From Necklaces to Networks: Meet Diana Maamari

With a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, Dr. Diana Maamari is an unstoppable problem solver. When asked how she got started in engineering, her reply is not about a piece of electronics or complex machinery she wanted to repair. Her story is about a necklace her mother gave her. The problem with the necklace was that the young Diana had broken its clasp — she did not want her mother to know.

Young Diana found a way to scavenge a piece of metal from some scrap, and managed to repair the clasp, so she could avoid disappointing her mom. She says this old necklace still has her childhood repair on it. The hook doesn’t look all that great, but it works, it’s lasted and best of all, her mother never found out. Or at least, never said anything about it.

Even now, Maamari is still looking for invisible solutions. Working on radios for extended reality (XR) devices, she’s focused on advancing the state of wireless in hardware that doesn’t have the power, physical room or heat dispersal characteristics for today’s powerful radios. The improvements she designs might be largely invisible to most people, but they will lead to a more robust market for XR devices for everyone.

The OnQ Team (OnQ): Why did you join Qualcomm Technologies?

Diana Maamari (DM): Qualcomm Technologies is the company for any wireless engineer, so I did not hesitate to join when the opportunity came my way. Working here has been wonderful and fruitful. The company provides enormous opportunities to innovate. I appreciate all the expertise across teams here, from upper to lower layers of the protocol stacks.

I am able to shine here in a way I wasn’t at any other company.

OnQ: What’s it like being an inventor at Qualcomm?

DM: It’s a joy. Qualcomm makes innovation seamless and facilitates the invention process. Information is accessible. Resources are accessible. The work is finding the right problem to tackle and then putting thought into inventing the most reasonable solution.

It’s amazing to be working on advanced wireless technologies in 2024 and to talk to people who worked on CDMA. We’ve been solving kind of the same problem for all those years, improving and improving. It’s an experience to be part of it.

OnQ: What are you working on now?

DM: Right now, working on the 5G and 6G specs to see if we can reduce user equipment (UE) power consumption, and also improve throughput and latency performance. The solution will span both the physical and media access control layers. We ideally want these solutions to become part of the 6G standard.

For example, in the 5G spec, whenever a device is transmitting, it has to light up all the spectrum allocation that was granted to it. There’s no way in the spec that allows a device to just light up a portion of that grant… just enough to get the job done. So what happens is that the UE transmits using all this over-allocated bandwidth, consuming more power than necessary. So one of our proposals was to have the UE use just enough bandwidth thereby reducing uplink power consumption.  

Hopefully this proposal will be part of 6G.

It will help everyone, but also it will improve the performance of XR devices using Qualcomm Technologies’ wireless modems.

OnQ: What are you proudest of? How does it feel to see your work in the world?

DM: It’s rewarding to see our impact on the industry, but what I’m really looking forward to is seeing our 6G enhancements being adopted in the standard!

OnQ: If you could build anything or solve any scientific or engineering problem, what would it be?

DM: What I’m working on now: solving the challenges for wireless in XR devices and AR glasses. 

There are so many limitations. You need the same performance as in a smartphone, but you have these really serious constraints: less power, less room, limitations on your antennas and lower thermal limits. It’s a really hard problem.

OnQ: Do you have advice for young innovators?

DM: Yes. You have to think outside the box. Not just when working on a solution but when looking for a problem to solve.

Also, it’s critical to build strong collaborative networks. Reaching out to experts can enhance an initial idea and drive innovation further. Fortunately, that’s pretty easy at Qualcomm, it’s a great community.

OnQ: Do you have any advice on how big companies can encourage people to develop ideas that can lead to new products and inventions?

DM: It would be great if inventors could present ideas to their review board instead of just submitting written proposals. That would facilitate dialog that might be useful for everyone… even when an idea isn’t accepted (especially so in that case). I’ve had so many ideas rejected and learned so much along the way.

Ideas are so fragile. They need to be nurtured. Anything we can do to encourage people to take invention risks, and to learn how to refine their idea process, that’s a good thing.

Editor's Note: The above interview was transcribed and consolidated by AI, then written and edited manually by our editors for editorial clarity.