Ungerboeck Wins "Nobel Prize
of Communications"
The Marconi International Fellowship, an organization created to honor the
memory of radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi, has awarded its 1996
International Marconi Award to Gottfried Ungerboeck, a scientist at IBM's
Zurich Research Laboratory. Ungerboeck received the annual award, often
regarded as the "Nobel Prize of communications," for his invention of
trellis-coded modulation (TCM), the core technology used in modems around
the world. Ungerboeck received the $100,000 award and a sculpture by
contemporary artist Otello Guarducci in a ceremony in London.
"We are honored and pleased that one of our scientists has been chosen to
receive this prestigious award," says James McGroddy, IBM senior vice
president and adviser to the Chairman, and a member of the Marconi
Fellowship's executive committee. "Without Dr. Ungerboeck's invention,
telephone modems would likely be limited to transmitting data over
telephone lines at considerably lower rates than the 28,800 bits per second
achieved today."
According to Gioia Marconi Braga, Marconi's daughter and chair of the
fellowship, "Dr. Ungerboeck's achievements have been instrumental in
creating the digital world in which millions of us travel every day. The
telephone line modem provides, and will continue to provide for the
foreseeable future, an important link to the electronic world."
Ungerboeck was born in Austria in 1940. He received a diploma in electrical
engineering from the Technical University of Vienna in 1964, and a Ph.D. in
electrical engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, in
Zurich, in 1970. He joined IBM Austria as a systems engineer in 1965, and
became a research staff member at the Zurich Research Laboratory two years
later. In 1984 he was named an IBM Fellow.
Ungerboeck began work on the technique that would improve digital data
transmission over telephone lines in 1975. He faced the problem of sending
digital signals over analog lines. His TCM solution combined two techniques
- error correction coding and modulation - that had previously been
regarded as separate.
TCM creates an optimal way of encoding the ones and zeros of digital data
in analog waveforms, thereby allowing the maximum amount of data to be
transmitted over an analog line. The method minimized the effects of small,
noise-induced distortions in the shape of a signal. Such distortions can
result in ones being mistaken for zeros, and vice versa, when the signal is
demodulated, significantly distorting messages at the receiving end.
Today, Ungerboeck's technique is a standard for converting digital signals
transmitted by computers over the analog phone network and is recommended
by the International Telegraph and Telephone Committee for use in new
high-speed modems. The technology is also beginning to find use for
transmissions over other communications links, such as satellite channels
and line-of-sight microwave transmissions.
"Research is an adventure of the mind," says Ungerboeck. "My adventure
started soon after I graduated from university. While serving in the army,
I read about optimum control of dynamical systems, like motors. Later, at
IBM Research, similarities came to my mind between optimum control and
recognizing information sent by noisy communication channels with minimum
probability of error. Information had to be sent in a form that makes
different information sequences easier to distinguish in the presence of
signal disturbances. At some time, the idea of TCM as a method to achieve
this was born. I am greatly indebted to IBM for providing me with a
stimulating research environment during many years, and I feel deeply
honored by receiving this prestigious award."
Auslander and Terman Elected to the
National Academy of Engineering
IBM Fellow Marc A. Auslander (top) and Lewis M. Terman, of the Thomas J.
Watson Research Center, have been elected to the National Academy of
Engineering (NAE). Auslander was recognized for his contributions to
reduced instruction set computer (RISC) systems; Terman for his
contributions to semiconductor memory, circuits and technology.
Established in 1964, the NAE is a prestigious, private honorary
organization for the encouragement of engineering research. Academy
membership - one of the highest professional distinctions accorded an
engineer - honors those who have made important contributions to
engineering theory and practice, and those who have demonstrated unusual
accomplishment in the pioneering of new and developing fields of
technology.
Thompson Named to
Silicon Valley Hall of Fame
IBM Fellow David A. Thompson, of the Almaden Research Center - a pioneer
in the field of magnetic data recording - has been named to the Silicon
Valley Engineering Hall of Fame.
Thompson earned the accolade for leading the effort that resulted in the
magnetoresistive (MR) head, a device that enables huge increases in data
storage capacity. The capacity of storage systems is now growing at 60 percent per year, owing mainly to MR heads. Used in all IBM storage products, the h
eads are becoming standard in the industry.
Thompson joined IBM in 1968, at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center.
Twelve years later, he was named an IBM Fellow. He moved to the Almaden
Research Center in 1987, where he is now director of the Advanced Magnetic
Recording Laboratory, a joint effort by Almaden and the Storage Systems
Division, both in San Jose.
