Leaders in wireless, automotive, academia and government will gather at the annual Brooklyn 5G Summit on April 19-21, 2017 to explore how close the industry is to deploying commercial products and services for the next-generation of wireless communications. The fourth annual event will also showcase the latest developments and research in telecommunications, machine-to-machine communication and the Internet of Things (IoT).

The invitation-only summit, at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering, is jointly organized by NYU WIRELESS and Nokia, and the IEEE Communications Society will broadcast the proceedings. The event features international thought and research leaders from Nokia, Verizon, National Instruments, Intel, Qualcomm, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and others.

“With nearly every major carrier launching 5G wireless field trials this year, this is a watershed moment in the next telecommunications revolution,” said Theodore (Ted) S. Rappaport, the Ernst Weber/David Lee professor of electrical engineering at NYU Tandon and founding director of NYU WIRELESS.

In recent months major carriers, including Verizon and AT&T, announced trials in nearly a dozen cities for both mid-band and the millimeter-wave (mmWave) bandwidth for which Rappaport and NYU WIRELESS conducted seminal research. Government and industry bodies such as the FCC, 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) and International Telecommunications Union (ITU) have also recently set new benchmarks aimed at taking mobile data speeds to new limits.

“Behind the blistering pace of research and development of technology—from microchips with phased-array antennas to vehicle-to-vehicle communications in self-driving cars—is the expectation that ultra-fast connectivity delivering huge data rates is just around the corner,” said Rappaport. “NYU WIRELESS’ industrial affiliate sponsors, including Nokia, AT&T, Qualcomm, Straight Path Communications and Verizon are fulfilling those expectations, and NYU WIRELESS is pleased to play a key role as well, with breakthrough research proving that mmWave transmissions can deliver 5G in many more settings than anticipated.”

A report from Nokia Bell Labs Consulting predicts that by 2020, global demand for digital content and services on mobile and portable devices will increase 30 to 45 times from 2014 levels. The study estimates that there will be over 46 billion IoT connected devices by 2020, with audio and video streaming accounting for 79 percent of the total increased consumption.

NYU WIRELESS, which conducted the world’s first radio channel measurements proving that the mmWave spectrum holds vast potential to improve wireless communications, was one of only two academic institutions recently chosen by the FCC to help test, debug and provide feedback on a new web-based portal that lets researchers apply for the program experimental license, a new paradigm that will reduce barriers to experimentation for universities, research laboratories, health care institutions and manufacturers. NYU WIRELESS is also the first to receive a program experimental license.

Summit Highlights

Driven by this year’s theme, “How Close is 5G to Commercial Reality,” the Brooklyn 5G Summit will focus on end-to-end system design, regulations and pre-commercial systems. In addition, the conference will address various use cases for 5G in the evolving IoT space by inviting selected start-up companies to share their work.

Presentations by industry leaders will include Theodore (Tod) Sizer, vice president of mobile radio research at Nokia; Durga Malladi, senior vice president of Qualcomm; Seizo Onoe, chief technical officer of the prominent Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo; Ken Steward, senior fellow at Intel; Gaurav Bansal, senior researcher at the Toyota InfoTechology Center; and HongBeom Jeon, executive vice president of KT Corporation (formerly Korea Telecom), which will introduce 5G to the Olympics at the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang.

Many of the industry affiliate sponsors of NYU WIRELESS are testing breakthrough 5G systems and platforms. Several will demonstrate prototypes and explain their advances.

NYU WIRELESS will demonstrate: 

• Groundbreaking research on 5G transmission in the mmWave spectrum, promising up to 40 times today’s data transmission rates. 
• The latest tools for designing 5G systems, including its widely used NYUSIM open-source channel software simulator (with over 7,000 downloads to date). 
• A new real-time network emulation tool for evaluating virtual reality and other applications over realistic mmWave channels. 
• A phased-array antenna system for measuring mmWave directional channel dynamics.
• A new dual architecture channel sounder with 2 GHz RF bandwidth throughout the mmWave spectrum, and a channel sounder on a chip.

To watch the live stream April 19-21, register at https://register.comsoc.org/brooklyn-5g-summit-2017.