Marvin Kenneth Simon (September 10, 1939 – September 23, 2007)''In memory of Marvin Simon'', IEEE Communications Magazine, Nov. 2007. was a telecommunication engineer who worked extensively for 35 years in the area of modulation, coding, and synchronization for space, satellite, radio, and military communications and also performance evaluation of wireless telecommunication systems over

fading In wireless communications, fading is the variation of signal attenuation over variables like time, geographical position, and radio frequency. Fading is often modeled as a random process. In wireless systems, fading may either be due to mul ...

channels. Simon got his PhD from New York University in 1966, and worked at the

Jet Propulsion Laboratory The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a Federally funded research and development centers, federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) in La Cañada Flintridge, California, Crescenta Valley, United States. Founded in 1936 by Cali ...

for the subsequent four decades of his life. The fruits of his research have been successfully applied to the design of many of

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

's deep space and near-earth missions for which he has been earned 11 patents, 25 NASA Tech Briefs, 4 Space Act awards, and over 200 technical papers. He died of brain cancer in September 2007. He was a Fellow of the

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) organization, 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE ...

, Fellow of the Iowa Academy of Education (IAE), and winner of the

NASA Exceptional Service Medal The NASA Exceptional Service Medal is an award granted to U.S. government employees for significant sustained performance characterized by unusual initiative or creative ability that clearly demonstrates substantial improvement in engineering, a ...

and the

NASA Exceptional Engineering Achievement Medal The NASA Exceptional Engineering Achievement Medal (abbreviated EEAM) was established by NASA in 1981 to recognize unusually significant engineering contributions towards achievement of aeronautical or space exploration goals. This award is given ...

both in recognition of outstanding contributions in analysis and design of space communications systems. In addition, he is listed in Marquis Who's Who in America and other similar compilations. In 1997 he was the recipient of the IEEE Edwin H. Armstrong Achievement Award for seminal contributions spanning three decades in the design and analysis of novel coherent digital communication systems, including synchronization and tracking, differential modulation and signal design, spread spectrum techniques, and trellis-coded modulation for fading channels. Most recently he was awarded the IEEE Third Millennium Medal for outstanding contributions to communications technology. He was also the co-recipient of the 1986 Prize Paper Award in Communications of the IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology for his work on trellis coded differential detection systems and the 1999 Prize Paper Award of the Vehicular Technology Conference for his work on generalized selection combining performance evaluation over fading channels. His paper on multiple-symbol differential detection of M-PSK was included in the IEEE Communications Society's 50th Anniversary Journal Collection – as one of the 50 key papers published in the IEEE Transactions on Communications and the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, over the past 50 years.

Books

* ''Probability Distributions Involving Gaussian Random Variables: A Handbook for Engineers and Scientists'', Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002. * ''Telecommunication Systems Engineering'', Prentice-Hall, 1973 and Dover Press, 1991. * ''Phase-Locked Loops and Their Application'', IEEE Press, 1978. * Spread Spectrum Communications, Vols. I, II, and III, Computer Science Press, 1984 and McGraw-Hill, 1994. * ''An Introduction to Trellis Coded Modulation with Applications'', Macmillan, 1991. * ''Digital Communication Techniques'', Prentice-Hall, 1994. * ''Digital Communication over Fading Channels: A Unified Approach to Performance Analysis'', John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2nd ed., November 2004. * ''Bandwidth Efficient Digital Modulation with Application to Deep Space Communications'', John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2003.

Footnotes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Simon, Marvin 20th-century American engineers 1939 births 2007 deaths