IEEE Awards Booklet - 2023 - 18

2023 IEEE MEDALS
IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal
Sponsored by Qualcomm, Inc.
IEEE Jun-ichi Nishizawa Medal
Sponsored by the IEEE Jun-ichi Nishizawa
Medal Fund
Frank R. Kschischang
James S. Harris
For contributions to the theory and practice
of error-correcting codes and optical
communications
Frank R. Kschischang's work in the area of digital communications
and coding theory has had a profound impact both in advancing
the theoretical understanding of these subjects and in using them
to solve real-world problems. His 1991 doctoral thesis considered
the application of lattices to digital communications. He cleverly
employed nonbinary codes to construct a number of dense spherepacking
lattices, including the Kschischang-Pasupathy lattice, which
is still the densest-known sphere-packing lattice configuration in
a 36-dimensional Euclidean space. He also devised a remarkable
multidimensional signal constellation-shaping technique that was incorporated
as a part of the internationally standardized V.34 modem
design. To accomplish such results in a strongly researched area is
truly impressive. There are several areas where Kschischang's contributions
have been pivotal: his highly cited work on factor graphs,
his innovations in the use of the nonlinear Fourier transform for the
performance improvement of optical communication systems, the
co-invention of staircase codes, and his development of the KoetterKschischang
subspace codes, which is perhaps his most brilliant
technical contribution. His subspace-coding approach for error
control in random linearly coded networks, developed with Ralf
Koetter, is not only a beautiful mathematical theory but a contribution
with significant practical applications, such as network coding
for internet transmission. Kschischang's application of the Nonlinear
Fourier Transform provides both a theoretical understanding of and
practical algorithms for achieving transmission schemes that can potentially
overcome distortion caused by optical fiber nonlinearities.
Staircase codes are a class of high-performance, yet low-complexity
error-correcting codes now adopted in a number of international
IEEE Awards Booklet - 2023

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