in the SALSA project, to advance upper mid-band technologies.

Exploiting Statistical Hardness for Increased Privacy in Wireless Systems

Posted on

Date & time: Tuesday, May 7, 2024 at 11 am EST

Location: 370 Jay Street, 8th floor,  seminar room, Brooklyn, NY 11201.

Abstract: Securing signals from unintended eavesdroppers has become an increasingly important problem with the emergence of the Internet-of-Things. Herein, we examine learning problems in signal processing that are inherently hard without key side information. In particular, we exploit necessary resolution limits for classical compressed sensing problems. To limit an eavesdropper’s capabilities, we create an environment for the eavesdropper wherein the appropriate compressed sensing algorithm would provably fail. The intended receiver overcomes this ill-posed problem by leveraging secret side information shared between the intended transmitter and receiver. Two scenarios are considered: one for communication over a wireless channel where a novel block-sparsity based signaling strategy is employed and one for localization where novel structured noise is introduced to degrade the form of the eavesdropper’s channel. In the latter scenario, the transmitter designs a beamformer that introduces spurious paths, or  alternatively spoofs the line-of-sight path, in the channel without having access to the channel state information. Both far-field and near-field cases are considered for the private localization. In both private communication and private localization, the amount of secret information that must be shared is very modest. Theoretical guarantees can be provided for both cases.  Preliminary results on the information theoretic limits of this form of private communication are provided. Proposed algorithms are validated via numerical results and it is seen that the eavesdropper’s capabilities are severely degraded.

Biography: Urbashi Mitra received the B.S. and the M.S. degrees from the University of California at Berkeley and her Ph.D. from Princeton University.  She began her academic career at The Ohio State University.  Dr. Mitra is currently the Gordon S. Marshall Professor in Engineering at the University of Southern California with appointments in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Dr. Mitra is a Fellow of the IEEE.   She was the inaugural Editor-in-Chief for the IEEE Transactions on Molecular, Biological and Multi-scale Communications. Dr. Mitra has served as an Associate or Area Editor for multiple IEEE publications.  Dr. Mitra was a member of the IEEE Information Theory Society’s Board of Governors (2002-2007, 2012-2017), the IEEE Signal Processing Society’s Technical Committee on Signal Processing for Communications and Networks (2012-2017, Vice-Chair 2024), the IEEE Signal Processing Society’s Awards Board (2017-2018), and the Chair/Vice Chair of the IEEE Communications Society, Communication Theory Technical Committee (2017-2020). She is the recipient of: the 2021 USC Viterbi School of Engineering Senior Research Award, the 2017 IEEE Communications Society Women in Communications Engineering Technical Achievement Award, a 2016 UK Royal Academy of Engineering Distinguished Visiting Professorship, a 2016 US Fulbright Scholar Award, a 2016-2017 UK Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professorship, 2016 IEEE Communications Society Women in Communications Engineering Mentoring Award, IEEE Communications Society (2015-2016)  and Signal Processing Society (2024) Distinguished Lecturer, 2012 Globecom Signal Processing for Communications Symposium Best Paper Award, 2012 US National Academy of Engineering Lillian Gilbreth Lectureship, Student Best Paper Award, as co-advisor, at the International Conference on Signal Processing and Communications, Bangalore India 2012, the 2009 DCOSS Applications & Systems Best Paper Award, Texas Instruments Visiting Professor (Fall 2002, Rice University), 2001 Okawa Foundation Award, 2000 OSU College of Engineering Lumley Award for Research, 1997 OSU College of Engineering MacQuigg Award for Teaching, and a 1996 National Science Foundation CAREER Award.  She is most recently, the general co-chair  for the IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, 2024, Athens Greece.  Dr. Mitra has held visiting appointments at: King’s College, London, Imperial College, the Delft University of Technology, Stanford University, Rice University, and the Eurecom Institute. Her research interests are in:  model-based machine learning, wireless communications, communication and sensor networks, biological communication systems, and the interface of communication, sensing and control.

The Software-ization of Networking: Protocols, People, Pedagogy

Posted on

Abstract: It has been said that “software is eating the world.” With the arrival of software-defined networking (SDN), software is “eating” networking as well. In this talk, we consider the impact of SDN on the evolution of network protocols, on network management and “people in the loop”, and on how and what we will teach to future generations of networking students

Bio: Jim Kurose is a Distinguished University Professor of Computer Science Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.   His research interests include computer network architecture and protocols, network measurement, sensor networks, and multimedia communication. From 2015 to 2019, Jim served as Assistant Director at the US National Science Foundation, where he led the Directorate of Computer and Information Science and Engineering, and in 2018, served as the Assistant Director for Artificial Intelligence in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.  He has also served as a department chair, dean and associate chancellor at UMass.  He has received a number of awards for his research, teaching and service, including the IEEE Infocom Award, the ACM SIGCOMM Lifetime Achievement Award, the ACM Sigcomm Test of Time Award,  the IEEE Computer Society Taylor Booth Education Medal, and the CRA Distinguished Service Award. With Keith Ross, he is the co-author of the best-selling textbook, Computer Networking: a Top Down Approach (Pearson), now in its 8th edition. He is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the ACM, IEEE and AAAS.

Date & time: September 26, 2023 at 11 am EST
Location: 370 Jay Street, 8th floor,  seminar room, Brooklyn, NY 11201.

 

Biden-Harris Administration Awards First Grants from Wireless Innovation Fund

Posted on

The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) awarded nearly $5.5 million in the first round of grants from the Public Wireless Supply Chain Innovation Fund.

