Let’s travel back to 1968; color TV is wowing audiences; in telecommunications, landline phones have made their way into most homes. The transistor radio is one of the most popular mobile technologies.
In the same year, Stanley Kubrick’s epic science fiction masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey is also in theaters. The film follows a voyage to Jupiter controlled by an advanced artificial intelligence named HAL 9000. The AI communicates with the astronauts in a human voice, makes decisions on its own to control the spaceship and continuously analyzes system data to spot potential problems.
Reality in 1968:
Reality in 1968: Although color TV was a milestone in consumer electronics, it would be a long time before most families had one in their living room. Landline telephones with rotary dials were commonplace. The gadget of the moment was the transistor radio, which allowed people to listen to music and follow sports events from anywhere.
Cinema in 1968:
Cinema in 1968: Voice-activated assistants, real-time data processing and autonomous systems were only found in science fiction such as Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey that presented a vision of the future which was remarkably accurate in anticipating many of the technologies that are now reality.
Today, almost six decades later, artificial intelligence is no longer science fiction. Large Language Models (LLM) power the intelligent assistants in our smartphones. Personalized recommendations we see on the internet are made possible with Machine Learning (ML) as well as groundbreaking developments in medicine, transportation and finance – AI is changing how we work, live and communicate.
Politics and business are also playing an active role. Governments are drafting the legal framework, while companies are searching for use cases. Both are investing in their own research and development along with AI startups.
In wireless communications, artificial intelligence can take over part of the signal processing in the receiver. One of the main aims is to replace traditional processing algorithms with a neural receiver – or at least to supplement these algorithms.
"Andreas Rößler, Technology Manager for 6G , Rohde & Schwarz
Leading research institutes and industry experts around the world think the 6G standard will use artificial intelligence for signal processing in the future wireless communications ecosystem. The aim is to increase data rates and reduce latencies – always and everywhere. This will play a critical role in applications such as extended reality (XR), autonomous driving and smart factories.
As a longstanding partner to the mobile communications industry, Rohde & Schwarz is actively supporting 6G research at universities and in industrial alliances across Europe, Asia and the USA. Rohde & Schwarz and NVIDIA have jointly presented how AI techniques can further improve wireless communications, with neural receivers firmly in the spotlight.
On the way to the future:
On the way to the future: Research into 6G wireless communications is already well underway, which is giving artificial intelligence an extra boost since AI can help transmit data more efficiently.
Unlike traditional receivers that only use mathematical algorithms, neural receivers use artificial neural networks to process signals. This allows them to learn from huge amounts of data and dynamically adapt to any network conditions. Trained machine learning models manage digital signal processing – a key stage in mobile communications.
The neural receiver from Rohde & Schwarz and NVIDIA was developed using NVIDIA’s SionnaTM open-source library, which was specially created for 5G and 6G research. High-end Rohde & Schwarz test solutions for signal generation and analysis are used in this joint project to assess the performance of the neural receiver and confirm results from simulations.
Our security scanners use artificial intelligence to detect anomalies. The imaging methods are designed to detect objects that are not part of the human body.
"Andreas Hägele, Vice President Microwave Imaging, Rohde & Schwarz
Another example from the company’s wide-ranging portfolio is the R&S QPS quick personnel security scanner. At airports around the world, security personnel rely on this solution from the German technology company to perform simple, quick security checks.
In the blink of an eye, the scanner can check a person using millimeterwaves. Neural networks automatically evaluate the reflected millimeterwaves within milliseconds and indicate whether a suspicious object is present.
Detection precision:
Detection precision: The security scanner from Rohde & Schwarz processes around two billion data points and it only takes a few seconds from the start of the millimeterwave scan to get the results.
The potential of artificial intelligence in general and for machine learning in particular is huge. In Germany, one out of every five companies already use artificial intelligence. At Rohde & Schwarz, initiatives like our internal AI incubation lab are helping drive innovation at the company. Constant dialog between AI experts from different divisions and the critical mass of expertise in the incubation lab itself are acting as an extremely effective catalyst.
Innovation has been an integral part of our DNA at Rohde & Schwarz for over 90 years. We will keep working to turn our ideas into reality and seamlessly develop and integrate advances in AI, mobile communications, sensor technology and computing power – for a safer and connected world.
AI is opening up exciting new capabilities and opportunities that we need to understand and master. By drawing on our innovative spirit, we hope to generate optimal added value for our partners and customers.
"Dr. Andrew Schaefer, Technology Coordinator (AI), Rohde & Schwarz
