Theodore (Ted) Scott Rappaport (born November 26, 1960, in Brooklyn, New York) is an American electrical engineer and the David Lee/Ernst Weber Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at

New York University Tandon School of Engineering The New York University Tandon School of Engineering (commonly referred to as Tandon) is the engineering and applied sciences school of New York University. Tandon is the second oldest private engineering and technology school in the United St ...

and founding director of NYU WIRELESS. He has written several textbooks, including ''Wireless Communications: Principles and Practice'' and ''Millimeter Wave Wireless Communications'' (2014). In the private sector he co-founded TSR Technologies, Inc. and Wireless Valley Communications, Inc. In the academic setting he founded academic wireless research centers at

Virginia Tech The Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, commonly referred to as Virginia Tech (VT), is a Public university, public Land-grant college, land-grant research university with its main campus in Blacksburg, Virginia, United States ...

, the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public university, public research university in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 53,082 stud ...

, and

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...

. His 2013 paper, "Millimeter Wave Mobile Communications for 5G Cellular: It Will Work!" has been called a founding document of 5G

millimeter wave Extremely high frequency (EHF) is the International Telecommunication Union designation for the band of radio frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum from 30 to 300 gigahertz (GHz). It is in the microwave part of the radio spectrum, between t ...

. He was elected a Fellow of the

National Academy of Inventors The National Academy of Inventors (NAI) is a US non-profit organization dedicated to encouraging inventors in academia, following the model of the National Academies of the United States. It was founded at the University of South Florida in 201 ...

in 2018, and to the Wireless Hall of Fame in 2019. He was also elected a member of the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American Nonprofit organization, nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. It is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), along with the National Academ ...

in 2021 for contributions to the characterization of radio frequency propagation in millimeter wave bands for cellular communication networks.

Early life and education

Ted Rappaport was born in

Brooklyn Brooklyn is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City located at the westernmost end of Long Island in the New York (state), State of New York. Formerly an independent city, the borough is coextensive with Kings County, one of twelv ...

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York New York may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * ...

, and graduated from Lincoln High School in

Cambridge City, Indiana Cambridge City is a town in Jackson Township, Wayne County, Indiana, Jackson Township, Wayne County, Indiana, Wayne County, in the U.S. state of Indiana. The population was 1,870 at the 2010 census. History Cambridge City was laid out and platte ...

. Rappaport first developed an affinity for radio at age 5 when he would visit his grandfather, and together they would spend hours "tuning around, listening to

Morse code Morse code is a telecommunications method which Character encoding, encodes Written language, text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations, called ''dots'' and ''dashes'', or ''dits'' and ''dahs''. Morse code i ...

and ship-to-shore" on his grandfather's

Philco Philco (an acronym for Philadelphia Battery Company) is an American electronics industry, electronics manufacturer headquartered in Philadelphia. Philco was a pioneer in battery, radio, and television production. In 1961, the company was purchase ...

antique

shortwave radio Shortwave radio is radio transmission using radio frequencies in the shortwave bands (SW). There is no official definition of the band range, but it always includes all of the High frequency, high frequency band (HF), which extends from 3 to 30& ...

. From those early beginnings, he developed a fascination for wireless and "loves to experiment with antennas". At age 13, after he fractured his leg playing football his grandmother gave him a shortwave radio which helped keep him occupied while his leg was healing. He acquired his

ham radio Amateur radio, also known as ham radio, is the use of the radio frequency spectrum for purposes of non-commercial exchange of messages, wireless experimentation, self-training, private recreation, radiosport, contesting, and emergency communi ...

license, and while in high school began teaching adults Morse code. Rappaport was among the first graduates of Purdue University's National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center (ERC) where he co-authored the proposal that resulted in the

National Science Foundation The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an Independent agencies of the United States government#Examples of independent agencies, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that su ...

award presented to Purdue by

President Ronald Reagan Ronald Wilson Reagan (February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004) was an American politician and actor who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He was a member of the Republican Party and became an important figure in ...

Career

Academic

Rappaport graduated from

Purdue University Purdue University is a Public university#United States, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, United States, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded ...

with a BS, MS, and

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

in electrical engineering in 1982, 1984, and 1987, respectively. He joined the faculty of

in 1988 as an assistant professor and in 1990 founded the Mobile and Portable Radio Research Group (MPRG), one of the world's first academic research centers for the fledgling wireless communications field. In 2002 Rappaport accepted the William and Bettye Nowlin professorship at The

(UT Austin). In 2012, he joined New York University and Polytechnic University prior to the merger of the two universities to lead their wireless communications engineering and research initiatives as the David Lee/Ernst Weber Chair of Electrical Engineering while also holding professorships at

NYU New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a non-denominational all-male institutio ...

Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences The Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences (commonly known as Courant or CIMS) is the mathematics research school of New York University (NYU). Founded in 1935, it is named after Richard Courant, one of the founders of the Courant Institute ...

and

NYU School of Medicine The New York University Grossman School of Medicine is a medical school of New York University, a private research university in New York City. It was founded in 1841 and is one of two medical schools of the university, the other being the NYU Gr ...

