[16] He was also elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2021 for contributions to the characterization of radio frequency propagation in millimeter wave bands for cellular communication networks.
[17] Ted Rappaport was born in Brooklyn, New York, and graduated from Lincoln High School in Cambridge City, Indiana.
He acquired his ham radio license,[20] and while in high school began teaching adults Morse code.
He received the Virginia Tech Alumni Award for Research Excellence in 1996,[33] TSR Technologies invented some of the world's first software-defined radio (SDR) products, including the Cellscope 2000.
[8][36] At UT Austin, Rappaport founded the Wireless Networking and Communications Group (WNCG), and in 2011 received the Industry/University Collaborative Research Center (IUCRC) award sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
At New York University, he launched the Brooklyn 5G Summit (B5GS) with co-sponsorship from Nokia[40] in 2013, an annual event held in April on the NYU-Poly Campus.
[44] Rappaport has served on the Technological Advisory Council of the Federal Communications Commission (TAC),[45] assisted the governor and CIO of Virginia in formulating rural broadband[46] initiatives for Internet access, testified before the US Congress[47] and conducted research for National Science Foundation, Department of Defense, and other global telecommunications companies.
[49] His early work helped develop the first Wi-Fi standards[50] and characterized multipath channels in a wide range of factory buildings in the 1300 MHz band when most wireless communication operated at lower frequencies.
[56] Rappaport met Brenda Velasquez during his sophomore year; she was an agricultural engineering student also attending Purdue.