Calit2 Affiliate Attracts $3.5 Million from Companies and State of California for Wireless Research
Five new research projects funded by industry and the State of California could lead to lowering the cost of wireless access for all citizens, and higher data rates for wireless Internet access.
The Center for Wireless Communications (CWC), which participates in the Calit2 division at the University of California, San Diego, has been awarded $1.5 million in matching funds from the State of California, to complement roughly $2 million in corporate funding for five separate research projects in the wireless arena. The grants from California's Communications Research (CoRe) program will fund research for two years effective August 15, with industry funds coming from twelve CWC member companies including Hughes Network Systems, Texas Instruments, Nokia, Fuji, Conexant, Intersil, STMicro, IdeaEDGE, Ericsson, AMCC, KDDI and Qualcomm. Most of the corporate sponsors are also Calit2 industrial partners.
"This is a vote of confidence in our mission to leverage the synergies of the state, member companies and faculty resources to do the research that will keep the State of California and the nation on the cutting edge of wireless technology," said Lawrence Larson, CWC director and Communications Industry professor of electrical engineering at UCSD's Irwin and Joan Jacobs School of Engineering. "The CoRe program allows more research to be accomplished in areas that are crucial to the future of society and the wireless telecommunications industry."
The state funds will be used primarily to support Ph.D. students performing wireless research on five projects. The projects, including principal investigators (PI), are:
- Critical Mixed-Signal Circuit Blocks for Highly Integrated Wireless Transceivers (lead PI Ian Galton, and PI Larry Larson)
- Enhanced Coverage of High Data Rate Wireless Systems (lead PI Pamela Cosman, other Pis Laurence Milstein, Paul Siegel, Kenneth Zeger, Alon Orlitsky and Geoffrey Voelker)
- Linear Power Amplifiers and Transmitter Building Blocks for Next-Generation Wireless Applications (lead PI Larry Larson, other Pis Peter Asbeck, Bang-Sup Song and Ian Galton)
- Space-Time Processing for Wireless (lead PI Bhasker Rao, other Pis Elias Masry, Laurence Milstein, John Proakis, Paul Siegel, Ken Zeger and James Zeidler)
- Wireless OFDM Communications (lead PI Laurence Milstein, other Pis John Proakis, James Zeidler and Bang-Sup Song)
Larson, who will be a principal investigator on one of the five projects and is a member of Calit2 's Networked Infrastructure group, added: "These projects address some of the most urgent issues facing the wireless world, issues such as achieving higher data rates for wireless internet access and lowering the cost of wireless access for all citizens. At the same time we are educating outstanding Ph.D. students. We want to thank the State and our member companies for making this new commitment to excellence in wireless research."
"Our ability to attract this kind of support from our industrial partners and the State underscores the value to industry of our faculty at the CWC and the Jacobs School," said Robert Conn, dean of the School and a primary force in the creation of the wireless center in 1995. "The success of the CWC is directly attributable to the loyal and increasing support of industry and the State, as well as to the excellence of our faculty research staff."
The Center for Wireless Communications offers a cross-disciplinary program of research and education targeted at the emerging needs of the cellular and wireless communications industry. On its own and as a founding partner of Calit2 , CWC and its 17 industrial members place high priority on strategic planning, collaboration, technology transfer, and the generation of highly trained graduates at all degree levels to meet industrial human resources needs.For more, see http://www-cwc.ucsd.edu/.
CoRe was launched in November 1998 as part of the Industry-University Cooperative Research Program of the state of California. It provides matching funds up to $2 million a year for industry-sponsored research at University of California campuses in the telecommunications area, especially on communication systems and components that will enable anywhere, anytime communications. CoRe is helping to address the problem that no one currently knows how to support the increased level of traffic and the rapidly expanding array of voice and non-voice applications, such as internet access, multimedia e-mail, videoconferencing, entertainment video-on-demand, picture phone, and other new telecommunications applications. More information on CoRe is available at http://uc-industry.berkeley.edu/sectors/core.htm.
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