UCSD Licenses New 5G Technology to Samsung

A new technology discovered by engineers at the University of California- San Diego will make its way into the next generation of smartphones, thanks to a licensing deal with Samsung Group.

Alexander Vardy, a professor with UCSD’s Jacobs School of Engineering, and Ido Tal, a professor who worked with Vardy on the project as a postdoctoral student, invented the technology. It essentially ensures a more reliable connection, whether making a phone call or browsing the internet on a 5G network.

The University of California- San Diego

Alexander Vardy

“We very much hope it is just the beginning with the other major players in the 5G market coming on-board and signing licenses with UCSD as well,” Vardy said.

More specifically, the Tal-Vardy invention is a method of encoding and decoding polar codes – a type of technology used to correct errors in the transmission of data. Polar coding was purely theoretical when it was first conceived by Erdal Arikan in 2008; the theory only kicked-in when transmitting extremely large amounts of information. The Tal-Vardy technology solved that problem by allowing polar codes to be used for transmitting practical amounts of information.

The University of California- San Diego

Ido Tal

"Ours was a key step. It actually made polar codes practical," Vardy said. “In reality, everything is extremely noisy. No communication would be possible without error correction.”

Global telecommunications standards group 3GPP adopted the technology in 2016 as part of the 5G wireless communications standard. This means device makers, such as Samsung, include the technology in their smartphones in order for them to work on a 5G network. The first 5G-capable smartphones are expected to go to market in early 2019.

"It's really a genius invention of Arikan to come up with polar codes. There is beautiful math involved,” Vardy said. “It will be doubly gratifying to see this beautiful math in every phone."

But the potential uses for technology extend beyond smartphones. Other 5G devices will also use the technology. And in the long term, Vardy also said it has potential applications in fiber-optic networks, satellite communications, deep space and more.