Dr. David D. Falconer:
Biography
David D.
Falconer was born in Moose
Jaw, Saskatchewan,
Canada on August
15, 1940. He received the B.A. Sc. degree in Engineering Physics from the
University of
Toronto in 1962 and the
S.M. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from M.I.T. in 1963 and 1967
respectively. After a year as a postdoctoral fellow at the Royal Institute of
Technology, Stockholm, Sweden he was with Bell Laboratories, Holmdel, New Jersey
from 1967 to 1980, as a member of the technical staff and later as group
supervisor. During 1976-77 he was a visiting professor at Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden. Since 1980 he has been at
Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, in the Department of Systems
and Computer Engineering.. He retired as Chancellor’s
Professor in 2005, and was Distinguished Research Professor from 2006 to 2012.
Currently he is Professor Emeritus in the same department.
Dr.
Falconer has been a Fellow of the IEEE since 1986. He was awarded the
Communications Society Prize Paper Award in Communications Circuits and
Techniques in 1983 and again in 1986. He was a co-recipient of the IEEE
Vehicular Technology Transactions best paper of the year award in 1992. He was
awarded the 2008 Canadian Award in Telecommunications Research. He was also a
recipient of a 2008 IEEE Technical Committee on Wireless Communications
Recognition Award and the IEEE
Communications Society 2009 Award for Public Service in the Field of
Telecommunications. He
received the 2009 Fessenden (Telecommunications) Medal from IEEE Canada. In June
2009, he was awarded an honorary doctorate of science from the University of Edinburgh.
Dr. Falconer was Editor for Digital
Communications of the IEEE Transactions on Communications from 1981 to 1987, and
was a guest editor of several special issues of the IEEE Journal of Selected
Areas in Communications. He was Director of the Ottawa-Carleton Centre for
Communications Research from 1987 to 1990. He was Chairman of the NSERC
Communications, Computers and Component Grant Selection Committee in 1991‑1992.
In 1998 he was Vice Technical Chair of the IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference
in Ottawa. He
was an IEEE Communications Society Distinguished Lecturer from 1992 to 2004. In
2004 and 2005 he was elected Chair of Working Group 4 (New Radio Interfaces,
Relay-Based Systems and Smart Antennas) of the Wireless World research Forum
(WWRF). He was Founding Director of the Broadband Communications and Wireless
Systems (BCWS) Centre at Carleton University from 2000 to 2004. Dr. Falconer
was Executive Chair of Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC)
2008, Las Vegas,
April, 2008. Dr. Falconer is a member of the Association of Professional
Engineers of Ontario.
His
interests are in digital communications and communication theory, with
particular application to wireless communications systems. From 1990 to 1998 he
led a research
project on broadband wireless communication at EHF radio frequencies,
involving several universities, sponsored by CITR (Canadian Institute for
Telecommunications Research). Along with Carleton University colleagues, he participated in
the European Union 6th Framework project on next-generation wireless,
“WINNER” (Wireless Initiative New Radio) [https://www.ist-winner.org] from 2004
to 2007. He was principal investigator on a NSERC grant which enabled Carleton
University to be the sole North American partner in
WINNER.