Good news for users of mobile devices who enjoy accessing multimedia content and social networking applications on the move!

Researchers at NTU are exploring ways to bring the speed and quality of wireless network communications up to par with that of wired communications. Better yet, their goal is to develop wireless devices that offer ultra-high-speed mobile broadband services at virtually zero cost to the user!

All these could become possible as Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and National Instruments (NI) join hands to develop the next-generation wireless communication technologies which are cheaper, faster, more reliable and more pervasive.

Both parties formalised the partnership by inking a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) at NTU today.

Under the NTU-NI Wireless Research Programme, NI will provide $2.07 million worth of equipment that will be installed at the Positioning and Wireless Technology Centre (PWTC), a centre under NTU’s School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (EEE). One key goal of the NTU-NI Wireless Research Programme is to develop future wireless communication protocols. The research team will be using the equipment to research into the practicality and performance of various wireless techniques.

PWTC’s Programme Director for wireless network research, Assistant Professor Ting See Ho, explained, “One of the major problems faced worldwide currently is the increasing shortage of usable frequency spectrum, which is further aggravated by current spectrum allocation regulations. My research team aims to address these issues by developing the next generation of wireless communication technologies that are able to relay radio signals and scan for available ‘holes’ in airwaves without interfering with the incumbent users. This would mean that users can enjoy the highest quality, best performance and most cost-efficient networks.”

“This project will not only bring about a technology breakthrough; it will also have a profound impact on current business models and inspire new designs for various wireless applications for the benefit of both mass-market and military users,” added Assistant Professor Ting.

“Wireless communication research is gaining tremendous interest from the industry and NTU is a top-notch technological university with strong international standing in this field,” said Chandran Nair, managing director for NI ASEAN. “We are pleased to equip PWTC with NI’s technologies and support NTU’s research efforts towards developing wireless technologies that will impact everyday life.”

“This partnership demonstrates NTU’s active collaboration and sharing of resources and expertise with our industry partners,” said Professor Kam Chan Hin, Chair of EEE, NTU.  “We look forward to leveraging on NI technologies in our research centre to expand our research and training capabilities at NTU. We will also make good use of the equipment for teaching purposes to prepare our graduates for professional careers in high-tech industries and to expose them to advanced research.”

“The NTU-NI collaboration is a testament to our long-term community engagement. We look forward to helping enhance science, technology and engineering education and research through partnerships that will take academic research to a whole new level,” said Victor Mieres, NI’s vice president of sales for Asia.

Media Contacts

National Instruments
Jessie Lee
Marketing Communications Specialist
Tel: +65 6226 5886
Email: jessie.lee@ni.com

Nanyang Technological University
Esther Ang
Manager, Corporate Communications Office
Tel: +65 6790 6804; Mobile: +65 9113 9654
Email: estherang@ntu.edu.sg

Rice Communications
Donna Garcia
Senior Consultant
Tel: +65 9734 8808
Email: donna.garcia@ricecomms.com

About Nanyang Technological University

Nanyang Technological University (NTU) is a research-intensive university ranked among the world’s top 100 universities.  The Yunnan Garden campus, NTU’s main campus, is located in the south-western part of Singapore and will be the Youth Olympic Village of the inaugural Youth Olympic Games in 2010. The NTU@one-north campus, home to educational and alumni clubhouse facilities, is located near Singapore’s biomedical research hub, Biopolis; and the new engineering and physical sciences hub, Fusionopolis.

NTU has four colleges, namely:

• The Nanyang Business School (the College of Business), the first and only Singapore business school to be ranked in the top 25 of the Financial Times Global MBA 2008 rankings
• The College of Engineering, with six schools focused on technology and innovation and a research output among the top four in the world
• The College of Humanities, Arts, & Social Sciences, home to Singapore’s first professional art school offering degree courses in art, design and interactive digital media; the Humanities and Social Science School; and the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, a top journalism and media school in Asia
• The College of Science is home to award-winning faculty, world-class laboratories, and Olympiad medal winners.

The S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, one of three autonomous institutes of NTU, is a world authority on strategic studies and security research. NTU is also home to the internationally-acclaimed National Institute of Education, Singapore’s only teacher-training institute. The Earth Observatory of Singapore, established in 2009 with $150 million in state funding, is dedicated to hazards-related earth science.

As Singapore’s main science and technology university, NTU makes significant contributions to the nation’s renewed drive for research and innovation spearheaded by the Singapore National Research Foundation (NRF). NTU’s strengths in biomedical sciences, environmental and water technologies, and interactive and digital media mirror the NRF’s research focus. Impressed by the vibrant entrepreneurship environment at NTU, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, widely known as ‘The Foundation of Entrepreneurship’, has chosen NTU to be the first Kauffman campus outside the United States of America.

NTU has a strong and broad international reach covering academic and research partnerships with top institutions in the US, Europe and Asia, such as MIT, Stanford University, Cornell University, Caltech, University of Washington, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Carnegie Mellon University; Cambridge University, Imperial College and Swiss Federal Institute of Technology; and Peking University, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Waseda University, and Indian Institute of Technology.

For more information, visit www.ntu.edu.sg

About National Instruments

National Instruments (www.ni.com) is transforming the way engineers and scientists design, prototype and deploy systems for measurement, automation and embedded applications. NI empowers customers with off-the-shelf software such as NI LabVIEW and modular cost-effective hardware, and sells to a broad base of more than 25,000 different companies worldwide, with no one customer representing more than 3 percent of revenue and no one industry representing more than 10 percent of revenue. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, NI has more than 5,000 employees and direct operations in over 40 countries. For the past eleven years, FORTUNE magazine has named NI one of the 100 best companies to work for in America.