NYU recently received $1 million worth of equipment from National Instruments — one of the founding sponsors of the NYU Wireless Center — to support the development of 5G wireless technology and facilitate the simulation of experiments in this field, according to Technically Media.

According to its website, NYU Wireless is a multi-disciplinary academic research center located at Tandon. The initiative has been responsible for some developments in research fields related to cell and data signals, and it is currently leading the nation in 5G development.

5G will bring in a groundbreaking tech shift since it will carry data at a speed 100 to 1000 times faster than the current fourth generation cell phone. This will enable downloading full-feature movies within seconds, support high-speed gaming techniques and foster the fields of virtual reality and artificial intelligence while encouraging research on the Internet of Things — the interconnection of computing devices embedded in everyday objects through the internet.

Tandon Professor of Electrical Engineering Ted Rappaport is the founding director of NYU Wireless. He has spearheaded the promising developmental efforts and encouraged students to concentrate their research on this domain.

“We are one of the few universities around the world that [National Instruments] trusts to use their latest equipment even before they commercialize it,” Rappaport said. “We help them make their products better, give them feedback and they have currently donated to us cutting-edge instruments.”

Tandon graduate student and NYU IT employee Sugandan Gopalakrishnan believes that the development of 5G technology could be extremely beneficial to the industry.

“Growth is the future and this research is certainly going to enhance opportunities in the telecommunications industry,” Gopalakrishnan said. “I believe with 5G, there would be a spike in data transmission rate and we can overcome network latency.”

Rappaport said that NYU Wireless will be showcasing its research projects alongside other startups who will be exhibiting their products.

“We have world leaders convening on the NYU Tandon Engineering Campus next week,” Rappaport said. “We have invited the press, the CTO of MTT DoCoMo, CTO of Korea Telecom, executives from Verizon and the riveting event will be made available to the world as IEEE livestreams it.”

A version of this story appeared in the Monday April 17th print edition.

Email Sanjukta Phadke at [email protected]