Steven Silvio Pietrobon

NAME:

Steven Silvio PIETROBON

POSITION:

Proprietor
Small World Communications
6 First Avenue, Payneham South SA 5070, Australia.

DATE OF BIRTH:

5 October 1963

NATIONALITY:

Australian

AREAS OF WORK EXPERIENCE:

Viterbi, Trellis, MAP, Turbo and LDPC Decoder Design, Trellis Coding, Turbo Coding, Error Control Coding, Digital Transmission, Satellite Commuications.

EDUCATION:

University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, USA.

• Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering - 19 May 1991

International Space University, Toronto, Canada.

• Summer Session - 31 August 1990.

South Australian Institute of Technology (now University of South Australia), The Levels, South Australia.

• M.Eng. in Electronic Engineering - 16 May 1989.
• B.Eng. in Electronic Engineering - 1 May 1986.

AWARDS:

• Australian Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (1993-1996).
• NASA Research Assistantship (1988-1990).
• Commonwealth Scholarship (1986-1987).
• South Australian Institute of Technology Medal for outstanding academic achievement (1986).
• National Semiconductor Prize for best first year Electronic Engineering student at SAIT (1982).

PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS:

Senior Member, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Member, Space Industry Association of Australia
Member, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics

PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES:

Editor, Coding and Communication Theory, IEEE Transactions on Communications (July 1996-Aug. 1999)

Member, Technical Program Committee, International Symposium on Information Theory and its Applications, Honolulu, USA (Nov. 2000)

Turbo Codes Invited Session Organiser, IEEE Information Theory Workshop, Cairns, Australia (Sep. 2001)

Organising Committee, Publicity, IEEE International Symposium on Spread Spectrum Techniques and Applications, Sydney, Australia (Aug.-Sep. 2004)

Organising Committee, Tutorials, IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, Adelaide, Australia (Sep. 2005)

Member, Technical Program Committee, International Symposium on Turbo Codes & Related Topics, Lausanne, Switzerland (Sep. 2008)

Editor, ISRN Communications (July 2010-Feb. 2014)

Member, Technical Program Committee, International Symposium on Turbo Codes & Iterative Information Processing, Brest, France (Sep. 2010)

Member (July 2016-June 2017), Secretary (July 2017-present), AIAA Adelaide Section Council

WORK EXPERIENCE:

Institute for Telecommuications Research Mar. 1997 to May 2015
University of South Australia, The Levels SA 5095.
Adjunct Research Fellow (6 May 1997 to 5 May 2000)
Senior Adjunct Research Fellow (6 May 2000 to 5 May 2015)
Part-time supervision of post-graduate students and teaching the Error Control Coding course.

Satellite Communications Research Centre Jan. 1990 to Feb. 1997
University of South Australia, The Levels SA 5095.

• Research Fellow, "Low rate convolutional codes for space and mobile radio communications," - Australian Postdoctoral Research Fellowship from the Australian Research Council.
  - Search for best low rate convolutional and turbo codes for use in deep space and spread sprectrum mobile radio communications.
• Project engineer, "Development of a 155 Mbit/s FEC codec," - project for INTELSAT (Washington DC, USA)
  - development of a novel FEC codec for satellite transmission of 155 Mbit/s Broadband ISDN. The design was based on a concatenation of a multi-dimensional trellis code and a Reed-Solomon block code.
• Project engineer, "Remote Area Satellite Service," - project for South Australian Department of Industry, Trade, and Technology.
  - study of the communications systems for the space and ground segments of a Remote Area Satellite Service (RASS) using small low Earth orbiting satellites and existing geosynchronous satellites.
• Project engineer, "Rate 5/6 8PSK codec," - project for University of South Australia and University of Notre Dame (Notre Dame IN, USA).
  - development of a prototype 2 Mbit/s rate 5/6 8PSK codec (using a multi-D trellis code) for possible use on the Hubble Space Telescope.

Digital Communications Group Dec. 1985 to Feb. 1986
South Australian Institute of Technology, The Levels SA 5095.
Work experience in error control codec design and manufacture.

Thorn EMI Electronics Dec. 1984 to Feb. 1985
Defence Science Technology Organisation, Salisbury SA 5108.
Work experience in testing electronic boxes for F/A-18.

MAJOR PUBLICATIONS:

1. S. S. Pietrobon, "Discrete implementation of a NASA planetary standard Viterbi decoder," IREE Int. Electron. Conv. and Exhib., pp. 249-252, Sydney, NSW, Sep. 1987. ireecon87.pdf (2,825,571 bytes)

2. S. S. Pietrobon, R. H. Deng, A. Lafanechhre, G. Ungerboeck, and D. J. Costello, Jr., "Trellis-coded multidimensional phase modulation," IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 36, pp. 63-89, Jan. 1990.

3. S. S. Pietrobon and D. J. Costello, Jr., "Trellis coding with multidimensional QAM signal sets," IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 39, pp. 325-336, Mar. 1993.

