WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Wireless Innovation Forum (WInnForum), a non-profit international industry association dedicated to driving the future of radio communications and systems worldwide, announces winners of its annual Innovation Awards as well as incoming and outgoing board members elected at its annual meeting in La Jolla, California, 20 November. Andrew Clegg of Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL) was announced as the President’s Award winner, Bruce Oberlies of Motorola Solutions (NYSE: MSI) as the Vanu Bose Award for Leadership in Wireless Innovation winner and Xilinx Versal ACAP (NASDAQ: XLNX) as the Technology of the Year award winner. The Forum also welcomed four new members to its Board of Directors: Richard Bernhard of WISPA, David Gurney of Motorola Solutions, Eric Nicollet of Thales (OTCMKTS: THLLY) and Naotaka Sato of Sony (NYSE: SNE).
The President’s Award is presented to individuals in recognition of their sustained outstanding contributions in support of the Wireless Innovation Forum and its activities. This year’s recipient, Dr. Andrew Clegg of Google, was selected because of his prolific contributions to the Forum in 2018 across committees and projects. He was instrumental in moving the CBRS Certified Professional Install program forward, one of several programs leading to enabling the commercialization of the U.S. CBRS Band. He led the Forum’s work creating and filing the “Technical Characteristics of Potential Commercial Systems Operating in Some or All of the U.S. 3100- 3550 MHz Band”. In addition, Dr. Clegg helped form the Forum’s new 6GHz committee as well as contributed changes to the Forum’s “Top 10 Most Wanted Wireless Innovations.”
Bruce Oberlies of Motorola Solutions, the Vanu Bose Award for Leadership in Wireless Innovation winner, is being recognized for numerous contributions to the Wireless Innovation Forum, immeasurable support of the organization through his service on the Board, and as President of the Forum. Bruce led the team that developed the past two strategic plans, which set the groundwork for creating the Spectrum Sharing Committee and the new 6 GHz committee. He also championed the development and maintenance of the advocacy agenda and has managed the ballot process as Forum Chair, resulting in 33 standards revisions for the SSC alone. He also chaired the Advanced Technologies Committee Steering Group for several years.
Technology of the Year winner Xilinx Versal ACAP was architected and developed with a recognition that the evolution of semiconductor process technology is no longer sufficient to achieve substantial gains in faster performance and lower power consumption on its own. The Versal ACAP has two key differentiators. From the hardware perspective, Versal ACAP has a plethora of silicon infrastructure which is hardened and yet still programmable, enabling lower power while maintaining flexibility. This includes a programmable Network-On-Chip, memory controllers, PCIe and CCIX controllers and a multi-rate ethernet controller. From a software perspective, ACAP has been designed to be fully software programmable without needing to know RTL (register-transfer level). The ACAP tools and software stack are designed such that different types of developers can use the tools and languages that they are familiar with, from VHDL to TensorFlow, and achieve a working design collaboratively or independently. Versal ACAP is designed for target applications like wireless communications and AI inference. The combination of SDR and AI technology is particularly intriguing.
New board members include:
Richard Bernhardt, who currently serves with the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (WISPA) as their National Spectrum Adviser. He is also the chairman of the Spectrum Sharing Committee (SSC), Operations Working Group (WG5) for the Forum, serving also on the group's Steering Committee and chair of the marketing function. WInnForum's SSC is the principal standards development organization for the telecom and wireless industries Citizens Broadband Radio Network (CBRS). Mr. Bernhardt is also the co-chair of the Fixed Wireless Access task group of the Business Wireless Group of the CBRS Alliance and the liaison representative for WISPA. Prior to these roles, he served as the Senior Director of Marketing and Communications for Streakwave Wireless Inc., a global wireless VAD for the wireless industry; and previously in a variety of senior roles in technology and start-up companies. Mr. Bernhardt has also served since 2006 on the board of directors and as chair of the executive board of the humanitarian organization, Bangla Hope, an orphanage and school system for destitute and orphaned children in need, located in Bangladesh. Mr. Bernhardt is married with one son. He attended California Western School of Law in San Diego, CA and holds a Juris Doctorate degree as well as dual bachelor's degrees in communications and political science from the University of California, Davis.
