Researchers, headed by an Indian-origin engineer in US, Harish Krishnaswamy, have developed an original technology that can double Wi-Fi speeds with a single antenna, a breakthrough that could transform the field of telecommunications.
This is reportedly the first time researchers at the Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science, led by Associate Professor Harish, have developed a technology that needs only one antenna, thus allowing an even smaller overall system.
"This technology could revolutionize the field of telecommunications," said Krishnaswamy, Director of the Columbia High-Speed and Mm-wave IC (CoSMIC) Lab. He added that their circulator, a component that enables full-duplex communications, was the first to be put on a silicon chip and that can provide greater performance.
Full-duplex communications, where the transmitter and the receiver operate at the same time and frequency, has become a critical research area as the Wi-Fi capacity can be doubled on the silicon chip with a single antenna. “This has enormous implications for devices like smartphones and tablets," he said.
Krishnaswamy’s crew has been working on silicon radio chips for full duplex communications for several years and became predominantly involved in the role of the circulator.
The team was able to design an exceedingly miniaturised circulator that uses switches to rotate the signal and successfully assembled a prototype of their full-duplex system as well.
Harish Krishnaswamy is an Indian Institute of Technology-Madras alumni with a B.Tech degree in Electrical Engineering. He graduated in the year 2001 and received his MS and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of South California in 2003 and 2009 respectively. He received the IEEE International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) Lewis Winner Award for Outstanding Paper in 2007, the Best Thesis in Experimental Research Award from the USC Viterbi School of Engineering in 2009, and the DARPA Young Faculty Award in 2011. He currently lives in New York.