TORONTO - Under a new research partnership between Canada and India, a Canadian professor will collaborate with a professor from the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi in wireless communication research.

Robert Schober of Vancouver-based University of British Columbia will work with Ranjan Mallik of IIT Delhi to ‘tackle some of the most pressing problems in wireless communication system design’.

The newly launched International Research Chairs Initiative (IRCI) pairs Canadian researchers with their counterparts in the developing world for research partnerships.

Canadian Minister of State for Science and Technology Gary Goodyear announced the first batch of eight research partnerships Wednesday night.

Under the programme, the research teams will receive up to $1 million over five years to address key development challenges in health, environmental sustainability, resource management and information technology, a statement said Thursday.

‘The demand for wireless communications will increase significantly over the next decade, especially in emerging industrial nations such as India,’ said Schober after his selection for research collaboration with India.

‘Collaborating with researchers in India will allow scientists to develop and apply the latest theories and technologies to this fast-growing industry,’ he said.

To accelerate fast technology transfer between the two countries, Mallik and Schober will work with Bell Canada, Sierra Wireless, fSONA Systems of Canada; and Sasken, STMicroelectronics, GM India Science Laboratory of India.

All these companies are supporting the project.

The two researchers will concentrate on ultra-wideband technologies, which offer data rates of hundreds of megabit per second, significantly faster than current wireless data transfer rates, the statement said.

Their work could help enable faster data transmission and improve power efficiency, battery life and range for billions of people using wireless devices, the statement added.