The $1.5 billion Wireless Innovation Fund supports the development of open and interoperable wireless networks as part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s Investing in America agenda.

Open and interoperable wireless equipment will help drive competition, strengthen global supply chain resiliency and lower costs for consumers and network operators.

“America’s continued leadership in wireless technology is critical to our economic competitiveness and national security,” said U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said. “These investments in the next generation of wireless innovation will help create a more diverse and resilient marketplace and ensure that American companies and entrepreneurs, along with our allies, remain at the cutting edge of this crucial technology.”

The shift to open and interoperable networks is vital for our national and economic security. The development of new, open-architecture approaches to wireless networks will help to ensure that future wireless equipment is built by the U.S. and its global allies and partners – not vendors from nations that threaten our national security.

This first round of funding will support R&D and testing activities related to evaluating energy efficiency, measuring performance of interoperable equipment and testing methods for sharing spectrum.

The funding totaled $5,482,052 and was awarded to projects at Northeastern University, New York University, and DeepSig Inc.

Innovation Fund Director Amanda Toman announced the awards at an event with Northeastern University.

“This first round of Wireless Innovation Fund awards will accelerate the transition to more open and resilient 5G and 6G wireless networks,” said Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information and NTIA Administrator Alan Davidson. “These grants will fund important research and testing to catalyze greater adoption of open wireless equipment. This in turn will promote resilience, innovation, and efficiency in the mobile networks so important to our economy.”

“At Northeastern, our research enterprise is relentlessly focused on impact in the world,” said David Madigan, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at Northeastern University. “This grant from the NTIA, made possible by the signing of the historic CHIPs Act, will be help us continue to pioneer critical research in wireless systems and networks, ensuring that the next generation of the Internet of Things will be a continuum of connected devices able to interact in new and exciting ways.”

“This project seeks to develop testing and evaluation procedures for next-generation cellular wireless systems in the upper mid-band, a promising new frequency range that has attracted considerable interest from wireless carriers,” said Sundeep Rangan, Associate Director of NYU WIRELESS. “Systems in these frequencies will likely need to be adaptive and agile to utilize the wide bandwidth and directionally communicate. The project will investigate how this spectrum agility can be tested for both dynamic spectrum sharing and resiliency to attacks— two vital features of these bands.”

“DeepSig is honored to be a recipient of the NTIA’s Public Wireless Innovation Fund,” said Jim Shea, CEO of DeepSig Inc. “Our effort will improve the performance and competitiveness of the Open RAN Air-Interface by leveraging DeepSig’s Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) and tools for modeling and measuring the wireless environment under real world conditions. Developing new Generative AI tools for Open RAN will accelerate the adoption and performance of Open RAN for 5G, and future AI-Native 5G Advanced and 6G. We are excited to get to work!”

Funded by the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, the Innovation Fund will invest $1.5 billion over the next decade to support the development of open and interoperable networks. NTIA will make up to $140.5 million in grants available on a rolling basis from the first round of funding.

more..

IEEE HPSR Keynote: Latency is the new Bandwidth

Posted on

The data rates of both wired and wireline links have increased relentlessly over the last several decades. Wireless access rates used to trail those for wireline access rates, but of late have started catching up, so much so that they can  be viewed as essentially equal. For most applications,  including mobile applications, bandwidth availability is not viewed as a serious constraint anymore. 5G is delivering tens of megabits per second to users, and will soon provide more. The next driver of advances in networking is expected to be the need for reliable low latency connectivity, rather than bandwidth alone. These applications include XR (Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and Mixed Reality), wirelessly controlled robots and haptic communications. The latency requirements for such applications vary from tens of milliseconds down to the sub-millisecond range. While the latency requirements for these applications can be met by carefully engineered wired and wireless communications, typically in controlled indoor environments, it is still a challenge to provide them over cellular networks. This talk will focus on the emerging challenge of providing reliable low latency broadband communications over cellular networks.

Source: https://hpsr2023.ieee-hpsr.org/program/keynotes/

IEEE HPSR: BEST PAPER AWARD

Posted on

The 24th IEEE International Conference on High-Performance Switching and Routing (IEEE HPSR 2023) held in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA, from June 5 to 7 culminated with the prestigious Best Paper Award bestowed upon the work titled “Do Switches Still Need to Deliver Packets in Sequence?” authored by Ufuk Usubutun, Fraida Fund, and Shivendra Panwar from New York University & Tandon School of Engineering.

Internet switches become harder and costlier to build for higher line rates and switch capacities. In-sequence delivery of packets has traditionally been a constraint on switch designs because TCP loss detection was considered vulnerable to out-of-sequence arrivals. For this reason, extremely efficient and simple designs, such as the Load Balanced Birkhoff-von Neumann Switch, were considered impractical. The research reevaluates this constraint considering modern TCP implementations with loss detection algorithms like Recent Acknowledgment (RACK) that are more resilient to out-of-order arrivals. In a set of testbed experiments representative of wide area core networks, the research evaluates the performance of TCP flows traversing a load balanced switch that reorders some packets within a flow. The findings indicate that widely deployed and standard TCP implementations of the last decade achieve similar performance when traversing a load balanced switch as they do when there is no reordering. Furthermore, it also verifies that an increase in the line rate leads to favorable conditions for time based loss detection methods, such as the one used in RACK. If further validated, these results suggest that switch designs that were previously thought to be unsuitable can potentially be utilized, thanks to the relaxation of the in-sequence delivery constraint.

Source: https://hpsr2023.ieee-hpsr.org/

Paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10147992