Statement of Purpose

(Rohan Ramchandra Pote)

An undergraduate in Department of Electrical Engineering is introduced to broad spectrum of
fields and so was my experience while studying here at Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur.
But, the one thing that fascinates me, and will always continue to do so, is the technology that
connects me to my dearest ones. Wireless Communication has revolutionized the way we live
today by providing newer ways to communicate and obtain crucial information. With an earnest
desire to understand this rapidly evolving field and to contribute, I wish to pursue Master’s in
Electrical Engineering with specialization in Wireless Communication.

It is said that life presents you wonderful moments of meeting people who create great impact
on your life and thereafter, you live a life being a different person. I believe I had one such
moment when I met Mr. Suresh Apte, my Mathematics Professor.

We were a bunch of eleven odd students, chasing our dreams to get into one of India’s premiere
Institutes of Technology, the IITs. On one fine day, when we all were busy scratching our head to
solve a difficult problem, my professor (Mr. Apte) told us a very inspiring line of thought, “If you
could not solve a problem, do have a look at the solution, and if you could understand the solution
at first glance, do believe that you had the ability to solve it yourself!”

It was this simple thought that moulded my attitude and strengthened my belief on self-abilities
which eventually helped me get into this Institute. From then, I have always carried this special
gift from my professor with me!

Sometimes, I consider myself very lucky to have chosen IIT Jodhpur as it has proven to be a
perfect airstrip for my successful flight. But, as Garry Player has rightly said, “The harder you
practice, the luckier you get”, it should be my hard work that has lifted me up till now and I will
continue to do so until this journey reaches me to its rightful destination.

IIT Jodhpur is very special, in the sense that it offers a unique blend of courses that enables a
student to explore various streams and specialize in one. It was my fourth semester that I
decided to go for higher studies after graduation. During this semester the course that fuelled
this dream was Signals, Systems and Networks. This course involved powerful concepts from
convolution, as a natural consequence of linearity and time invariance properties of a system, to
the family of transforms.

To enhance my knowledge, I chose to stay in the Institute during the summer vacations and
worked on a project on Global Positioning System (GPS). The aim of this project was to develop
a toolkit in LabVIEW that can transmit GPS signals that follow L5 standard. This Project was an
excellent opportunity to enhance my knowledge and understanding, especially, of the GPS L5
standard, to familiarize myself with the hardware crucial to applications involving RF
technology and above all to understand practical implementation of one of the leading edge
technology, Code division multiple access (CDMA). This project also gave me an experience to
work in a team and to contribute by giving your best to the job assigned to you.

The concept of modulation had, to a certain degree, abated my teasing curiosity to understand
the solution to the following unfeigned problem –
 Given that the available frequency spectrum is limited, how can we incorporate the huge
ingressing traffic of users?

To further quench my thirst, I started taking interest in the GSM standard, more specifically the
Um interface. The idea of simultaneously using time and frequency division multiplexing caught
my mind, and more research revealed the codified steps to allocate these resources (time slot
and frequency). I further decided to perform some experiments and after few weeks of hard
work in the RF lab, I finally succeeded in observing these allocations on a soft front panel
(software from National Instruments).

For the semesters that followed, I chose courses to consolidate my interest, namely – Principles
of Communication, Digital Communications, Wireless Communications and Information Theory.
As every ambrosial meal must follow an apposite disposition of its ingredients, the succession of
these courses was strikingly apt as they exhibited a perfect coherence!

India is globally known for its diverse culture and studying in an IIT ensures that you extend
your confined comfort zone beyond the boundaries laid out by regional dialects. I happened to
extend this boundary further, when I secured an Internship at University Of Manitoba, Canada.
This internship was yet another opportunity to delve deeper into concepts pertaining to RF
hardware particularly, Phase Locked Loops. The Project involved developing software which
can run on Arduino board. This software generates data that can control a Phase Locked Loop to
transmit signals over a desired range of frequency within stringent time constraints. This
project was a part of an on-going research on design of passive, low cost, wireless electric field
sensors based on the variation of the resonance frequency of a nonlinear transmission line.

At ÉCOLE POLYTECHNIQUE FÉDÉRALE DE LAUSANNE (EPFL), I wish to understand the various

challenges faced by the wireless technologies today and contribute to the next generation
technologies. Particularly, technologies that involve exploitation of the available diversity
schemes for a given communication channel drive my curiosity. I would also like to research on
MIMO communication.

I chose EPFL, as it has an exceptional collegium of ingenious faculty, state-of-the-art labs and a
rich diversity of highly passionate students. I believe, with the knowledge that I have gained
over these years of my undergraduate program and my inbuilt curiosity, I can contribute to the
research at your Institute and to the Society.