Intel joins other industry giants to fund NYU Wireless research

Chipmaker giant Intel is the latest company to become an affiliate of NYU Wireless, an industry research program based at the former NYU Poly.

Affiliate companies pay $100,000 per year for a three year commitment of access to early market research, according to an interview with Prof. Ted Rappaport, the founding director, on FierceWirelessTech. Previous companies to join as affiliates include Qualcomm, Nokia and Samsung.

NYU Wireless is exploring the millimeter band of extremely high frequency wireless communication. Rappaport and others believe that the millimeter band will be useful for dense urban wireless networks that are increasingly being overworked by active data users. The band has a short range, but that’s advantageous in a way. It allows for more users of a given band, licensing it to different people in different areas.

“NYU’s cutting-edge research to explore millimeter wave channels in urban environments will help inform the evolution of next-generation small-cell network technologies. Intel is pleased to contribute to and support these efforts,” said David Ott, program director for Intel’s University Research Office.

NYU Wireless has made a database of measurements of the millimeter band throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn. Affiliates can use this information for their own internal research. Affiliates also get early access to NYU Wireless’s research publications and two seats on its board. Rappaport describes this as a “pre-competitive” way of sharing costs across the industry.

NYU Wireless is a center that includes 20 faculty and dozens of graduate students, from engineering, mathematics and medical schools.