Timo Nihtilä: From founding employee to principal scientist

Timo Nihtilä describes himself as one of the founding employees of Magister Solutions, when it was first established as a private company in 2006. Magister emerged from a research collaboration between Nokia and the University of Jyväskylä (JYU) at the Dept. of Mathematical Information Technology – and Timo has been there right from the start.

Principal Scientist Timo Nihtilä first met Magister’s CEO, Jani Puttonen, when they were both starting their studies at the Dept. of Mathematical Informational Technology of JYU. Later they both went on to do their Master’s degrees in the department’s Telecommunications Lab.

Timo’s thesis, which was about the quality of service in wireless networks, received the 2003 award for the Best Master’s Thesis at the department. After this, in collaboration with Nokia, Timo did his PhD on a telecoms system simulator. It looked specifically at the advanced transmission and reception algorithms of WCDMA, the air interface of 3rd generation (3G) wireless networks, in various realistic network scenarios.

“I’m the only one in the company who’s been here from the start”, Timo admits. However, when asked about Jani, he explains further: “We started university together and did our Masters’ theses in the same Telecommunications Lab. Jani then went off for two years to do another project. Later at Magister, we joined forces again.”

“I worked for the University of Jyväskylä doing my PhD for a couple of years first. Magister was established on top of that project”, Timo explains. “The story of Magister started by continuing the work with Nokia on 3.5G, 4G, and WiFi simulators. It wasn’t until 2020 that the project ended, and now I’ve been working with other customers”.

Throughout that project, Magister supported Nokia’s standardisation and wireless work by providing simulations and their analyses right up to 5G.

“There was one thing they had in common – simulators”

In addition to developing radio resource management algorithms for WCDMA and HSDPA, the Nokia project got Timo involved with a wide range of technologies, e.g., LTE self-optimizing networks (SON), LTE licensed assisted access (LAA), WiFi IEEE 802.11 ac/ad/ay and NR-U (New Radio Unlicensed).

“There was one thing they had in common – simulators”, Timo adds. The project gave Timo such a wide range of technological and professional experience that in 2011, his job title at Magister Solutions became Principal Scientist. This job title no doubt has something to do with the fact that, in addition to the dissertations completed as part of his studies, Timo has also published over 30 articles for academic journals and international conferences. He is grateful that he’s been able to pursue his academic studies alongside his work at Magister.

“That has been a very nice bonus, that I’ve been able to advance my academic pursuits along with the work I’ve been doing.”

“At first it might sound like I’ve been ‘stuck in one job’, as they say”, Timo adds, “but it’s like there have been many jobs in this one career – or even just that one research project. I’ve studied various interesting things here.”

“Studying might not always be possible in a project where you do a lot of development work. However, at Magister, it’s been possible to combine simulation development with studying.”

“With freedom comes responsibility”

When asked more about this flexibility, Timo explains that: “with freedom comes responsibility, so then you are responsible for your own work. You have to make sure that the things that are being asked from you are being done.”

Learn more about Timo’s work:

• Doctoral thesis
• Energy Consumption of DECT-2020 NR Mesh Networks
• Energy Saving Router Rotation Protocol for DECT-2020 NR

Mesh-networking for the Internet of Things (IoT)

Most recently, Timo has been studying low power mesh networks for IoT, where devices can relay information to each other without the need for any kind of intervention.

“You can have an IoT communication device inside whatever”, Timo explains holding his thumb and forefinger together in an imaginary device, “for example, an autonomous robot, wireless sensor, or asset tracker. They do a particular thing, then they transmit messages about whatever they are measuring or doing to another device. Then that device relays it to another device, and so on.”

But where does all this information go?

“There’s a wide variety of use cases for IoT, but that is also the challenging part. No one can say that IoT is limited to just one specific use case, as long as information is transmitted back and forth.”

Therefore, Timo’s job is not about the hardware at each end, or the particular use case.

“My role is to develop the techniques and algorithms so that information goes as efficiently and as fast as possible from one device to another.”