Message Padding and an Optimal Modulation Approach Promises Big Gains in Wireless Efficiency

Researchers from Boston University, Northeastern University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have come up with a new design of transmitter that, they say, could help boost the range and battery life of future wireless devices — everything from 6G smartphones to embedded Internet of Things (IoT) sensors.

"By thinking outside the box, we created a more efficient, intelligent circuit for next-generation devices that is also even better than the state-of-the-art for legacy architectures," claims co-author Muriel Médard of the team's work. "This is just one example of how adopting a modular approach to allow for adaptability can drive innovation at every level."

"The traditional approach has become so ingrained that it was challenging to not get lured back to the status quo, especially since we were changing things that we often take for granted and concepts we’ve been teaching for decades," Médard adds.

The team's work builds on an earlier effort known as GRAND, for "Guessing Random Additive Noise Decoding." This "universal decoding algorithm" was designed to improve efficiency in wireless communication and has now been paired with modifications at the transmitter end, which ensure uniformity in transmission lengths — padding out the data-carrying symbols so every transmission is exactly the same length, yet with a non-uniform modulation approach that maximizes transmission efficiency.

In testing, a transmitter built using the new system resulted in an error rate some 75 percent lower than rival optimal-modulation approaches — while also offering error rates "significantly lower" than traditional, non-optimal modulation transmitters. The difference is enough that industry is taking notice, too: "This optimal modulation transmitter radio frequency integrated circuit is a game-changing innovation over the traditional RF signal modulation," says NXP Semiconductors' Rocco Tam, who was not part of the research team. "It's set to play a major role for the next generation of wireless connectivity such as 6G and Wi-Fi."

The team's work has been published in the proceedings of the 2025 IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium (RFIC), under closed-access terms.