The Multiport Communication Theory

Josef A. Nossek

The high level of abstraction taken by information theory makes it a very versatile and powerful tool for the analysis and optimization of communications systems.  But information theory has no concept of the flow of energy that accompanies the flow of information.  Therefore, some important aspects of communication systems such as transmit power or noise covariance can by no means be straightforwardly mapped from the information theoretic context to technical reality.  It is the purpose of multiport communication theory to provide the necessary framework to allow correct assessment of the energy flow in a communication system and thereby enables an information theoretic analysis and optimization which is consistent with the underlying physics.  After developing appropriate circuit theoretic channel models, the potential performance of multi-antenna communication systems will be analyzed and surprising new results and insights will be revealed.  All the new results have been obtained with the application of classical circuit theory which extends the mathematical theory of communications to engineering science.

Josef A. Nossek (S'72--M'74--SM'81--F'93—LF’12) received the Dipl.-Ing. and the Dr. techn. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Technology in Vienna, Austria in 1974 and 1980, respectively. In 1974 he joined Siemens AG in Munich, Germany as a member of technical staff, in 1978 he became supervisor, and from 1980 on he was Head of Department. In 1987 he was promoted to be Head of all radio systems design. Since 1989 he has been Full Professor for circuit theory and signal processing at the Munich University of Technology where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on circuit and systems theory and signal processing and leads research on signal processing algorithms for communications, especially multiantenna systems. He was President Elect, President and Past President of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society in 2001, 2002 and 2003 respectively. He was Vicepresident of VDE (Verband der Elektrotechnik, Elektronik und Informationstechnik e.V.) 2005 and 2006, President of VDE 2007 and 2008 and was Vicepresident again in 2009 and 2010. His awards include the ITG Best Paper Award 1988, the Mannesmann Mobilfunk (now Vodafone) Innovationsaward 1998, the Award

for Excellence in Teaching from the Bavarian Ministry for Science, Research and Art in 1998. From the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society he received the Golden Jubilee Medal for 'Outstanding Contributions to the Society' in 1999, the Education Award in 2008 and the Guillemin-Cauer Best Paper Award in 2012. In 2008 he also received the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany and in 2009 he has been elected member of the German National Academy of Engineering Sciences (acatech). In 2013 he received an Honorary Doctorate and in 2014 the Ring of Honor from VDE. From 2016 to 2019 he has been Full Professor at the Federal University of Ceara in Brasil.