David Gurney is a Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff in the CTO organization at Motorola Solutions in Schaumburg, IL. In his 30-year career at Motorola, he has worked on numerous communications systems, including US and Japan Digital Cellular, CDMA, Wimax, LTE, cable, FTTH, RFID and LMR systems. He has also worked extensively on shared spectrum techniques (CBRS/geo-location databases), digital signal processing, communications system and propagation modeling, as well as FPGA hardware development. He holds a BSEE degree from the University of Illinois, and an MSEE degree from NTU. He currently holds 47 patents and is recognized as a Master Innovator and Science Advisory Board Associate at Motorola Solutions.
Eric Nicollet has 20 years of experience in the area of embedded SDR with Thales Communications and Security, France, committed to better realize the SDR promises down to the heart of radio products: baseband and radio processing. He initiated the WInnF Transceiver Facility and Time Service Facility, contributed actively in elaboration of SCA 4.1, and has served many years as co-chair of the WInnF committee on International SDR Standards. Eric was instrumental in definition of the portability-focused ESSOR Base Waveform methodology. He was awarded the WInnF 2009 International Achievement Award for the first Transceiver Facility specification, and the 2014 President’s Award for his work in support of SCA 4.1 development for better support of resource constrained processors.
Naotaka Sato has over 25 years of experience in wireless communication research, regulation, standardization and industry activities. He has been engaged in development of CDMA cellular phone and research and development of RF systems for 3G cellular phone system in Sony Corporation, Tokyo, Japan, Sony Electronics, Inc., San Diego California, USA and Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications Japan, Inc., Tokyo, Japan. Since April 2005, he has been working on cognitive radio systems. His research interests include dynamic spectrum access and RF system architecture. He has been contributing to 3GPP RAN1, ETSI TC RRS, IEEE 1900.6, IEEE 802.19, Wi-Fi Alliance, Wireless Innovation Forum and CBRS Alliance, and served Rapporteur in ETSI and Task Group Chair in IEEE. He is the project leader of Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) developments. He received his B.E. and M.E. degree in electrical engineering from Tokyo University of Science, Japan.
The Forum would like to thank outgoing members Bruce Oberlies of Motorola Solutions and Marc Adrat of Fraunhofer for their service.
Individuals continuing on the Board include Manuel Uhm of Xilinx as Chair of the Board of Directors, John Glossner of Optimum Semiconductor Technologies as Forum Chair/President, Mark Gibson of CommScope (NASDAQ: COMM) as Forum Vice Chair/President, Andrew Clegg of Google as Chief Technology Officer, Prakash Moorut of Nokia (NYSE: NOK) as Chief Regulatory Officer, Ken Dingman of L3Harris (NYSE: HRS) as Treasurer, Kurt Schaubach of Federated Wireless as Secretary, Louise Lamont of CRC as Government/NonProfit Representative, Pierre Jean Muller of RED Technologies as Small Company Representative, Alberto Quintana of Indra Sistemas (OTCMKTS: ISMAY) as Medium Company Representative, and Paul Challoner of Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC) as Large Company Representative. Members at Large include David Hagood of Viavi Solutions (NASDAQ: VIAV), R. Muralidharan of Tata Power SED, Neeti Tandon of AT&T (NYSE: T), Doug Knisely of Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM), and Jean Philippe Delahaye of DGA.
Management and oversight of the Forum as a whole, including the Forum’s corporate affairs, is performed by the Forum Board of Directors. WInnForum members are dedicated to advocating for the innovative use of spectrum and advancing radio technologies that support essential or critical communications worldwide. Through events, committee projects and initiatives the Forum acts as the premier venue for its members to collaborate to achieve these objectives, providing opportunities to network with customers, partners and competitors, educate decision makers, develop and expand markets and advance relevant technologies. To learn more about the Forum visit http://www.WirelessInnovation.org.
About the Wireless Innovation Forum
Established in 1996, The Wireless Innovation Forum (SDR Forum Version 2.0) is a non-profit mutual benefit corporation dedicated to advocating for spectrum innovation, and advancing radio technologies that support essential or critical communications worldwide. Members bring a broad base of experience in Software Defined Radio (SDR), Cognitive Radio(CR) and Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) technologies in diverse markets and at all levels of the wireless value chain to address emerging wireless communications requirements. To learn more about The Wireless Innovation Forum, its meetings and membership benefits, visit www.WirelessInnovation.org.