. He founded NYU WIRELESS one of the world’s first academic research centers to combine wireless engineering, computer science, and medicine. He founded three academic wireless research centers at New York University ( NYU WIRELESS),

The University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 53,082 students as of fall 2 ...

(WNCG), and

(MPRG). He wrote one of the first widely used wireless communications textbooks for academia and industry and has co-authored textbooks on simulation, smart antennas, and millimeter wave wireless communications. He is a co-inventor on more than 100 US and International patents that have issued or are pending and has advised or launched high-tech companies in the wireless communications and computing fields, and two university spin-off companies. While on the faculty of Virginia Tech, Rappaport launched the Virginia Tech/MPRG Symposium on Wireless Personal Communications that was held on campus each summer. He received the Virginia Tech Alumni Award for Research Excellence in 1996, TSR Technologies invented some of the world's first

software-defined radio Software-defined radio (SDR) is a radio communication system where components that conventionally have been implemented in analog hardware (e.g. mixers, filters, amplifiers, modulators/ demodulators, detectors, etc.) are instead implemented ...

(SDR) products, including the Cellscope 2000. In 2005, Rappaport along with other faculty at UT Austin received an IC2 Endowed Research Fellows appointment.

Private sector

While at Virginia Tech, Rappaport founded two wireless companies with his students. TSR Technologies, founded in 1989, was engaged in the manufacture of cellular radio/PCS software radios. He sold the company in 1993 to Allen Telecom. With Roger Skidmore, a graduate student of MPRG, he co-founded Wireless Valley Communications in 1995; the firm was an early developer of site-specific design and modeling products for the wireless local area network (WLAN) and indoor cellular/PCS. It was sold to Motorola in December 2005. At UT Austin, Rappaport founded the Wireless Networking and Communications Group (WNCG), and in 2011 received the Industry/University Collaborative Research Center (IUCRC) award sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Rappaport also launched the Texas Wireless Summit which became an annual fall event hosted by UT Austin’s wireless research program. At New York University, he launched the Brooklyn 5G Summit (B5GS) with co-sponsorship from

Nokia Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications industry, telecommunications, technology company, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, originally established as a pulp mill in 1 ...

in 2013, an annual event held in April on the NYU-Poly Campus. His propagation measurements and channel modeling work for millimeter-wave wireless communications proved to the world that millimeter waves could be used for future mobile communication systems, and was cited in the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Notice of Inquiry on the use of spectrum above 24 GHz for mobile communications (Spectrum Frontiers rulemaking proposal), and was featured in the September 2014 issue of ''

IEEE Spectrum ''IEEE Spectrum'' is a magazine edited and published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The first issue of ''IEEE Spectrum'' was published in January 1964 as a successor to ''Electrical Engineering''. In 2010, ''IEEE Spe ...

''.

Other

Rappaport has served on the Technological Advisory Council of the Federal Communications Commission (TAC), assisted the governor and CIO of Virginia in formulating rural broadband initiatives for Internet access, testified before the US Congress and conducted research for National Science Foundation, Department of Defense, and other global telecommunications companies. Rappaport served as a technical advisor to Straightpath (NYSE: STRP). In April 2017, Straightpath entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired for $3.1 Billion. His early work helped develop the first

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for Wireless LAN, local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by ...

standards and characterized multipath channels in a wide range of factory buildings in the 1300 MHz band when most wireless communication operated at lower frequencies. His research program at

has been developing fundamental theories and techniques for characterizing, modeling, and using knowledge of wireless channels for future potential in millimeter wave wireless communication systems. Rappaport served as a senior editor of the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (JSAC), and led in the creation of the

IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications ''IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications'' is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the IEEE Communications Society. It covers all areas of wireless communication systems and networks. It was established in 2002 and its edit ...

. In 2006 he served on the Board of Governors of the

IEEE Communications Society The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE has a corporate office i ...

(ComSoc), has served consecutive terms on the Board of Governors for the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society (VTS) beginning in 2008 and served on the board of directors for the Marconi Society from 2012 to 2015. Rappaport launched the Communications Engineering and Emerging Technologies (CEET) Book Series with Pearson/

Prentice-Hall Prentice Hall was a major American educational publisher. It published print and digital content for the 6–12 and higher-education market. It was an independent company throughout the bulk of the twentieth century. In its last few years it ...

in 1996, and serves as Series Editor. The series has over 20 books in the field of communications technology.

Personal life

Rappaport met Brenda Velasquez during his sophomore year; she was an agricultural engineering student also attending Purdue. They married in 1981 before his senior year at Purdue, and had three children together. They divorced in 2021.

