Mobile Communications: New Directions in Blue Sky Research

September 18, 2007: 3:00pm - 4:00pm
Location: 290 Hearst Memorial Mining Building, the Maria & Dado Banatao Conference Room, UC Berkeley

Please join us for a special talk by Professor Joseph McGeehan CBE FREng, who is the Director of the Centre for Communications Research, University of Bristol Professor, and also Managing Director of Toshiba's Telecommunications Research Laboratory. A reception will follow this talk.

Abstract:

The past 40 years or so have witnessed a tremendous growth in the use and application of mobile communications. The UK has played a major role in the research and development of the technologies, systems and networks that are in use today. In this talk, Professor McGeehan, Managing Director of Toshiba's Telecommunications Research laboratory (UK), and Director of the Centre for Communications Research, University of Bristol, will discuss how wireless and mobile communications have changed, highlighting some of the key, but perhaps little known innovations that have shaped the way we communicate today. He will outline pioneering academic research in areas, including propagation, multi-level modulation, 'linearised' power amplifiers, SMART antennas, CDMA and Wireless LANs. He will also consider disruptive technologies and their impact on the future.

Biography:

Currently Director of the Centre for Communications Research, University of Bristol Professor Joseph McGeehan is also Managing Director of Toshiba's Telecommunications Research Laboratory. After graduating from the University of Liverpool, he spent several years at the Allen Clark Research Centre, The Plessey Company Ltd. (Caswell), researching the technology and application of Gallium Arsenide microwave devices. He then held academic positions at the School of Electrical Engineering, University of Bath, before his appointment to the Chair of Communications Engineering at Bristol in 1985.

In academia, he has pioneered many of the major advances used in mobile communications today including linear modulation techniques for transmitting/receiving multi-level modulation schemes, linearised power amplifiers, ray-tracing for propagation prediction, SMART antennas, WLAN technology and wideband CDMA. In 2003 he was awarded the degree of D.Eng. by the University of Liverpool for his significant contribution to the field of mobile communications. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, was awarded the CBE in the Queen's 2004 Birthday Honours List for 'Services to the Communications Industry' and is a nonexecutive director of Renishaw plc and of the UK's Virtual Centre of Excellence in Mobile & Personal Communications (Mobile VCE).

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