The Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IIT-D) in its effort to establish India as a key global player in the “standardisation”, “Research and Development (R&D)” of 5G equipment, has established a massive Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) radio laboratory. According to IIT researchers if this technology becomes successful and is manufactured in India, it will be financially viable for the operators to provide broadband access in rural areas.
While the fourth generation cellular communication technology (4G) is gaining popularity in India and worldwide, scientists have already started to standardise the fifth generation cellular communication technology (5G) where the base station towers could now have a few hundreds of antennas, also known as massive MIMO technology.
The lab has been set up in Bharti School of Telecommunication Technology and Management, IIT-Delhi where Associate Professor Saif Khan and his team have been conducting research on physical layer algorithms for massive MIMO systems since last five years. Dr Saif is Associate Professor in the Electrical Engineering department at IIT-Delhi.
“It would take another five years for 5G technology to come into market but standardisation, research and innovation on a technology starts much earlier than its actual launch. We are working on it for the last 5 years,” Saif told The Pioneer.
“This 5G base station prototype will be used to test and verify algorithms and also for developing a complete 5G base station, which can possibly lead to the manufacturing of 5G base stations in India with support or collaboration from industry. It will also be instrumental in generating skilled manpower in this technology,” he said .
In massive MIMO, several antennas are deployed at the base station as compared to only a few antennas in 3G/4G. This large antenna array at the base station allows the network to communicate reliably with a very large number of mobile terminals simultaneously at the same time and on the same frequency channel. The large antenna array also improves system power efficiency, as the mobile terminals will now be required to radiate ten times lesser power than in 3G/4G systems. This in turn reduces interference to other radio systems and also reduces possible effects of exposure to radiation on our health.
In the past, compared to other developing countries like China, there has been little participation of Indian academia and industry in the standardization, R&D and manufacturing of 2G/3G/4G telecommunication equipment (eg base station).
Prof Saif said, “This is one reason why the telecom operators in India have to import equipment from foreign vendors at very high cost. This cost is ultimately borne by the end user who ends up paying high tariff. If cellular telecommunication equipment is manufactured in India, then it will also be financially viable for the operators to provide broadband access in rural areas, which has been an important agenda of the Digital India program.”