NYU Wireless 5G program gets signal boost with $1M donation

NYU Wireless just got a big-time donation from a corporate patron to continue its work in developing 5G wireless technology.

The donation comes in the form of nearly $1 million of equipment which will allow researchers to be better able to test, rather than just simulate some experiments, from Texas-based, billion-dollar company National Instruments (NI).

“NYU Wireless and NI have had a long and productive working relationship as NI was a founding sponsor of our wireless center in 2012,” said professor Ted Rappaport, founding director of NYU Wireless at NYU Tandon. “We look forward to providing NI with feedback on its products and using them for further breakthroughs in the massively broadband future of mmWave wireless communications.”

NYU Wireless has had some promising developments so far in its research to use the previously untouched realms of the electromagnetic spectrum for cell and data signals. The university, led by Rappaport, is leading the nation in terms of its work on this, which many people thought an impossible task.

Last year we talked to one of Rappaport’s associates at NYU Wireless, who offered a sort of primer on what the millimeter wave spectrum is and how it can be used. And in November, one of the program’s grad students, George MacCartney, won the Young Scholar award from the Marconi Foundation for his work with Rappaport.