Arogyaswami Paulraj has an interesting background. He has been a professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University since 1993. His group has been instrumental in developing many key fundamentals in the relatively new field of space-time communications and has helped shape a global R&D focus on this technology. Known as the father of WIMAX and MIMO, the next generation of telecommunications, Prof Paulraj talks to Biztech2.0 about the history of WIMAX and how India is an ideal platform for this technology.

What is the history of WIMAX?

Personally, I feel WIMAX grew out of a desperate need for a truly broadband mobile data network so that the Internet could be delivered to users on the move. In early 2000, the IEEE standards body under the chairmanship of Roger Marks started an 802.16 project to standardise a broadband technology. The focus then was on fixed broadband Internet service. In 2003, Sean Maloney, SVP, Intel Corp, realised that Internet access will eventually migrate from the PC platform to a handheld mobile platform. So Intel was keen to be the first to introduce this on the new platform. That is when US firm Iospan Wireless stepped in with an advanced mobile Internet system based on the MIMO-OFDMA technology, which was my baby. Intel acquired this company and used its Intellectual Property and staff to take over the IEEE standards process and dubbed it as WIMAX. This eventually resulted in the current version of WIMAX i.e. 802.16e Release 1. There is still a lot of work left and the evolution should be seen in the next couple of years.

What is the greatest personal challenge you faced to make WIMAX a successful technology?

Many things have to come together to make a technology successful in the market. There is no greatest challenge here; there are a lot of challenges, which make the quest for innovation an uphill task. Adoption by carriers, availability of spectrum, maturity and equipment availability, a large eco-system etc. are some of them. My initial focus was to ensure that the standard was defined as completely and as coherently as possible while delivering good performance. I think that goal has now been achieved; however, the challenges are still far from over. My current focus is on persuading governments around the world, and in particular in India, to allocate spectrum for WIMAX.

What do you see to be the WIMAX adoption pattern in India?

India already has significant activity on the WIMAX front. More than 30 companies have already participated as carriers, system vendors and semiconductor suppliers. My own company, Beceem Communications has most of its R&D staff working out of India. Today, Beceem Communications is the world's largest WIMAX terminal chipsets manufacturer. So one can definitely argue that India is a leader in WIMAX. No doubt, it is extremely important to allocate spectrum and launch WIMAX services soon. India will initially use WIMAX in the fixed mode, however, soon we should be able to get a Rs 1500 Internet-ready phone and this will result in a huge internal market for WIMAX, making it the main channel for Internet access.

What are the competitive technologies to WIMAX?

The main challenge to WIMAX is 3GPP LTE, which uses technology identical to WIMAX but is developed by the 3GPP project group. LTE is about three years behind WIMAX, but it does have advantages in spectrum availability as it will inherit the 3G spectrum. The evolution will result in upgrading the current GSM/UCDMA technologies to get higher speeds on the move. WIMAX and LTE will share the world market. Perhaps WIMAX will have a better overall share, as it is technologically more advanced and not very expensive.

Will WiMAX promote a lower carbon footprint?

WIMAX can serve as virtual infrastructure and can connect almost 10-50 million small/ medium businesses and homes in India by 2012. This will go a long way in mitigating the weak physical infrastructure of the country. This virtual network can be used for fixed, portable and mobile users, as and when suitable terminal devices are made available. The ability to do transactions anywhere, anytime, will reduce transaction costs and also reduce the need for physical travel, which will ultimately impact the carbon footprint.