IIT-K to develop 5-G base station

KANPUR: The Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IIT-K), has received an ambitious project of setting up a 5-G base station in the city from the the Department of Science and Technology (DST).

The base station will boost internet speeds, providing 5-G services to mobile users.

The institute has been given the project for a period of three years and will be completed by 2020, Prof Rohit Budhiraja of the electrical engineering department at the institute said. To encourage indigenous manufacturing, the DST recently funded a 5G base station which was being built at various IITs, the IISc, and research organisations in India.

The Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT-K, was leading the base station design effort, said Budhiraja. A team including 13 professors, B Tech and M Tech students were engaged in developing the 5-G base station.

The complete set up of the station was almost ready and it would be made operative within next two years. Earlier, speaking about the importance of the 5-G at a seminar ‘5-G Communications – Driving the Future’, IIT-K director Prof Abhay Karandikar said that wireless communication was important in the Indian context because for most Indians, cell phones were the first phones they used, and they continue to be the primary phones for many Indians today.

For broadband connections as well, wireless networks will play a huge role in the country as opposed to the West where internet connectivity was largely with the help of fibre optic cables. It is, therefore, important that research into 5G communications today addresses these requirements,” he said.