Increase bandwidth, engineers urged

By Our Staff Reporter

BANGALORE, JULY 26. Dr. A.P.J.Abdul Kalam, Principal Scientific Adviser to Government of India, today called upon the communication engineers to find ways of increasing the bandwidth for faster telecommunication without having to replace the existing cables.

He was inaugurating a four-day "International conference on communications, control and signal-processing in the next millennium" organised by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Bangalore Section, here.

Dr. Kalam said replacing the existing copper wires and co-axial cables was one way of achieving greater bandwidth, but the need of the hour was to find new technologies that enabled the infrastructure to carry information at greater speed. "This is the challenge for the engineers and scientists."

It was necessary to achieve conversion of the one-way system of cable TV to an interactive system, and enable it to carry hundreds of megabytes of information. The capacity of wireless communication should be raised from a few kilohertz to the level of video-conferencing.

The aim should be to acquire knowledge of international applications that make use of optic fibre, co-axial cables, copper cables and VSAT infrastructure, to enhance bandwidth and to become the world leader in compression technology. He recalled that the Prime Minister, Mr. A.B.Vajpayee, had given a call for making India a "knowledge power" by 2008. An ingredient of the process of becoming a knowledge power was to protect the resources, knowledge, culture and networks, and strengthen laws for protecting intellectual property rights.

Apprehending that the growth of mobile phones, internet and fixed telephony might halt by 2004 on account of the "chip problem", he said there would be a need to make innovations in this field.

Another area that needed the attention of scientists was to reduce the noise levels in missiles, rockets, etc., while ensuring that signaling system remained effective.

Mr. Govardhan Mehta, President, IEEE, Bangalore Section, presided.

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