Theodore S. Rappaport
Professor
Electrical and Computer Engineering
William and Bettye Nowlin Chair in Engineering
Phone: (512) 471-6500
Fax: (512) 471-6512
Email: wireless@mail.utexas.edu
Dr. Rappaport’s
Web site
Dr. Ted Rappaport earned his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from
Purdue University in 1987. He joined the faculty of The University of
Texas at Austin in 2002. He is the founding director of the
Wireless
Networking and Communications Group. In 2002, he won the Frederick
Emmons Terman Award as the outstanding electrical engineering educator
from the American Society of Engineering Education, and was recently named
one of the most highly cited researchers in electrical engineering and computer science by ISI.
Dr. Rappaport has been a pioneer in the fields of radio wave propagation and wireless communication
system design. His research has been used by many international wireless standard bodies over the past
two decades, and his work has led to the broad acceptance of site-specific radio frequency (RF) propagation
modeling for broadband wireless network design and deployment. He has over 100 US and International patents
issued or pending and has authored or coauthored more than 15 books. Recently, he has been focusing on new
methods for analyzing and deploying wireless broadband networks and portable internet access. A recent Army
Research Laboratory grant has enabled his team to begin research in millimeter wave circuits and embedded
antennas that will enable far-reaching applications such as rugged, lightweight and massively broadband
wireless multimedia terminals. This research will pave the way for single-chip data transceivers that reliably
transfer more than 5 gigabytes of data per second over distances of 5 meters or more, allowing wireless devices to
replace hard copy media and the paperless office to flourish. Rappaport’s goal is to make the wireless channel
understood as well as a copper wire, and to transfer that knowledge into actual products. Rappaport has founded
and sold two wireless companies to multinational publicly-traded firms. The first, TSR Technologies, provided software-radio signal
intercept equipment for the early cellular and paging markets, and was sold to Allen Telecom (now CommScope) in 1993.
The second company, Wireless Valley Communications, pioneered software based on site-specific RF propagation modeling,
and was sold to Motorola in 2005. Rappaport is a Fellow and an elected member of the Board of Governors for the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Communications Society. He is also an active consultant,
advisor and board member to several technology companies.
Research interests:
- Wireless communications systems and subsystems
- Simulation and modeling of telecom networks performance
- Radio propagation and antennas
- RF integrated circuit design and fabrication