Alumnus Sundaram Vanka presents a seminar as part of the WI Seminar Series

Notre Dame Alumnus Sundaram (Sundar) Vanka returned to his alma mater to present: Interference Management in Emerging Wireless Networks and Systems as part of the Wireless Insitute Seminar Series. 

Vanka is an Associate Professor in Electrical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad (IIT-H), India. Before joining IIT-H in 2021, he was a Master Engineer in the Wireless Systems Architecture Group at Broadcom Inc. His charter was to develop new technologies related to interference management, coexistence, low-power operation, and low-latency connectivity. He proposed, planned, and led long-term R&D projects implementing these technologies in Broadcom’s flagship WiFi/Bluetooth combination SoC products.

During his visit to Notre Dame, he met with WI-affiliated graduate students and shared his journey from industry to a career in academia. Vanka also had the opportunity to visit with faculty members who played a key role during his Ph.D. program at Notre Dame, including Professor Martin Haenggi, who was his faculty advisor. 

In his seminar, Sundar emphasized that interference management in WiFi systems needs to include the dynamics of traffic flows. Apart from the complexities induced by the need to serve different traffic classes using a decentralized channel access mechanism (CSMA-CA) on unlicensed wideband channels, traffic dynamics may be further complicated by the possible non-linear coupling between the RF chains on different frequency bands, especially on devices with small form factors such as smartphones or wearables. Accounting for such intricacies will be essential for future wideband WiFi standards, whose bandwidths will approach what was previously called “ultrawideband” (UWB). In contrast to UWB, though, the spectrum access will be much more dynamic and adaptive to the interference sensed by other occupants of the unlicensed spectrum.

His parting words to the audience were. Don’t over-specialize in one area. Take a step back and look at the big picture. Ask yourself what happens if we change this feature or that part. How does it affect the outcome? You don’t have to be an expert in everything, but you must understand how it works as a whole product.

The Wireless Institute is always looking for alums interested in sharing their knowledge and insight with current students. If you are interested, please get in touch with Tiffanie Sammons at tsammon1@nd.edu.