The Road Ahead for Wireless Technology: Dreams and Challenges

Andrea Goldsmith

Wireless technology has enormous potential to change the way we live, work, and play. Future wireless networks will support Gigabit per second multimedia communication between people and devices with high reliability and uniform coverage indoors and out. Software will create a virtual wireless network cloud, enabling resource management, seamless connectivity, and roaming across heterogeneous access networks, including WiFi and cellular systems. Wireless technology will also enable smart and energy-efficient homes and buildings, automated highways and skyways, and in-body networks for analysis and treatment of medical conditions. The shortage of spectrum will be alleviated by advances in cognitive radios, and breakthrough energy-efficiency algorithms and hardware will be employed to make wireless systems “green”. There are many technical challenges that must be overcome in order to make this vision a reality. This talk will describe what the wireless future might look like and some of the innovations and breakthroughs that are required to realize this vision.

Speaker Bio: Andrea Goldsmith is the Stephen Harris professor in the School of Engineering and a professor of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. She was previously on the faculty of Electrical Engineering at Caltech. She co-founded and served as CTO of both Accelera, Inc., which develops software-defined wireless network technology, and of Quantenna Communications Inc., which develops high-performance ultra-reliable WiFi chipsets. She has previously held industry positions at Maxim Technologies, Memorylink Corporation, and AT&T Bell Laboratories. Dr. Goldsmith is a Fellow of the IEEE and of Stanford, and she has received several awards for her work, including the IEEE Communications Society and Information Theory Society joint paper award, the IEEE Communications Society Best Tutorial Paper Award, the National Academy of Engineering Gilbreth Lecture Award, the IEEE Communication Theory Technical Committee Recognition Award, the IEEE Wireless Communications Technical Committee Recognition Award, the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, and the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal’s Women of Influence Award. She is author of the book ``Wireless Communications'' and co-author of the books ``MIMO Wireless Communications'' and “Principles of Cognitive Radio,” all published by Cambridge University Press. She received the B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from U.C. Berkeley.

Dr. Goldsmith served on the Steering Committee for the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, and has previously served as editor for the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, the Journal on Foundations and Trends in Communications and Information Theory and in Networks, the IEEE Transactions on Communications, and the IEEE Wireless Communications Magazine. Dr. Goldsmith participates actively in committees and conference organization for the IEEE Information Theory and Communications Societies and has served on the Board of Governors for both societies. She has been a Distinguished Lecturer for both societies, served as the President of the IEEE Information Theory Society in 2009, founded and chaired the student committee of the IEEE Information Theory society, and currently chairs the Emerging Technology Committee and is a member of the Strategic Planning Committee in the IEEE Communications Society. At Stanford she received the inaugural University Postdoc Mentoring Award, served as Chair of its Faculty Senate, and currently serves on its Faculty Senate and on its Budget Group.