17 April 2016, New York :
Harish Krishnaswamy, an electrical engineering graduate has developed a novel technology that doubles Wi-Fi speeds with a single antenna, an achievement with potential to transform the telecommunications field in future.
Krishnaswamy, who’s of Indian origin is the director of the Columbia High-Speed and Mm-wave IC (CoSMIC) Lab. He said, “This technology could revolutionise the field of telecommunications.”
“Our circulator is the first to be put on a silicon chip, and we get literally orders of magnitude better performance than prior work,” he added.
Last year, Columbia researchers invented a technology full duplex radio integrated circuits (ICs) that can be implemented in nanoscale CMOS to enable simultaneous transmission and reception at the same frequency in a wireless radio. That system required two antennas.
Krishnaswamy further explained, “Full-duplex communications, where the transmitter and the receiver operate at the same time and at the same frequency, has become a critical research area and now we’ve shown that WiFi capacity can be doubled on a nanoscale silicon chip with a single antenna. This has enormous implications for devices like smartphones and tablets.”
Jin Zhou, co-researcher added to the information, “Being able to put the circulator on the same chip as the rest of the radio has the potential to significantly reduce the size of the system, enhance its performance, and introduce new functionalities critical to full duplex.”
“It is rare for a single piece of research, or even a research group, to bridge fundamental theoretical contributions with implementations of practical relevance. It is extremely rewarding to supervise graduate students who were able to do that,” Krishnaswamy told.
They had to break and rework the theorem ‘Lorentz Reciprocity’ – a fundamental physical characteristic of most electronic structures that requires electromagnetic waves travel in the same manner in forward and reverse directions to develop the technology.
Source : ndtv.com