Radhakrishna Ganti | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement On a visit to Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh during the recent floods, Radhakrishna Ganti, a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, saw first-hand how drones were used to drop food packets to people rendered inaccessible. A son of the soil, he wondered how advanced technology could help the disaster-affected better. On August 22, 2024, the President of India Droupadi Murmu had presented Mr. Ganti with the ‘Rashtriya Vigyan Puraskar: Yuva Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar’ for his work, which primarily focuses on indigenous hardware and wireless communications stack development. He had led the development of 5G radio systems at IIT Madras, and his team is currently designing 6G technologies. Mr. Ganti has made several contributions to global standards bodies and spearheaded the development of rural use cases in the international telecom union to provide modern telecom access and connectivity to remote and rural areas. His work on stochastic geometry for analysis of wireless and cellular networks is globally recognised. 5G in disaster-hit areasSoon, India will roll out 4G using indigenous equipment, Mr. Ganti says. “In a few months, the entire country will be covered by the 4G network. The equipment is basically designed and made in India. This will also pave the way to upgrade to 5G smoothly,” he says. This would mean higher speed and faster connectivity for lay mobile phone users, but for the industry, it would mean better control over equipment. Citing the example of using cell phones at traffic signals, Mr. Ganti says, “Cell phones become slow at traffic signals even with a 4G phone, as more users are accessing the tower. In a disaster-hit area, everyone will try to access the network. In 5G, the concept of network slicing will be introduced. A specific slice of the entire network will be given to the organisation – for example, the police can buy a network slice from the provider. They will be able to get their data and connect, irrespective of what others are doing and be able to provide services at the disaster site,” he explains. 5G will also be more energy efficient, permitting an organisation to deploy its own network. “Your data will be secure, and you will have flexibility and other benefits,” he said. Technologists are also exploring how much more can be done with a 5G network, he adds. Mr. Ganti’s team developed new standards based on existing standards for the 5G network. After initial resistance, the international standards body subsequently merged the 5Gi standards with 5G standards. Currently, research is on to introduce self-contained private networks in 6G, he says. “It is anticipated that the 6G network will be introduced in 2030, and people are looking at technologies that can be included in 6G. Artificial intelligence and machine learning is going to become part of 6G,” he adds. It is not just about higher speed and better performance but also about drone communications. “We are in the phase of defining what 6G is going to be and what technologies will go into it, we will know in another couple of years. But already research and standardisation work has started across India. We want to make sure we are well-versed with the technology,” Mr. Ganti says, adding: “6G and 5G will provide connectivity to drones. We can see a lot of positive use of drones, like long distance delivery.” Published – September 14, 2024 04:27 pm IST