Biography
Foschini received the B.S.E.E. degree from the New Jersey Institute of Technology, the M.E.E. degree from New York University and a Ph.D. from the Stevens Institute of Technology. In December 1962, he joined AT&T Bell Laboratories where he has worked since. He has also taught at Princeton University and Rutgers University.
Within the telecommunications engineering field, he is best known for his invention of Bell Laboratories Layered Space-Time (BLAST). This is a scheme for use in wireless communications which recommends the use of multiple antennas at both the transmitter and receiver. By careful allocation of the data to be transmitted to the transmitting antennas, multiple data streams can be transmitted simultaneously within a single frequency band — the data capacity of the system then grows directly in line with the number of antennas. This represents a significant advance on current, single-antenna systems.
Foschini's 1996 paper (not published until 1998), "On limits of wireless communications in a fading environment when using multiple antennas", sparked the massive international research effort on multiple-input multiple-output wireless systems that continues today. Shortly after that publication, in a technical memorandum for his employers, Foschini introduced the BLAST concept which is one of the most widely examined techniques in wireless communications research today. Among his later contributions, the paper offering a simplified form of the original BLAST architecture, called Vertical BLAST (V-BLAST), has also resulted in intensive international research efforts. In 2002, Bell Laboratories' patent on BLAST was named by MIT's Technology Review Magazine as one of five "Patents to watch". According to the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Foschini is in the top 0.5% of most widely cited authors.
In 2002, Foschini received the Thomas Alva Edison Patent Award, an honor given to New Jersey people who have changed the world with their inventions; he has also received the Bell Labs Inventor's Award, Gold Award and Teamwork Award and holds the titles of "Distinguished Member of Staff, Distinguished Inventor" in the Laboratories. Before his work on BLAST, Foschini had already been elected a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 1986, "for contributions to communications theory".
Foschini received the 2008 IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal "For seminal contributions to the science and technology of multiple-antenna wireless communications."
Read more about this topic: Gerard J. Foschini
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