Arogyaswami Paulraj

Paulraj was born in Pollachi near Coimbatore, British India in 1944, one of six children of Sinappan Arogyaswami and his wife Rose.[1] He joined the Indian Navy at age 15 through the National Defense Academy, Khadakvasla and served the Indian Navy for 26 years. Paulraj received a B.E. in electrical engineering from the Naval College of Engineering, Lonavala, India, and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, India

Paulraj’s contributions in India came whilst serving in the Indian Navy. In 1972, he developed an improved trans-receiver-display for a British origin Sonar 170B. The technology was widely deployed in the Indian fleet. During 1977- 83, Paulraj led the development of a large surface ship sonar APSOH. This sonar became the fleet sonar for the Indian Navy and its variants are still widely deployed. APSOH was a landmark achievement in Indian Electronics. Later, Paulraj founded three national level research centers in India: the Center for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Defense R&D Organization, the Central Research Laboratories, Bharat Electronics, and the Center for Development of Advanced Computing, Dept. of Electronics (as co-founder). These labs are now a part of India’s vast R&D infrastructure.

Paulraj joined Stanford University in 1991. His invention (1992) for exploiting multiple antenna at both ends of a wireless link (MIMO) lies at the heart of the current high speed WiFi and 4G mobile phones, and has revolutionized high speed wireless services for billions of people. MIMO boosts data rate by creating parallel data streams, multiplying throughput by the number of antennas used. Paul’s contributions went beyond MIMO’s invention - his large research program at Stanford and two pioneering start-up companies: Iospan Wireless for MIMO-OFDMA core technology (acquired by Intel), and Beceem Communications for WiMAX chips (acquired by Broadcom), have helped create an wireless technology eco-system now shipping billions of MIMO wireless devices annually. More recently he founded Rasa Networks (acquired by Aruba /HPE) for using AI tools in WiFi network analytics.

Paulraj is an ISI Thomson most highly cited researcher with two textbooks on MIMO. He has published over 350 archival papers and a co-inventor in over 80 patents. He has graduated over 50 doctoral and post-doctoral students at Stanford.

• Inducted into the US Patent Trademark Office National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2018.[2]
• Foreign Member Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences [3]
• Foreign Member Chinese Academy of Engineering
• The Padma Bhushan award by the Indian Government in 2010.[4]
• IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal in 2011.[5][6]
• Marconi Prize and Fellowship in 2014.[7] I
• Foreign Fellow Indian Academy of Sciences
• Foreign Fellow Indian National Science Academy
• Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering
• Overseas Fellow National Academy of Sciences, India.
• Member United States National Academy of Engineering, elected in 2006.[8]
• Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.[9]
• Technical Achievement Award from the IEEE Signal Processing Society in 2003.[10]
• Fellow of The World Academy for Sciences, elected in 2007.[11]
• Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) since 1991.[12]
• Also received several national awards in India during his service there 1971-1991 (not listed)

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