Ed Knapp
Senior Vice President and CTO
American Tower Corporation
As a Senior Vice President, Engineering at Qualcomm Ed Knapp was responsible for Qualcomm’s New Jersey Research Center and Qualcomm’s Global Small Cell product engineering team with staff across India, Israel and the US. Mr. Knapp has more than 35 years of communications technology experience with over 28 years invested in the development of the global wireless industry from 1G to 5G, including CxO leadership roles in 3 start-ups.
Ed has led multi-disciplined teams across many facets of the wireless business including financing, planning and engineering operator networks (Verizon Wireless/NextWave), the development of video services platforms (PacketVideo), and building the ecosystem for FLASH-OFDMA IPR with end to end products incorporating new radio access protocols (Flarion).
Recently, he was responsible for managing multiple small cell semiconductor SoC and RFIC programs with commercial deployments at global operators via Tier1 OEMs. Mr. Knapp’s current activities focus on the evolution of 3G/4G/5G & Wi-Fi networks through development of Qualcomm’s Femtocell Station Modem™ (FSM™), Wi-Fi convergence and backhaul products. His advanced Qualcomm R&D projects include mmW 5G, mobile & vehicular device to device (V2X) technology and visual light communications applications. Ed joined Qualcomm with the acquisition of start-up Flarion Technologies in 2006.
Before joining Flarion, Knapp was the chief technology officer of PacketVideo Corporation, a leading provider of multimedia software for streaming of MPEG4 video to mobile devices. Prior to PacketVideo, Knapp co-founded and served as the senior vice president of engineering and chief technology officer of NextWave Telecom, Inc. Mr. Knapp also served as the executive director of technical services for Bell Atlantic/NYNEX Mobile (Verizon Wireless) where he was responsible for design, buildout and operation of the New York Metro area cellular system.
He received a master's of business administration from Columbia University, his master's of science degree in electrical engineering from Polytechnic University (NYU) in New York, and a bachelor's degree in engineering from Stony Brook University. Ed currently has 4 granted US patents and 1 pending application.
