David M. Smith

A little about me.

I have a background in engineering management, technical product management, and marketing. Earlier in my career I started two companies. The first manufactured testers for dynamic RAM chips and modules. The second, New Class-Five, took advantage of the telecom transition to IP networks and provided solutions for incumbents to modernize voice services. Among other things, we developed possibly the first carrier-grade fault-tolerant virtualized signaling- and media-gateway. NCF was eventually sold to Metaswitch Networks.

Since then I have worked on technologies and strategies for meeting the RAN needs of wireless service providers globally, mainly macro and massive MIMO radio, but mmWave and baseband as well. I have been privileged to lead programs to demonstrate practical mmWave beam-forming and evaluate chipsets for ORAN-compliant radios, as well as a proof-of-concept of automated cavity filter tuning. Open RAN has been a special interest because of the possibility of eventual plug-and-play, which means I have spent a fair amount of time digging into the ORAN Alliance’s fronthaul architecture to examine its strengths and weaknesses.

I can also honestly state that I have worked on 6G! — in the sense of providing a beginning assessment of cell-free massive MIMO.