Kicking off the next “G”: Meet Miguel Griot

In an alternate timeline, the world would be honoring Miguel Griot as a football (soccer in the U.S.) star. At about 14 years old, an inflection point for many young people, Griot found himself a gifted footballer as well as a bit of a math and logic prodigy. He had the chance to devote himself to sport and attend a football academy, on the path to a professional sports career and its possible glory. But where he was growing up, in Uruguay, choosing this football path meant giving up on rigorous academics.

So teenaged Griot approached the jock/nerd problem as an engineer would: looking at risks and failure modes. His parents were willing to support either decision (his sports-loving father maybe leaning a bit toward the football path), so it was up to him. “Football is a lot of risk,” he thought, and he was fascinated by engineering and “geeky” anyway. He chose the engineering path, and in the timeline in which we live, we are thankful he did.

With a Ph.D. in Information Theory and Nonlinear Channel Coding, plus more than a decade of experience working at Qualcomm Technologies, Dr. Griot’s work has given us fundamental improvements in wireless technology, starting with his work in 4G. Today he’s working hard on “starting a new G” — establishing standards for what comes after 5G.

The OnQ Team (OnQ): What drew you to engineering?

Miguel Griot (MG): It was always on my radar, especially telecommunications. Growing up, I was fascinated by the technological advancements happening around me. I remember being amazed when my parents bought a cordless phone. The arrival of cell phones and the mobile internet had a huge impact on our lives, and I wanted to be part of the ongoing transformation. So at 14, I made the critical decision between pursuing a career as a professional footballer and continuing my studies. It was a tough decision, but I chose engineering and never looked back.

OnQ: What’s it like being a Qualcomm inventor?

MG: Innovation is the best part of my job. It’s what keeps me excited. It’s researching the landscape, understanding the state of the art, knowing where the industry should be heading, and then finding the opportunities for Qualcomm in the area of your expertise. In my case that’s system architecture and protocols. 

At Qualcomm, innovation does not happen in isolation. There are lots of discussions between colleagues, and great ideas spin out of brainstorming sessions. Those discussions are the most stimulating part of this job. The input from different people looking at the same problem from different angles is what makes a good idea into a great invention.

What inspires me? That we are contributing to technology that has significant impact on society. We are the frontier of it, and working to push it even further.

OnQ: What are you working on now?

MG: Right now, the hardest thing I’m working on is starting a new “G” — 6G.  Starting a new G is always hard. You need to go outside and convince existing and new industries that it makes sense to invest in it. Which it does, especially now as we’re building it for devices beyond smartphones.

I’m leading R&D design on 6G’s system architecture, which includes 6G signaling protocols and end-to-end procedures. We’re trying to have 6G improve on some of the limitations of 5G, and to support connectivity for more use cases and scenarios, like IoT, drones, vehicles and obviously artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning.

To get the most out of AI, it needs to be incorporated into the system from the beginning. So 6G will be quite an improvement compared to what we can do with 5G, since 5G was not built natively for AI.

OnQ: Why are we working on this now, when 5G is still expanding?

MG: We have to start building the next generation of protocols before we’re done with the current ones, and we have to get operators and manufacturers excited about them. That’s our job.  

One of the most important parts of 6G is actually reducing its core functionality, compared to 5G, which is a mass protocol, one size fits all. Except it doesn’t in our expanding world of applications. So 6G will reduce the core footprint, and allow for new building blocks and more flexibility. That is the main paradigm shift.

Plus of course the usual things for a new G — more spectrum, better performance and AI built into the system. It’ll be used for parameter tuning of the whole system, down to the device level, to optimize coverage, performance and power use.

We think operators will be excited by it, and will deploy it, and get good revenue from it.

OnQ: What’s your advice on collaborating?

MG: Collaborate whenever you can! Cellular systems are complex, and no feature or component of the system works in isolation. So the people behind the technologies need to collaborate as well.

The first step in being a good collaborator is to have a basic understanding of what other teams are doing and where the expertise is within the company. Paying attention at all-hands meetings and internal reviews is a good start. Then, start a dialogue with people working on related systems. In my experience, once that dialogue is started, that bridge stays open for a long time.

OnQ: How can a young innovator improve their chances for success today?

MG: You need to really understand the system you want to improve, and why your new idea will be useful. Spend a lot of time in that first stage, seek feedback from colleagues early on, and constantly look back and revise your goals to produce a solid set of requirements and scenarios your design is addressing.

Avoid working on solutions looking for a problem. If you nail the problem statement first, chances are the solutions you produce will be solid.

OnQ: Do you have any thoughts to share with policy makers on encouraging innovation?

MG: It became very clear to me with 5G that having a strong patent portfolio on such a big global technology is essential. We need a strong foothold on technology like this, that spans all nations. Understanding the technology and being at the forefront of it gives a country a significant advantage. 

For Qualcomm and all companies in the industry, protecting IP and getting fair compensation for it is essential. It provides the incentive and justification for companies to continue investing in and evolving technology. The moment you don’t have that, your technology becomes stagnant.  

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