Over the past 30 years, we have reaped the benefits of two wireless communication revolutions, which have had significant social and economic impact. The period from 1990-2000 saw the mobile wireless communication revolution, as cellular mobile telephony enabled human beings across the globe to be instantly connected with each other. The period from 2000 to the present day is witness to the mobile wireless data revolution, as 3G and 4G networks have brought the Internet to our fingertips. However, as massive as the amount of data that exists on the Internet is, it pales in comparison to the amount of data inherently present in the constitution of our physical world. The next wireless revolution will be the mobile wireless-reality revolution, which will bring the physical world to our fingertips. RF, mm-Wave and terahertz communication, imaging and sensing devices will enable us to interrogate the physical world and create virtual or augmented worlds in ways that exceed and augment human sensory situational awareness. The wireless-reality revolution will require a quantum leap forward in our ability to control and manipulate the RF-to- THz electromagnetic spectrum, and in our ability to transmit, acquire, aggregate and process the associated data.
I will describe recent research on high-power and energy-efficient millimeter-wave power amplifiers, transmitters and large-scale phased arrays that have drawn interest for next-generation 5G cellular networks. I will also describe recent work on extreme-bandwidth 20Gbps communication links at millimeter-waves for applications such as virtual and augmented reality. I will also briefly cover other novel wireless communication paradigms, including massive MIMO and full-duplex wireless, that enable extremely-high spectral efficiencies and data rates at lower RF frequencies. I will also talk about ongoing efforts towards the realization of city-scale testbeds that deploy advanced wireless hardware supporting mm-Wave, massive MIMO and full-duplex operation, enabling higher-layer systems research for the first time at city scales. Finally, I will touch upon new ideas on how to converge communications, imaging and sensing, enabling city-scale communication infrastructure to be repurposed for city-scale imaging.
