Panel: When will Smart Antennas be ready to the market?

Organizer: Thomas Kaiser, University of Duisburg-Essen

Tuesday, March 22, 11:45 - 12:45, Location: Room 108-A

Note: This panel session is free to attend by all. A box lunch will be provided ONLY for those who purchased the box lunch option in advance (see the registration form).

The term Smart Antennas (SAs) was born in the early 1990s when the well-developed adaptive antenna arrays, originating from military, were brought by several scientists into mobile communications. Hence, more than a decade ago the research on SAs began and a large amount of scientific contributions have been published on innumerable conferences and in many journals. Moreover, numerous SA testbeds were built and more than 100 academic and industrial institutions are active in SA research in Europe alone. One of the SA pioneers, Prof. Ernst Bonek from Vienna University of Technology, periodically asked his industrial fellows about their expected breakthrough of smart antennas in terms of successful products. The answer was the same as that more than a decade ago: in two years. But why don’t SA penetrate the market? Despite all the research efforts, isn’t the technology mature enough? Or do we need to conclude that there is no adequate signal processing solution available yet ? The aim of this forum is to shed more light on these questions from various perspectives supported by panelists from academia and industry.

Panelists

• Andre Bourdoux (IMEC, Belgium)
• Seungwon Choi (Hantel Ltd., Hanyang University)
• Qinghua Li (Intel)
• Bjorn Ottersten (KTH Stockholm/ArrayComm)
• Constantinos Papadias (Lucent Technologies)
• Steffen Paul or Christoph Mecklenbräuker (Infineon Technologies/Research Center for Telecommunications Vienna)
• Pieter van Rooyen (Broadcom)
• Jack Winters (Motia)