John Mathew Cioffi (born November 7, 1956) is an American electrical engineer, educator and inventor who has made contributions in telecommunication system theory, specifically in coding theory and information theory. Best known as "the father of DSL," Cioffi's pioneering research was instrumental in making
digital subscriber line (DSL) technology practical and has led to over 400 publications and more than 100 pending or issued patents, many of which are licensed.
Early life and education
John Cioffi was born and raised in
Illinois
Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Rockf ...
. He earned a B.S.E.E. degree from the
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univer ...
in 1978.
From 1978 to 1982, Cioffi worked as a modem designer at
Bell Laboratories in New Jersey. While at Bell Laboratories, he also attended
Stanford University, where he earned a Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering in 1984, under the supervision of
Thomas Kailath
Thomas Kailath (born June 7, 1935) is an electrical engineer, information theorist, control engineer, entrepreneur and the Hitachi America Professor of Engineering, Emeritus, at Stanford University. Professor Kailath has authored several books ...
.
Career
In 1984, Cioffi left Bell Labs to work at
IBM as a
hard disk drive
A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magne ...
read channel researcher.
In 1986, Cioffi began his teaching career as an assistant professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University. Cioffi supervised the Ph.D. programs of more than 70 students over the course of more than two decades.
His and his students' research into
discrete multitone modulation
In telecommunications, orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) is a type of digital transmission and a method of encoding digital data on multiple carrier frequencies. OFDM has developed into a popular scheme for wideband digital communi ...
(DMT) became widely adopted in
digital subscriber line (DSL) technology, used commonly for
Internet access.
In 1991, at the age of 35, Cioffi took a leave of absence from Stanford to found Amati Communications Corporation. His vision was to build DSL modems based on his and his students' research. Many of Cioffi's then-current and former students followed him to Amati, where they built the Prelude modem, a DSL modem that could transmit 6+ megabits per second over 9,000 feet of
telephone line
A telephone line or telephone circuit (or just line or circuit industrywide) is a single-user circuit on a telephone communication system. It is designed to reproduce speech of a quality that is understandable. It is the physical wire or ot ...
. The Prelude modem would go on to win what has become known as the "Bellcore ADSL Olympics" in 1993 by performing significantly better than modems using single-carrier modulation techniques, such as
quadrature amplitude modulation
Quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) is the name of a family of digital modulation methods and a related family of analog modulation methods widely used in modern telecommunications to transmit information. It conveys two analog message signa ...
(QAM) and
carrierless amplitude phase modulation (CAP), including modems from
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile te ...
and
Bellcore
iconectiv is a supplier of network planning and network management services to telecommunications providers. Known as Bellcore after its establishment in the United States in 1983 as part of the break-up of the Bell System, the company's name ...
. Hundreds of millions of people now use DSL based on Amati's innovations.
In 1993, Cioffi returned to Stanford, although he remained involved with Amati as an officer and director until its 1998 acquisition by
Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American technology company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, that designs and manufactures semiconductors and various integrated circuits, which it sells to electronics designers and manufacturers globa ...
. Cioffi's research interests then turned to
dynamic spectrum management
Dynamic spectrum management (DSM), also referred to as dynamic spectrum access (DSA), is a set of techniques based on theoretical concepts in network information theory and game theory that is being researched and developed to improve the performan ...
(DSM), an improvement on DSL that mitigates service interruptions and allows DSL lines to run with higher and more reliable data rates.
In 2001, Cioffi was elected as a member into the
National Academy of Engineering
The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of ...
for contributions to the theory and practice of high-speed digital communications.
In 2003, Cioffi founded Adaptive Spectrum and Signal Alignment, Inc. (ASSIA) to help service providers realize improvements in the performance and profitability of their DSL networks. Today ASSIA's customers collectively provide DSL service to more than 70 million subscribers worldwide.
In 2009, Cioffi assumed
emeritus status at Stanford, as the Hitachi Professor Emeritus of Engineering.
He is now CEO and Chairman of ASSIA.
Honors and awards
Cioffi has received numerous awards and honors. Among them are:
* IEEE Leon K. Kirchmayer Award for Graduate Teaching (2014)
*
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 ...
(2010)
* Honorary Doctorate, Edinburgh University (2010)
* The Economist Innovation Award – Computing and Telecommunications (2010)
* University of Illinois Outstanding Alumni Awards (Electrical Engineering 1999 and School of Engineering 2010)
* International Fellow Royal Society of Engineering (UK) (2009)
*
Marconi Prize
The Marconi Prize is an annual award recognizing achievements and advancements made in field of communications (radio, mobile, wireless, telecommunications, data communications, networks, and Internet). The prize is awarded by the Marconi Society ...
(2006)
* Member
National Academy of Engineering
The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of ...
(2001)
*
IEEE Koji Kobayashi Computers and Communications Award
The IEEE Koji Kobayashi Computers and Communications Award is a Technical Field Award of the IEEE established in 1986. This award has been presented annually since 1988 for outstanding contributions to the integration of computers and commun ...
(2001)
* IEEE Third Millennium Medal (2000)
*
IET J. J. Thomson Medal (2000)
* IEEE Fellow (1996)
* Outstanding Achievement Award,
American National Standards Institute for contributions to ADSL (1995)
Selected publications
* T. Starr, M. Sorbora, J.M. Cioffi, and P.J. Silverman, DSL Advances, Prentice Hall, 2003.
* T. Starr, J.M. Cioffi, and P.J. Silverman, Understanding Digital Subscriber Line Technology, Prentice Hall, 1999.
* J.M. Cioffi, Chapter 4, "Generalized Decision-Feedback Equalization for Packet Transmission with ISI and Gaussian Noise" of Communications, Computation, Control and Signal Processing, a Tribute to Thomas Kailath, editors A. Paulraj, V. Roychowdhury, and C.D. Schaper, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997.
* J.M. Cioffi, Chapter 34, "Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Lines" of the Communications Handbook, Editor-in-Chief, J.D. Gibson, CRC Press in cooperation with IEEE Press, 1997.
* J.M. Cioffi, Chapter 15, "Adaptive Filtering" of the Digital Signal Processing Handbook, editors S.K. Mitra and J.F. Kaiser, Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1988.
References
External links
ASSIA, Inc. home pageThe Economist Innovation Awards Homepage
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cioffi, John
1956 births
Living people
Grainger College of Engineering alumni
Stanford University School of Engineering alumni
21st-century American engineers
American people of Italian descent
Coding theorists
Stanford University School of Engineering faculty
Digital subscriber line
Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering
Winners of The Economist innovation awards