Theodore S. Rappaport

Bio: Theodore S. Rappaport is an academic researcher from New York University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Path loss & Multipath propagation. The author has an hindex of 112, co-authored 490 publications receiving 68853 citations. Previous affiliations of Theodore S. Rappaport include University of Waterloo & University of Texas at Austin.

Crucible of Communications: How Amateur Radio Launched the Information Age and Brought High Tech to Life: Part 1: The Birth and Breadth of the Ham Radio Hobby Invited Article

Abstract: The hobby of amateur radio, or “ham radio” as it is commonly known among its 3 million global practitioners, has been at the vanguard of electrical and computer engineering since a young Italian inventor, Guglielmo Marconi, first demonstrated wireless at his summer home in Bologna in 1894. Ever since that fateful discovery, amateur radio has played vast and vital roles in capturing the imagination of inventors, spawning new technologies, fueling the global engineering work force, and fostering friendship and international goodwill. This three-part series of articles chronicles the historical evolution of amateur radio, and shows the astounding impact that the ham radio hobby has made on both the engineering profession and the world.

Spacetime Frequency-Multiplexed Digital-RF Array Receivers With Reduced ADC Count

Abstract: Wireless systems operating at mm-wave frequencies require dense antenna arrays to achieve directional gain for overcoming high path loss. Digital mm-wave arrays retain spatial degrees of freedom, but require a dedicated analog to data converter (ADC) per spatial channel, leading to undesirably high receiver complexity, large ADC count, and power consumption. This brief exploits directional sparsity to reduce the number of receivers and ADCs with minimal loss in performance. A multidimensional (MD) linear transformation using transmission lines and a $K~:~1$ combiner is used to reduce the number of ADCs by a factor $K$ . Simulations verify that the proposed method can lead to better than 50% ADC complexity reductions (for $K\ge 2$ ) for linear arrays and more than 75% ADC complexity reduction (for $K\ge 4$ ) for rectangular arrays when sparsity conditions are met. Unlike in analog-digital hybrid beamforming, where a phased-array combines $K$ channels to a single ADC, the proposed method does not lead to loss of spatial degrees of freedom.

Millimeter Wave and Terahertz Urban Microcell Propagation Measurements and Models

Abstract: Comparisons of outdoor Urban Microcell (UMi) large-scale path loss models, root mean square (RMS) delay spreads (DS), angular spreads (AS), and the number of spatial beams for extensive measurements performed at 28, 38, 73, and 142 GHz are presented in this letter. Measurement campaigns were conducted from 2011-2020 in downtown Austin, Texas, Manhattan (New York City), and Brooklyn, New York with communication ranges up to 930 m. Key similarities and differences in outdoor wireless channels are observed when comparing the channel statistics across a wide range of frequencies from millimeter-wave to sub-THz bands. Path loss exponents (PLEs) are remarkably similar over all measured frequencies, when referenced to the first meter free space path loss, and the RMS DS and AS decrease as frequency increases. The similar PLEs from millimeter-wave to THz frequencies imply that spacing between cellular base stations will not have to change as carrier frequencies increase towards THz, since wider bandwidth channels at sub-THz or THz carrier frequencies will cover similar distances because antenna gains increase quadratically with increasing frequency when the physical antenna area remain constant.

