Letter from the Editor

Oh Gee, 5G?

These days everyone is talking about 5G: 5G phones, 5G networks, 5G appliances, and even 5G-ready vehicular networks. So what is 5G? What is going to happen to my (flip) phone? My wireless router at home or an access point at my (small) office? My all-new electric car? Do I have to buy a whole new set of devices for my car, office, and home? Will my phone continue to work at Starbucks and at the airport with free Wi-Fi? Are there new standards coming up for these gadgets to work on the old and the new networks?

 

Even if you are a casual user of the internet looking for advances in communication technology, you will come across an alphabet soup (and numbers) with acronyms such as ITU-R, 802.11, 3GPP, IoT, .ad, and .ah. What about all the other TLAs (three-letter acronyms) I keep reading about in technical journals, magazines, and sometimes even the business media?

 

Well, you don’t have to wonder anymore, nor do you have to wander very far. Adrian Stephens is a member of the Standards Education Committee (SEC) and the Editorial Board of this eZine. He is also very active in the wireless standards development community. In fact, he chairs the IEEE 802.11 working group. So, you are going to hear about these topics straight from the horse’s mouth—literally!

 

Adrian has prepared a 15-minute video that explains the role of many of these standards, their respective organizations, and their interaction with each other. And at the end of his video talk, he introduces the other papers and articles. For many of our regular readers, Paul Nikolich’s article will resonate well. Not only has he contributed to past eZines, but as the Chair of the entire IEEE 802 working group, he also has the best seat in the industry to tell you about the importance of standards in networks. Many of you will then move on to the focused articles and research papers to learn about these standards and related activities. We have a great collection from expert contributors:

 

  • Coexistence of Content-Centric Wireless Network (CCWN) and Traditional Cellular Networks, Bitan Banerjee, et al.
  • Interworking of mmWave and sub-6 GHz Access Technologies for 5G Multi-Connectivity, Kishor Chandra, et al.
  • Making 5G NR a Commercial Reality—A Unified, More Capable 5G Air Interface, Wanshi Chen
  • IEEE 5G Initiative Overview, Dr. Ashutosh Dutta
  • The Road Towards Faster, Simpler, and Smarter Test Equipment for mmWave Products, Dr. Jeorge S. Hurtarte
  • How IEEE 802.11 WLAN Is an Essential Part of a Practical 5G Cellular Network, Joseph Levy
  • 5G Standards in IMT-2020 and Elsewhere, Roger Marks
  • Why Are Standards of Value in Networks Such As 5G? Paul Nikolich
  • How Well-Positioned is IEEE 802.11ax to Meet the IMT-2020 Performance Requirements? Rakesh Taori and Farooq Khan

 

My special thanks to Adrian Stephens and Periklis Chatzimisios, members of the eZine editorial board, for reaching out to the 5G community and successfully soliciting this great collection.

 

For the past 18 months, we have engaged a few experts to help us understand the readership. IEEE staff member Robert Craig brings insight into the reader community we serve. Your comments, questions, and suggestions for future topics help us serve this community. Please let us know how we can help you reach this community with your work in standards education.

 

We are also privileged to share the experiences and insights of teaching standards in university curriculum by Prof. Hemchandra Shertukde, recipient of 2017 Standards Education Award.

 

Happy Reading …

Yatin Trivedi

Editor-in-Chief, SEC eZine

Member, IEEE-SA Board of Governors

ytrivedi@ieee.org

Yatin Trivedi, Editor-in-Chief, is a member of the IEEE Standards Association Board of Governors (BoG) and Standards Education Committee (SEC), and serves as vice-chair for Design Automation Standards Committee (DASC) under Computer Society. Yatin served as the Standards Board representative to IEEE Education Activities Board (EAB) from 2012 until 2017. He also serves as the Chairman on the Board of Directors of the IEEE-ISTO.

Yatin currently serves as Associate Vice President for semiconductor design services at Aricent Inc. Prior to his current assignment, Yatin served as Director of Strategic Marketing at Synopsys where he was responsible for corporate-wide technical standards strategy. In 1992, Yatin co-founded Seva Technologies as one of the early Design Services companies in Silicon Valley. He co-authored the first book on Verilog HDL in 1990 and was the Editor of IEEE Std 1364-1995™ and IEEE Std 1364-2001™. He also started, managed and taught courses in VLSI Design Engineering curriculum at UC Santa Cruz extension (1990-2001). Yatin started his career at AMD and also worked at Sun Microsystems.

Yatin received his B.E. (Hons) EEE from BITS, Pilani and M.S. Computer Engineering from Case Western Reserve University. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE and a member of IEEE-HKN Honor Society.