Gottfried Ungerboeck is an Austrian communications engineer.

Ungerboeck received an electrical engineering

Electrical engineering

Electrical engineering is a field of engineering that generally deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism. The field first became an identifiable occupation in the late nineteenth century after commercialization of the electric telegraph and electrical...

 degree (with emphasis on telecommunications) from Vienna University of Technology

Vienna University of Technology

Vienna University of Technology is one of the major universities in Vienna, the capital of Austria. Founded in 1815 as the "Imperial-Royal Polytechnic Institute" , it currently has about 26,200 students , 8 faculties and about 4,000 staff members...

 in 1964, and a Ph.D. from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology

ETH Zurich

The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich or ETH Zürich is an engineering, science, technology, mathematics and management university in the City of Zurich, Switzerland....

, Zurich

Zürich

Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...

, in 1970. He joined IBM

IBM

International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...

 Austria as a systems engineer in 1965, and the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory

IBM Research

IBM Research, a division of IBM, is a research and advanced development organization and currently consists of eight locations throughout the world and hundreds of projects....

 in 1967.

At Zurich he worked on digital signal processing

Digital signal processing

Digital signal processing is concerned with the representation of discrete time signals by a sequence of numbers or symbols and the processing of these signals. Digital signal processing and analog signal processing are subfields of signal processing...

 and switching systems, communication and information theory

Information theory

Information theory is a branch of applied mathematics and electrical engineering involving the quantification of information. Information theory was developed by Claude E. Shannon to find fundamental limits on signal processing operations such as compressing data and on reliably storing and...

. Among many contributions to the theory of data transmission, he invented trellis coded modulation.

Ungerboeck joined Broadcom

Broadcom

Broadcom Corporation is a fabless semiconductor company in the wireless and broadband communication business. The company is headquartered in Irvine, California, USA. Broadcom was founded by a professor-student pair Henry Samueli and Henry T. Nicholas III from the University of California, Los...

 in 1998 as Technical Director for Communication Systems Research.

Awards and honours

• IBM Fellow
  IBM Fellow
  An IBM Fellow is an appointed position at IBM made by IBM’s CEO. Typically only 4 to 9 IBM Fellows are appointed each year, at the annual Corporate Technical Recognition Event in May or June. It is the highest honor a scientist, engineer, or programmer at IBM can achieve.The IBM Fellows program...
  
   (1984)
• IEEE Fellow
  IEEE Fellow
  An IEEE member is elevated to the grade of IEEE Fellow for "unusual distinction in the profession and shall be conferred by the Board of Directors upon a person with an extraordinary record of accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest"...
  
   (1985)
• IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal (1994)
• Marconi Prize
  Marconi Foundation
  The Guglielmo Marconi International Fellowship Foundation, briefly called Marconi Foundation and currently known as The Marconi Society, was established by Gioia Marconi Braga in 1974 to commemorate the centennial of the birth of her father Guglielmo Marconi)...
  
   (1996)
• Australia Prize
  Australia Prize
  The Australia Prize was Australia's pre-eminent prize for scientific research from 1990 until 2000, when it was replaced by the Prime Minister's Prizes for Science. The award was international, 10 of the 28 recipients were not Australians.-Recipients:...
  
   (1997)
• Golden Jubilee Award for Technological Innovation from the IEEE Information Theory Society
  IEEE Information Theory Society
  The IEEE Information Theory Society , formerly the IEEE Information Theory Group, is a professional society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers focused on several aspects of information: its processing, transmission, storage, and usage; and the "foundations of the...
  
  (1998), for "the invention of trellis coded modulation".

External links

• 1997 Australia Prize
• Ungerboeck Wins "Nobel Prize of Communications"
• Gottfried Ungerboeck Oral History, IEEE Global History Network