Path Loss Channel Modeling in Factory Buildings

Abstract: This paper presents sub-Terahertz (THz) radio propagation measurements at 142 GHz conducted in four factories with various layouts and facilities to explore sub-THz wireless channels for smart factories in 6G and beyond. Here we study spatial and temporal channel responses at 82 transmitter-receiver (TX-RX) locations across four factories in the New York City area and over distances from 5 m to 85 m in both line-of-sight (LOS) and non-LOS (NLOS) environments. The measurements were performed with a sliding-correlation-based channel sounder with 1 GHz RF bandwidth with steerable directional horn antennas with 27 dBi gain and 8° half-power beamwidth at both TX and RX, using both vertical and horizontal antenna polarizations, yielding over 75,000 directional power delay profiles. Channel measurements of two RX heights at 1.5 m (high) emulating handheld devices and at 0.5 m (low) emulating automated guided vehicles (AGVs) were conducted for automated industrial scenarios with various clutter densities. Results yield the first path loss models for indoor factory (InF) environments at 142 GHz and show the low RX height experiences a mean path loss increase of 10.7 dB and 6.0 dB when compared with the high RX height at LOS and NLOS locations, respectively. Furthermore, flat and rotatable metal plates were leveraged as passive reflecting surfaces (PRSs) in channel enhancement measurements to explore the potential power gain on sub-THz propagation channels, demonstrating a range from 0.5 to 22 dB improvement with a mean of 6.5 dB in omnidirectional channel gain as compared to when no PRSs are present.

I and i

Abstract: There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality. Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

Cooperative diversity in wireless networks: Efficient protocols and outage behavior

Abstract: We develop and analyze low-complexity cooperative diversity protocols that combat fading induced by multipath propagation in wireless networks. The underlying techniques exploit space diversity available through cooperating terminals' relaying signals for one another. We outline several strategies employed by the cooperating radios, including fixed relaying schemes such as amplify-and-forward and decode-and-forward, selection relaying schemes that adapt based upon channel measurements between the cooperating terminals, and incremental relaying schemes that adapt based upon limited feedback from the destination terminal. We develop performance characterizations in terms of outage events and associated outage probabilities, which measure robustness of the transmissions to fading, focusing on the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime. Except for fixed decode-and-forward, all of our cooperative diversity protocols are efficient in the sense that they achieve full diversity (i.e., second-order diversity in the case of two terminals), and, moreover, are close to optimum (within 1.5 dB) in certain regimes. Thus, using distributed antennas, we can provide the powerful benefits of space diversity without need for physical arrays, though at a loss of spectral efficiency due to half-duplex operation and possibly at the cost of additional receive hardware. Applicable to any wireless setting, including cellular or ad hoc networks-wherever space constraints preclude the use of physical arrays-the performance characterizations reveal that large power or energy savings result from the use of these protocols.

Cognitive radio: brain-empowered wireless communications

Abstract: Cognitive radio is viewed as a novel approach for improving the utilization of a precious natural resource: the radio electromagnetic spectrum. The cognitive radio, built on a software-defined radio, is defined as an intelligent wireless communication system that is aware of its environment and uses the methodology of understanding-by-building to learn from the environment and adapt to statistical variations in the input stimuli, with two primary objectives in mind: /spl middot/ highly reliable communication whenever and wherever needed; /spl middot/ efficient utilization of the radio spectrum. Following the discussion of interference temperature as a new metric for the quantification and management of interference, the paper addresses three fundamental cognitive tasks. 1) Radio-scene analysis. 2) Channel-state estimation and predictive modeling. 3) Transmit-power control and dynamic spectrum management. This work also discusses the emergent behavior of cognitive radio.

An application-specific protocol architecture for wireless microsensor networks

Abstract: Networking together hundreds or thousands of cheap microsensor nodes allows users to accurately monitor a remote environment by intelligently combining the data from the individual nodes. These networks require robust wireless communication protocols that are energy efficient and provide low latency. We develop and analyze low-energy adaptive clustering hierarchy (LEACH), a protocol architecture for microsensor networks that combines the ideas of energy-efficient cluster-based routing and media access together with application-specific data aggregation to achieve good performance in terms of system lifetime, latency, and application-perceived quality. LEACH includes a new, distributed cluster formation technique that enables self-organization of large numbers of nodes, algorithms for adapting clusters and rotating cluster head positions to evenly distribute the energy load among all the nodes, and techniques to enable distributed signal processing to save communication resources. Our results show that LEACH can improve system lifetime by an order of magnitude compared with general-purpose multihop approaches.