NYU Tandon, collaborating institutions and industry partners have been awarded nearly $10 million to develop next generation communications technology.
The project, dubbed SALSA (Spectrally Agile Large-Scale Arrays), is funded by the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to advance U.S. leadership in open, secure communications infrastructure.
SALSA aims to create advanced wireless systems that operate in the "upper mid-band" spectrum — a region of frequencies relatively unused in cellular systems today that offers an optimal balance of coverage and data capacity. SALSA will develop an advanced RF integrated circuit (RFIC) operating in these bands.
The RFIC will be designed for the Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) framework to enable deployment in emerging commercial networks. The award comes through the NTIA's Public Wireless Supply Chain Innovation Fund, established under the CHIPS and Science Act to promote O-RAN development and domestic manufacturing of telecommunications equipment, seen as crucial for economic competitiveness and national security.
"SALSA focuses on the upper mid-band — a sweet spot in wireless communications," said Sundeep Rangan, the project's lead investigator. Rangan is the associate director of the NYU WIRELESS research center and a professor of electrical and computer engineering at NYU Tandon. "The upper mid-band frequencies provide an optimal balance of bandwidth and coverage, making them ideal for future high-data-rate applications. The spectrally agile features of the SALSA RFIC will enable coordination between cellular operators, satellites, and federal systems, ensuring robust communications even in adverse conditions. The scale of this investment — which we believe represents one of the largest federal commitments to O-RAN — underscores this work's importance."
"This project represents a pivotal moment in wireless technology development that builds on NYU Tandon’s leadership in advancing cellular networks," said Juan de Pablo, NYU’s EVP for Global Science and Technology and executive dean of NYU Tandon. "We're creating new technologies that will democratize advanced wireless networks making them more open, efficient and secure – helping ensure that the next generation of wireless innovation serves the broader public good while strengthening America's technological leadership."
The SALSA project is structured around four major tasks: developing specialized wireless chips, building modular radio platforms, integrating with open network standards, and analyzing system performance.
NYU Tandon will oversee a team of academic and industry partners to achieve those objectives. Pi-Radio — a startup spun out of NYU Tandon that received sponsorship from NYU WIRELESS, the Center for Advanced Technology in Telecommunications, and the NTIA — will lead development of the physical radio platform – including packaging, antennas and system integration.
In 2023, NYU Tandon and Pi-Radio received one of the first grants awarded from the Public Wireless Supply Chain Innovation Fund. That award supported the development of an initial version of the system in the upper mid-band. The current project will build on this highly successful project to create an RFIC-based version with much lower cost and power and greater scale suitable for commercial systems.
Princeton University’s Professor Kaushik Sengupta and NYU Tandon Assistant Professor Hamed Rahmani bring considerable expertise in advanced RFICs and will lead the development of the proposed radio micro-chip itself.
Rutgers University’s WINLAB will provide critical testing facilities for the project – first at their indoor ORBIT lab in New Jersey, and later supporting outdoor trials at the COSMOS testbed in New York City. WINLAB also runs one of the largest O-RAN testing and integration centers that will be leveraged for this project.
Nokia, a global leader in wireless network infrastructure and NYU WIRELESS affiliate member, will evaluate SALSA technology for cellular networks. The evaluation results will be used for future product design requirements for commercialization.
Analog Devices, a global semiconductor leader and also an Industrial Affiliate member of NYU WIRELESS, will provide specialized radio hardware that helps connect the project's wireless technology to O-RAN, making it compatible with equipment from different manufacturers.