Joachim Hagenauer (born 29 July 1941) is an

information theorist Information theory is the scientific study of the quantification, storage, and communication of information. The field was originally established by the works of Harry Nyquist and Ralph Hartley, in the 1920s, and Claude Shannon in the 1940s. T ...

and professor

emeritus ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...

Technical University of Munich The Technical University of Munich (TUM or TU Munich; german: Technische Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It specializes in engineering, technology, medicine, and applied and natural sciences. Establis ...

. He pioneered the use of ''soft bits'' (see

Soft output Viterbi algorithm The Viterbi algorithm is a dynamic programming algorithm for obtaining the maximum a posteriori probability estimate of the most likely sequence of hidden states—called the Viterbi path—that results in a sequence of observed events, especiall ...

), a

coding theory Coding theory is the study of the properties of codes and their respective fitness for specific applications. Codes are used for data compression, cryptography, error detection and correction, data transmission and data storage. Codes are stud ...

technique that contributes to the high performance of the

turbo code In information theory, turbo codes (originally in French ''Turbocodes'') are a class of high-performance forward error correction (FEC) codes developed around 1990–91, but first published in 1993. They were the first practical codes to closely ...

s. Professor Hagenauer's work enabled the advancement of turbo coding and led to a significant improvement in channel coding for

digital communications Data transmission and data reception or, more broadly, data communication or digital communications is the transfer and reception of data in the form of a digital bitstream or a digitized analog signal transmitted over a point-to-point or ...

and storage. His works have been applied to digital receiver designs, satellite transmissions and other facets of telecommunications. Hagenauer received his

doctorate A doctorate (from Latin ''docere'', "to teach"), doctor's degree (from Latin ''doctor'', "teacher"), or doctoral degree is an academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism ''l ...

in 1974 from

Darmstadt University of Technology Darmstadt () is a city in the state of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Rhine-Main-Area (Frankfurt Metropolitan Region). Darmstadt has around 160,000 inhabitants, making it the fourth largest city in the state of Hesse a ...

where he also served as an assistant professor. In 1990 he was appointed a director of the Institute for Communication Technology at the

German Aerospace Center The German Aerospace Center (german: Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V., abbreviated DLR, literally ''German Center for Air- and Space-flight'') is the national center for aerospace, energy and transportation research of Germany ...

DLR in

Oberpfaffenhofen Oberpfaffenhofen is a village that is part of the municipality of Weßling in the district of Starnberg, Bavaria, Germany. It is located about from the city center of Munich. Village The village is home to the Oberpfaffenhofen Airport and a m ...

. In 1993 he became the Chair of the University of Technology's Communications Technology department in

Munich, Germany Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...

. He was also active at the IEEE Information Theory Society. He has been awarded the Erich Regener and Otto Lilienthal Prizes from the German Aerospace Association, and the Armstrong Award from the

IEEE Communications Society The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operation ...

, and was also elected to the Bavarian Academy of Science. In 2003, he received the

IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal The IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal is an award honoring ''"exceptional contributions to communications and networking sciences and engineering"'' in the field of telecommunications. The medal is one of the highest honors awarded by the Instit ...

for meritorious achievements in telecommunications.

References

External links

* Engineering & Technology History - Joachim Hagenauer

* IEEE
IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal Recipients: 2003 - Joachim Hagenauer (biography)
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) website. Retrieved May 2010. Living people 1941 births German information theorists Technical University of Munich faculty {{Germany-engineer-stub Technische Universität Darmstadt faculty Technische Universität Darmstadt alumni

See also

References

External links