Associate Professor Ranjan Singh has been elected as the Fellow of the Optical Society (OSA) for pioneering contributions to the field of terahertz science and technology through the development of active metamaterial platforms for sensing, ultrafast switching, and communication applications.
About Associate Professor Ranjan Singh’s research on terahertz science and technology
The fifth generation (5G) communication network has provided a breakthrough platform to fulfil needs at individual and societal levels enabling enhanced broadband mobile communications, Internet of Things (IoT), autonomous vehicles, and virtual reality. However, the never-ending quest for new services and technology development has already led scientists to look forward to the sixth generation (6G) of communication network. The holy grail of 6G communications would be to achieve data bit rate of terabits per second, which is two orders of magnitude higher than 5G. Terahertz (THz) carrier frequencies are envisioned to facilitate 6G wireless communication since they offer huge bandwidth along with high directionality that will allow a plethora of disruptive applications.
The vision of future wireless links using terahertz waves can be categorized as short, medium and long range. Among them, medium range high speed terahertz wireless links will overcome the bottleneck of high data traffic, eliminate the growing complexity of wired connections and offer great promise towards the future of “a world without wires”. Therefore, active terahertz metamaterial devices invented by A/P Singh through existing dynamic material platforms that respond to terahertz waves such as high-temperature superconductors, chalcogenides, silicon, germanium, perovskites and reconfigurable microelectromechanical systems has become an important step towards the advancement of terahertz communication, modulation and sensing technologies.
Impact of Associate Professor Ranjan Singh’s research
A/P Singh’s seminal terahertz works has advanced the field of terahertz science and technology and has laid a solid foundation for bridging the “Terahertz gap” between the electronics and photonics world. His works provide a clear advantage in the realization of 6G communications that would enable a trillion IoT device connectivity and unprecedented data transfer rates of 1Tb/s. Such large data bit rates would enable cloud computing driven functionalities, artificially intelligent sensors, autonomous driving, and reliable safety mechanisms. Overall, the advanced information and communication technologies based on sub-terahertz wireless networks would contribute strongly towards improving healthcare, development of smart cities including intelligent transportation and energy distribution systems. These developments would transform societies and lives of people apart from creating huge businesses.
About Associate Professor Ranjan Singh
Ranjan Singh is a tenured Associate Professor at the Center for Disruptive Photonic Technologies and Division of Physics and Applied Physics, School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He leads an internationally renowned research program on terahertz waves, metamaterials, superconductor photonics, and ultrafast optics. A/P Singh has made pioneering contributions towards filling the so called “Terahertz gap” in the electromagnetic spectrum that connects the world of electronics and photonics. He has over 150 refereed publications that has attracted citations with h-index of 53 (Google Scholar). He has also delivered more than 50 keynote and invited talks at major conferences.
About the Optical Society (OSA)
The Optical Society promotes and delivers scientific and technical information on optics and photonics worldwide that is authoritative, accessible and archived. Since 1916, OSA has been the world’s leading champion for optics and photonics, uniting and educating scientists, engineers, educators, technicians and business leaders worldwide to foster and promote technical and professional development. The OSA Fellow is a membership designation of OSA that denotes distinguished scientific accomplishment. To find out more about OSA, visit https://www.osa.org/en-us/about_osa/.