Ted Rappaport Keynote Talk
Title: Two Foundational Wireless Technologies Born from Dynamic Data Driven Applications and Systems
Abstract: This keynote presents the little-known history behind the research, development and global commercialization of two fundamental technologies that are embedded in all wireless networks today.
First, the use of over-the-air monitoring of cellular and paging systems, combined with dynamic data-driven approaches, led to the first autonomous broad area mobile user detection system in cities and large geographic areas. This technology, born in the first generation of the US Cellular standard, first became a critical part of the law enforcement community to detect and capture cellphone and paging criminals, and was used to find stranded motorists, eventually leading to the world’s first Emergency 911 (E911) emergency position location system in the United States. E911 is foundational to all cellular networks around the world today. The second foundational technology, site-specific network management, was born from NSF funding in the early/mid 1990s, where site-specific computer aided network design, raytracing for propagation prediction and modeling, and feedback from dynamic, real time network measurements were fused to dynamically allocate resources in wireless networks in and around buildings. This site-specific approach is now used in virtually every enterprise local area network and cellular phone installation around the world.
Bio-Overview: Prof. Theodore (Ted) S. Rappaport (tsr@nyu.edu), is the David Lee/Ernst Weber Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Tandon School of Engineering at New York University (NYU), and is a professor in the NYU Courant Computer Science Dept. and the NYU Grossman School of Medicine. He founded the NYU WIRELESS research center in 2012 and the wireless research centers at the University of Texas Austin (WNCG) and Virginia Tech (MPRG) earlier in his career. He has authored or co-authored widely used textbooks on wireless communications, millimeter wave communications, smart antennas, and simulation. He has provided fundamental knowledge for wireless system design and radio propagation channels used to create the IEEE 802.11Wi-Fi standard, the first U.S. digital TDMA and CDMA standards, the first public Wi-Fi hotspots, and has led the world to adopt millimeter wave and sub-Terahertz frequencies for 5G, 6G, and beyond. His work influenced the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to open up the world’s first mobile telephone spectrum in the millimeter wave bands in 2014-2016 as part of the FCC Spectrum Frontiers ruling, and he again led the FCC to open up spectrum in the sub-Terahertz bands above 95 GHz with the FCC Spectrum Horizons ruling in 2018-2019. He founded two businesses that were sold to publicly traded companies — TSR Technologies, Inc. which pioneered software defined radios for cellphone/paging over-the-air intercept and the first Emergency-911 (E911) cellphone position location system, and Wireless Valley Communications, Inc., a leader in site-specific wireless deployment, and was an advisor to Straight Path Communications which sold 5G millimeter wave spectrum to Verizon. He is a licensed Professional Engineer and is in the Wireless Hall of Fame, a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the U.S. National Academy of Inventors, recipient of IEEE’s Eric Sumner Award, and a life member of the American Radio Relay League. His ham radio call sign is N9NB.