Thomas Haug (26 April 1927 – 9 December 2023) was a Norwegian-Swedish electrical engineer known for developing the cellular telephone networks.

Early life and education

Thomas Haug was born in Norway on 26 April 1927. He received a master's degree in Electrical Engineering from the Technical University of Norway in Trondheim in 1951, and a degree of Licentiate from KTH—corresponding to a PhD—from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm in 1973.

Professional career

Haug worked at the Ericsson group in Stockholm and with Westinghouse in Baltimore, Maryland, USA, primarily on radio projects. In 1966 Haug joined the Swedish Board of Telecommunications where, together with Östen Mäkitalo and lead the joint Nordic project for cellular communications called the

Nordic Mobile Telephone NMT (''Nordic Mobile Telephony'') is an automatic cellular phone system specified by Nordic countries, Nordic telecommunications administrations (Postal Telephone and Telegraph, PTTs) and opened for service on 1 October 1981. NMT is based on ana ...

(NMT) system. NMT was an analog mobile phone system commercialized in 1980 in Saudi Arabia and throughout the Nordic countries through 1982, reaching 1 million subscribers in 1990. The NMT system enabled roaming among countries and lead the way to the common European System (

GSM The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a family of standards to describe the protocols for second-generation (2G) digital cellular networks, as used by mobile devices such as mobile phones and Mobile broadband modem, mobile broadba ...

). Thomas Haug chaired from 1981 to 1992 the steering committee of experts that standardized the GSM system, first at the CEPT and from 1988 at the

ETSI The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) is an independent, not-for-profit, standardization organization operating in the field of Information and communications technology, information and communications. ETSI supports the de ...

. Haug's personal contributions included introducing features such as SIM cards and SMS messaging. Haug remained chair of the standards work through 1992 when GSM was introduced to the market. GSM and its progeny (

UMTS The Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is a 3G mobile cellular system for networks based on the GSM standard. UMTS uses Wideband Code Division Multiple Access, wideband code-division multiple access (W-CDMA) radio access technolog ...

and LTE) is the world's leading mobile air interface with networks operating in more than 220 countries. He, along with Philippe Dupuis received the James Clerk Maxwell Medal in 2018. Prince William presented the award to them in Edinburgh for their contributions to the first digital mobile telephone standard.

Death

Haug died in Sollentuna, Sweden on 9 December 2023, at the age of 96.

Awards

Haug received, together with Mäkitalo, the Gold Medal of IVA (the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences) in 1987. He further received the Philip Reiss Medal from the Federal German Ministry of Post and Telecommunications in 1993 and the Eduard Rhein Prize from the Eduard Rhein Foundation in 1997. *

Charles Stark Draper Prize The U.S. National Academy of Engineering annually awards the Draper Prize, which is given for the advancement of engineering and the education of the public about engineering. It is one of three prizes that constitute the "Nobel Prizes of Enginee ...

2013 With Joel S. Engel, Martin Cooper, Yoshihisa Okumura and Richard H. Frenkiel

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Haug, Thomas 1927 births 2023 deaths Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Draper Prize winners