UTD & NI Partner on a Project to Help Shape the Future of 4G Communications

[jboone]

Key elements of the next-generation of mobile technology are under  development at UT Dallas, promising better Internet access, lightning-fast  downloads and seamless global roaming.

A two-year project focuses on the advanced algorithms required to orchestrate  the complexities of fourth-generation, or 4G, communications. Those complexities  arise in part from what’s known as MU-MIMO – multi-user, multi-input,  multi-output technology – and particularly from the proliferation of  antennas.

Your basic walkie talkie had just one antenna. But soon your cellphone and  the person’s you’re calling will each have multiple antennas inside, and each  cellular base station will also have multiple antennas. Optimizing the  communications in such a situation is not trivial.

“In order to realize the full benefits of MU-MIMO for 4G devices, new ideas  and techniques must be developed,” said Murat Torlak, an associate professor of  electrical engineering in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science at  UT Dallas and principal investigator on the project. “In particular, effective  and novel real-time algorithms with excellent complexity/performance tradeoffs  must be implemented.”

Torlak’s team is one of four groups in the nation working on an effort  co-funded by National  Instruments that involves the implementation of real-time algorithms for  software-defined radio, cognitive radio and other communications applications.  The others are at the University of California, Berkeley; Virginia Tech; and UT  Austin.

Click the link below to read the full story:

http://www.utdallas.edu/news/2010/3/24-1971_Project-Helping-Shape-Future-of-4G-Communications_articl...