In a significant step towards developing Indigenous state-of-the-art next-generation telecommunications technology, the Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT), the premier telecom research & development (R&D) centre of the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), on Monday signed an agreement with the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Mandi in collaboration with IIT Jammu, for the development of "Wideband Spectrum-Sensor ASIC-Chip for Enhancing the Spectrum Utilisation".

The agreement has been signed under the Telecom Technology Development Fund (TTDF) scheme of the DoT. This scheme, designed to fund Indian startups, academia, and R&D institutions, is a crucial enabler for designing, developing, and commercialising telecommunication products and solutions. It aims to enable affordable broadband and mobile services, playing a significant role in bridging the digital divide across India.

The project aims to develop a reliable and implementation-friendly wideband spectrum sensing (WSS) algorithm to improve spectrum efficiency by leveraging spectrum holes to deliver broadband services in rural India. WSS enables cognitive Radio users to adapt to the environment by detecting spectrum holes without causing interference to the primary network.

This project will focus on the design of communication algorithms which are hardware friendly for sensing the wideband spectrum (beyond 2 GHz of bandwidth) for detecting and utilising the under-utilised bands (or white spaces), thus enhancing the spectrum utilisation efficiency of any communication system. 

Additionally, it will demonstrate a wideband cognitive radio module targeting the 6 GHz satellite band (5.925–7.125 GHz) for spectrum sensing and communication. These designs will be emulated in the field-programmable gate-array (FPGA) environment initially and subsequently an application-specific integrated-circuits (ASIC) semiconductor-chip will be taped out that will lead to achieving better spectrum efficiency. 

The  project will also lead to creation of intellectual properties (IPs) for the wideband spectrum sensing technology which is the key component for the dynamic spectrum access.