Rice reported that its innovation has attracted interest from wireless companies globally, noting that carriers are universally concerned about having enough spectrum to support the continuing explosion of wireless devices and their increasingly complex applications, such as video.

One of AT&T's arguments in wanting to purchase T-Mobile USA for $39 billion is to gain access to more wireless spectrum.

Asked on Tuesday to comment on the full-duplex technology demonstrated at Rice, an AT&T spokesman said the carrier would need to study the innovation before commenting on it.

Sabharwal and his colleagues, Melissa Duarte and Chris Dick, first wrote in 2010 that full-duplex was possible, and this summer Sabharwal and other colleagues showed a full-duplex signal with 10 times better reliability and throughput than any other touted by researchers, Rice officials said.

Sabharwal said Rice has also been able to show it can add full-duplex as an additional mode to existing hardware, such as smartphones, where space is limited. That means that a smartphone maker would not need to add new hardware to support full-duplex.