Cable Industry Research Consortium Becomes 12th Affiliate of University Research Center Exploring Super-Fast Data Transfer via Millimeter Wave Spectrum

NYU WIRELESS announced today that CableLabs, the non-profit research consortium for the cable industry, has joined the university research center as it drives the development of the next super-fast generation of mobile technology, 5G.  CableLabs becomes the 12th industry affiliate sponsor of the research center, joining Intel, Samsung, Qualcomm, and others, as the industry starts to look beyond 4G and LTE-A, in pursuit of faster connections and greater access.

The rapid consumption of wireless data continues to outpace the industry’s ability to meet demand. By 2020, an estimated 50 billion devices will be connected to wireless networks worldwide. In order to keep pace with demand, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently began exploring the potential of mobile services in the millimeter-wave (mmWave) radio spectrum—an area in which NYU WIRELESS is developing fundamental science and mathematical channel models needed to create 5G equipment. CableLabs’ research also lies at the heart of wireless: With more than half of all broadband traffic across all technologies initiated over
Wi-Fi, new technologies and new spectrum policy supporting wireless broadband are of strategic importance for the cable industry and broadband subscribers.

Researchers around the world envision that new technology using the mmWave spectrum could increase today’s wireless data capacity by a thousand-fold or more—essential for meeting demand growth that will exceed 60 percent annually for decades to come. The use of the mmWave spectrum is emerging as practical through the pioneering radio propagation and system simulation work at NYU WIRELESS.

“The addition of CableLabs as an industry affiliate sponsor is exciting not only because of the depth of research insight it brings, but because it illustrates just how quickly technology leaders are embracing the drive to 5G,” said Professor Theodore (Ted) Rappaport, founder and director of NYU WIRELESS. “The pace is much more rapid than the changeover to 4G—and it promises to vault the U.S. into a leadership position while ushering in a phase of thrilling research and development and products that will create jobs, wealth, and access to extraordinary new services and capabilities.”

“The use of mmWave frequencies provides a viable solution to meet the data rates and speeds promised by 5G,” said Dan Rice, senior vice president of Network Technology at CableLabs. “In order to ensure the most effective use of its capacity, it will require a ubiquitous wired network to offload data. The cable industry has invested a lot in its network and provides a robust and reliable platform for connecting wireless cells to the Internet. Collaborating with NYU WIRELESS enables us to solve the technical challenges of mmWave frequencies for the next generation of wireless broadband.”

The New York University Tandon School of Engineering launched NYU WIRELESS in August 2012. Focused on mass-deployable wireless devices across a wide range of applications and markets, NYU WIRELESS is the first university center to combine wireless, computing, and medical applications research. NYU WIRELESS includes more than 20 faculty members and 100 graduate students from the NYU School of Engineering Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, NYU Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, and the NYU Langone School of Medicine.

About CableLabs

Cable Television Laboratories was founded in 1988 by members of the cable television industry. A nonprofit research and development consortium, CableLabs delivers innovations that enable cable operators to be the providers of choice in their markets. Cable operators from around the world are members. For more information on CableLabs visit www.CableLabs.com  and follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/CableLabs

CableLabs® and DOCSIS® are registered trademarks of Cable Television Laboratories, Inc. Other CableLabs marks are listed at http://www.cablelabs.com/certqual/trademarks. All other marks are the property of their respective owners.

About NYU WIRELESS

NYU WIRELESS is a multi-disciplinary academic research center that offers an unprecedented and unique set of skills. Centered at New York University’s Brooklyn engineering location and involving faculty and students throughout the entire NYU community, NYU WIRELESS offers its faculty and students a world-class research environment that is creating the fundamental theories and techniques for next-generation mass-deployable wireless devices across a wide range of applications and markets. This center combines NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering program with NYU’s School of Medicine and the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences and offers a depth of expertise with unparalleled capabilities for the creation of new wireless circuits and systems as well as new health care solutions for the wireless industry. For more information, visit http://nyuwireless.com.