Honors and awards

* 1990 Marconi Young Scientist Award * 1992

NSF NSF may stand for: Political organizations *National Socialist Front, a Swedish National Socialist party *NS-Frauenschaft, the women's wing of the former German Nazi party * National Students Federation, a leftist Pakistani students' political g ...

Presidential Faculty Fellowship *1996 Virginia Tech Alumni Award for Research Excellence *1998

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) organization, 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE ...

fellow for research contributions and educational leadership in the field of wireless communications. * 1999 IEEE COMSOC Stephen O. Rice Prize * 2000 Sarnoff Citation, Radio Club of America * 2002 Fredrick E. Terman Outstanding Electrical Engineering Faculty Award, American Society for Engineering Education * 2004 Outstanding Electrical and Computer Engineering Alumni Award, Purdue University * 2005

Vehicular Technology Society – Stuart F. Meyer Award * 2008 IEEE Communications Society Wireless Communications Technical Committee recognition award * 2008 Austin Wireless Alliance (AWA) Wireless Industry Leadership Award * 2010 Joe J. King award at UT Austin * 2011

IET __NOTOC__ IET can refer to: Organizations * Institute of Educational Technology, part of the Open University * Institution of Engineering and Technology, a UK-based professional engineering institution ** Institute of Engineers and Technicians, wh ...

Sir Monty Finniston Medal for achievement in engineering and technology * 2012 IEEE Education Society William E. Sayle Award for Achievement in Education * 2013 Purdue University Distinguished Engineering Alumnus * 2015 IEEE Donald G. Fink Paper Prize Award * 2015 IEEE Communications Society Howard Edwin Armstrong achievement award * 2013—2016 Distinguished Lecturer, IEEE Vehicular Technology Society * 2017 IEEE VTS Neal Shepherd Memorial Best Propagation Paper Award * 2018 Radio Club of America Armstrong Medal * 2019 Fellow: National Academy of Inventors *2019 Elected to Wireless History Foundation Hall of Fame * 2020 IEEE Eric E. Sumner award *2021 Elected to

*2023 IEEE VTS Neal Shephard Memorial Best Propagation Paper Award *2024 IEEE Vehicular Technology Society Hall of Fame *2024 Hagler Fellow at Texas A&M University

Books

* T. S. Rappaport, R. Heath, R. Daniels, J. Murdock, ''Millimeter Wave Wireless Communications'', Prentice Hall, 2015 * W. H. Tranter, K. S. Shanmugan, T. S. Rappaport, K. L. Kosbar, ''Principles of Communication Systems Simulation'', Prentice Hall, 2004 * T. S. Rappaport, ''Wireless Communications: Principles and Practice'', Second Edition, Prentice Hall, 2002 * M. J. Feuerstein, T. S. Rappaport, ''Wireless Personal Communications'', Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993 * T. S. Rappaport, B. D. Woerner, J. H. Reed, ''Wireless Personal Communications: Trends and Challenges'', Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994 * B. D. Woerner, T. S. Rappaport, J. H. Reed, ''Wireless Personal Communications: Research Developments'', Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995 * T. S. Rappaport. ''Wireless Communications: Principle and Practice'' Prentice Hall, 1996 * T. S. Rappaport, B. D. Woerner, J. H. Reed, ''Wireless Personal Communications: The Evolution of Personal Communications Systems'', Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996 * J. H. Reed, B. D. Woerner, T. S. Rappaport, ''Wireless Personal Communications: Advances in Coverage and Capacity'', Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996 * T. S. Rappaport, B. D. Woerner, J. H. Reed, W. H. Tranter, ''Wireless Personal Communications: Improving Capacity, Services, and Reliability'', Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997 * W. H. Tranter, T. S. Rappaport, B. D. Woerner, J. H. Reed, ''Wireless Personal Communications: Emerging Technologies for Enhanced Communications,'' Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999 * W. H. Tranter, B. D. Woerner, T. S. Rappaport, J. H. Reed, ''Wireless Personal Communications: Channel Modeling and Systems Engineering'', Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000 * W. H. Tranter, B. D. Woerner, J. H. Reed, T. S. Rappaport, M. Robert, ''Wireless Personal Communications Bluetooth Tutorial and Other Technologies'', Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001 * Theodore S Rappaport, ''Smart Antennas: Adaptive Arrays, Algorithms, & Wireless Position Location'', 1998 * Joseph C Liberti; Theodore S Rappaport ''Smart Antennas for Wireless Communications: IS-95 and Third Generation CDMA Applications'' Prentice-Hall, 1999 * Theodore S Rappaport, ''Cellular Radio & Personal Communications: A Book of Selected Readings,'' 1995 * Theodore S Rappaport, ''Cellular Radio & Personal Communications: Advanced Selected Readings'', 1996

References

External links

NYU Wireless

Marconi Society

IEEE News Source

IEEE Explore

Google Scholar page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rappaport, Theodore Living people Fellows of the IEEE Purdue University College of Engineering alumni New York University faculty 1960 births Polytechnic Institute of New York University faculty American electrical engineers Writers from Brooklyn Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering