IEEE Awards Booklet - 2022 - 19

2022 IEEE MEDALS
IEEE/RSE James Clerk Maxwell Medal
Sponsored by ARM, Ltd.
IEEE Alexander Graham
Bell Medal
Sponsored by Nokia Bell Labs
Ingo Wolff
Panganamala R. Kumar
For the development of numerical electromagnetic
fi eld analysis techniques to design
advanced mobile and satellite communication
systems
A spirited pioneer and champion of electromagnetic theory and applications
in communication technology, Ingo Wolff's contributions
to numerical techniques for the analysis of electromagnetic fields
have advanced the design of radio frequency (RF) and microwave
components, circuits, and antennas as well as the solving of electromagnetic
compatibility problems. Capitalizing on the dramatic
advances in computer technology, Wolff recognized that the finite
difference time domain (FDTD) method could potentially serve as
a powerful computational engine for the full-wave analysis of complex,
three-dimensional microwave- and millimeter-wave structures
with arbitrary distributions of complex materials. Exploiting features
such as parallel processing and special coding adapted to the architecture
of different computers, Wolff and his research team developed
an electromagnetic field simulator that today is one of the best, fastest,
and most accurate electromagnetic field simulators. Based on the
FDTD method, the EMPIRE-XPU electromagnetic field simulator
enables engineers to simulate structures as small as bond wires to
large systems such as entire aircraft accurately and in a very short
time. In 1992, Wolff founded the Institute for Mobile and Satellite
Technology (IMST) GmbH, which very quickly developed technologies
including radar circuits in the millimeter-wave range for
level measurement in large containers, RF circuits and planar antennas
for wireless communication, car radios with integrated telephones,
car-to-car communication systems, wireless sensor systems,
and complete smart city systems. IMST has become a major European
player at the forefront of telecommunications research and
development. He is also a pioneer of using low-temperature co-fired
ceramic (LTCC) technology for communications satellite antennas
and circuits as well as high-density microwave monolithic circuits using
co-planar waveguides. Wolff's recent work includes a new circuit
technology based on dielectric image lines for circuits in the subTHz
range that could play a key role in 6G mobile radio systems.
An IEEE Life Fellow and recipient of the 2002 IEEE MTT-S
Microwave Career Award and the 2013 Outstanding Career Award
from the European Microwave Association, Wolff was the president
and chief executive offi cer (until 2018) and research director
(until 2021) with the Institute for Mobile and Satellite Technology
(IMST) GmbH, Kamp-Lintfort, Germany.
Scope: For groundbreaking contributions that have had an exceptional
impact on the development of electronics and electrical
engineering or related fields.
For seminal contributions to the
modeling, analysis, and design of
wireless networks
Panganamala R. Kumar's sustained contributions to the mathematical
modeling, analysis, and design of wireless networks have
been instrumental in understanding the scaling behavior of network
capacity with a large number of nodes and the role of network
protocols in achieving capacity limits for optimum network
performance, including real-time communications. One of the
most widely cited theoretical works in the area of communication
networks is his result on the asymptotic behavior of network
throughput in a wireless network as the number of nodes
in the network goes to infinity. He demonstrated that, while it
is difficult to characterize the throughput of small and moderately
sized wireless networks, a clean asymptotic characterization
emerges when the number of nodes is very large. He also showed
how network protocols should be designed to achieve maximum
throughput. His development of optimal scheduling algorithms
for transmitting real-time data over time-varying wireless channels
was a major breakthrough for communication in networks
supporting cyber-physical systems subject to severe deadline constraints,
such as information that a vehicle is suddenly braking that
has to be conveyed to other vehicles behind it nearly instantaneously.
He provided a general solution by assigning to each node
a time-varying weight depending on the number of packets delivered
by their deadlines. He established that a scheduling algorithm
allocating a priority to nodes in function of their weights can be
used to maximize the probability that packets are delivered on
time. This led to the design of general algorithms implementable
for all real-time wireless communications. He also has championed
the view that sensor networks are essentially a collection of
nodes designed to perform computation, such as a sensor network
deployed in an area to compute the maximum temperature in
the sensed area, where the goal of the network is to compute the
maximum value of these measurements.
An IEEE Life Fellow and member of the U.S. National Academy
of Engineering, Kumar is Regents Professor and University
Distinguished Professor with the Department of Electrical and
Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University, College Station,
TX, USA.
Scope: For exceptional contributions to communications and networking
sciences, and engineering.
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IEEE Awards Booklet - 2022

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