Simulation software giant Altair and publicly-traded engineering consultancy LTTS have opened an innovation hub to support the development of 6G networks. Boardroom Insight caught up with Altair COO Stephanie Buckner and LTTS CEO Amit Chadha to get the inside story on the technology behind the news.

In the late 1980s, Qualcomm laid the groundwork for modern mobile networks by inventing a technology called CDMA. It was an implementation of a concept known as spread spectrum that Hedy Lamarr helped pioneer a few decades prior. The main innovation in CDMA was the ability to spread a mobile device’s data traffic over a large number of radio frequencies, which unlocked a massive increase in bandwidth. Download speeds accelerated from kilobits to megabits per second, making mobile internet useful for a range of tasks besides calling. The innovation earned Qualcomm the prestigious IEEE Milestone award from the world’s largest electrical engineering association. 

In the three decades since the invention of CDMA, the telecommunications industry has racked up many other technical milestones. One was the launch of the world’s first 5G network in South Korea six years ago. The next major milestone will be the introduction of 6G, a future standard for cellular connectivity currently under development. The effort to make mass-market 6G a reality is driven partly by industry partnerships such as the one that Altair and LTTS, two publicly-traded tech giants, launched last month. Boardroom Insight got the inside story on the news from Altair Chief Operating Officer Stephanie Buckner and LTTS Chief Executive Officer Amit Chadha.

High-frequency antennas 

Altair is a provider of simulation and data analytics software currently in the process of being acquired by Siemens for $10.6 billion. LTTS, in turn, is a publicly-traded IT and engineering services firm that was named Altair’s partner of the year for 2025. It’s also a subsidiary of Larsen & Toubro, one of the largest industrial conglomerates in India. 

As part of their partnership, Altair and LTTS have launched an innovation hub called the 5G-6G Wireless Center of Excellence. LTTS experts at the hub will use Altair software to assist companies such as internet providers with 5G infrastructure projects. Notably, the center will also help lay the foundation for future 6G networks. The latter standard has the same basic goals as previous cellular specifications: higher bandwidth, less latency and more reliable connections. It’s set to be finalized by the end of the decade.

According to Altair and LTTS, one of the innovation hub’s focus areas will be the development of reflective intelligent surface, or RIS, devices. Such devices could play a key role in tomorrow’s 6G network infrastructure. They’re designed to enhance a network’s other hardware components in various ways, such as by making radio signals easier to pick up for cell towers.

RIS modules are “essentially large programmable surfaces embedded with meta-materials that dynamically manipulate electromagnetic waves,” Chadha told Boardroom Insight. Metamaterials are composites engineered to include intricate microscopic structures on their surface. Those structures have physical properties that lend themselves well to tasks such as amplifying wireless signals. Nanomaterials also have applications in a range of other areas ranging from healthcare to the sports equipment industry.

“RIS controls how radio signals are reflected, refracted, or absorbed,” Chadha explained. “RIS can create virtual line-of-sight paths in obstructed environments for improved signal strength and optimized network performance.”

Improving signal strength in obstructed environments would address one of 5G’s main limitations. In many cases, data sent from a 5G cell tower can be blocked by objects such as buildings and trees. This means reliable connectivity often requires a line-of-sight path between the cell tower and the user’s phone, which isn’t always achievable in dense urban environments. 

 “In areas where direct line-of-sight communication is obstructed (like urban areas with tall buildings or factory floors with multiple heavy machinery setups), the RIS redirects signals for ensuring enhanced connectivity,” Chadha said. 

Altair comes into the picture because its flagship simulation platform, HyperWorks, makes it easier to design complex devices such as cell tower antennas. The platform enables engineers to test their hardware designs in a virtual sandbox that emulates real-world physical conditions. The technical data collected from such simulations can be used to identify hardware flaws and optimization opportunities. 

The complexity of high-frequency 5G and 6G antennas means they require “precise optimization to ensure strong signal transmission and reception,” Altair’s Buckner told Boardroom Insight. There’s also the matter of ensuring that the hardware works as expected even when environmental conditions are not ideal. “5G/6G infrastructure must withstand real-world thermal and structural stresses,” Buckner explained. “HyperWorks provides multiphysics simulation to evaluate thermal, mechanical and electromagnetic performance.”

The process of ensuring a cellular network works reliably even when it’s snowing or there’s a building in the way goes beyond hardware design. In other words, it’s not entirely up to the network equipment suppliers that make 5G gear. Internet providers must also play a role by placing their cell towers in locations where coverage quality is maximized. That task, which is known as network planning, will be a major focus for the staffers at the 5G-6G innovation hub launched by Altair and LTTS.

“Interference and signal degradation pose significant challenges in multiple scenarios including urban, indoor, vehicular and non-terrestrial deployments,” Buckner said. Altair’s software, she continued, helps network planners predict the movement of radio waves and optimize cell tower deployments accordingly to minimize inference. 

Digital twins

Internet providers’ infrastructure teams are responsible for not planning and building networks but also maintaining them. There’s often an emphasis on predictive maintenance, which is the idea of catching malfunctions early to avoid major outages. Carriers sometimes relegate this task to their IT consulting partners. “LTTS leverages its extensive experience in end-to-end product development and predictive analytics to analyze real-time data, such as network traffic patterns, signal strength and device activity, identifying early signs of potential issues like interference or capacity bottlenecks,” Chadha said. 

He elaborated that the workflow can involve digital twins, which are virtual replicas of network infrastructure. The difference between a digital twin and a simulation is that the former often incorporates real-time data collected from the carrier network it emulates. “By creating sophisticated digital twins of network systems, our engineering teams enable the simulation of realistic operational conditions,” Chadha explained.

Altair, for its part, provides a digital twin platform as part of its software portfolio. Buckner said that carriers can combine the platform with the company’s RapidMiner data analytics product, which lends itself to not only engineering-related tasks but also business intelligence. Using the two products in tandem “enables multiple use cases across operations and network management – ranging from predictive maintenance, network optimization, and real-time monitoring to reducing operational costs and enhancing service reliability,” Buckner said.

If everything goes according to plan, researchers will standardize the 6G specification by 2030. The first production-grade 6G networks should follow suit in the subsequent decade. But how will customers use those future networks, exactly? Chadha went through a few scenarios. 

“Potential use cases include remote robotic surgery in healthcare, where surgeons can perform complex procedures from remote locations with advanced robotic systems,” he said. “Enabling a network of drones, sensors, and autonomous agriculture equipment to manage crops and monitor environmental conditions in real-time is another promising scenario using 6G. This would help boost crop yields.”

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