4. S. S. Pietrobon and D. J. Costello, Jr., "A bandwidth efficient coding scheme for the Hubble space telescope," NASA Space Commun. Technol. Conf., Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.A., pp. 75-81, Ohio, Nov. 1991, National Space Eng. Symp. pp. 231-235, Canberra, ACT, Sep. 1992., and J. Electrical and Electron. Eng., Australia, vol. 13, pp. 275-282, Dec. 1993. iree93a.pdf (5,156,648 bytes)

5. P. K. Gray and S. S. Pietrobon, "An Australian low Earth orbiting mobile satellite system," National Space Eng. Symp., pp. 13-18, Canberra, ACT, Sep. 1992 and J. Electrical and Electron. Eng., Australia, vol. 13, pp. 283-291, Dec. 1993.

6. I. S. Morrison, S. S. Pietrobon, P. K. Gray, and J. J. Kasparian, "A 155 Mbit/s FEC codec for B-ISDN over a 72 MHz satellite transponder," National Space Eng. Symp., pp. 9-12, Canberra, ACT, Sep. 1992 and J. Electrical and Electron. Eng., Australia, vol. 13, pp. 263-270, Dec. 1993.

7. S. S. Pietrobon, G. Ungerboeck, L. C. Perez, and D. J. Costello, Jr., "Rotationally invariant nonlinear trellis codes for two-dimensional modulation," IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 40, pp. 1773-1791, Nov. 1994.

8. S. S. Pietrobon, J. J. Kasparian, and P. K. Gray, "A multi-D trellis decoder for a 155 Mbit/s concatenated codec," Int. J. of Satellite Commun., vol. 12, pp. 539-553, Nov.-Dec. 1994.

9. S. S. Pietrobon, "On the probability of error of convolutional codes," IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 42, pp. 1562-1568, Sep. 1996. it96.pdf (79,497 bytes)

10. S. S. Pietrobon, "Implementation and performance of a turbo/MAP decoder," Int. J. of Satellite Commun., vol. 16, pp. 23-46, Jan.-Feb. 1998. turboMAP.pdf (371,535 bytes)

11. S. S. Pietrobon, "High density liquid rocket boosters for the Space Shuttle," J. of the British Interplanetary Society, vol. 52, pp. 163-168, May/June 1999. lrb.pdf (89,348 bytes)

12. S. S. Pietrobon, "Lunar orbit propellant transfer," 8th Int. Aerospace Congress, Adelaide, Australia, Sep. 1999. IAC99pap.pdf (109,344 bytes)

13. S. A. Barbulescu and S. S. Pietrobon, "Turbo codes: A tutorial on a new class of powerful error correcting coding schemes," J. Electric. and Electron. Eng., Australia, vol. 19, pp. 129-142 (Part 1), pp. 143-152 (Part 2), Sep. 1999. JEEEA99a.ps.gz (162,182 bytes) JEEEA99b.ps.gz (830,594 bytes)

14. S. S. Pietrobon, "Ausroc III telemetry system," 9th Australian Space Research Institute Conf., Canberra, Australia, Dec. 1999. ASRI99.pdf (48,217 bytes)

15. S. S. Pietrobon, "A flexible reusable space transportation system," J. of the British Interplanetary Society, vol. 53, pp. 276-288, May/June 2000. nsto.pdf (156,748 bytes), 49th Int. Astronautical Congress, IAF-98-V.3.07, Melbourne, Australia, Sep.-Oct. 1998. IAF98pap.pdf (123,896 bytes)

16. S. S. Pietrobon, "Super codes: A flexible multi-rate coding system," Int. Symp. on Turbo Codes & its Related Topics, Brest, France, pp. 141-148, Sep. 2000. super.pdf (128,549 bytes)

17. S. S. Pietrobon, "On punctured serially concatenated turbo codes," Asilomar Conf. on Signals, Systems, and Computers, Pacific Grove, California, USA, Nov. 2001. Asilomar01.ps.gz (49,540 bytes)

18. S. S. Pietrobon and W. Xiang, "On the capacity and rate of ISI channels," submitted to IEEE Inform. Theory Symp., Lausanne, Switzerland, June-July 2002. ISIT02.ps.gz (64,204 bytes)

19. N. H. Ngo, S. S. Pietrobon and S. A. Barbulescu, "Performance of non-uniform 16QAM modulation over linear and nonlinear channels," IEE Electron. Letters, vol. 42, pp. 544-546, 27 Apr. 2006. EL06.ps.gz (48,865 bytes)

20. S. S. Pietrobon, "Fly me to the Moon on an SLS Block II," Int. Astronautical Congress, Adelaide, Australia, IAC-17-D2.8-A5.4, Sep 2017. IAC17pap.pdf (706,565 bytes), IAC17ovh.pdf (815,475 bytes)

ITR's Turbo Coding Home Page
ITR's Masters and Ph.D. Theses
Steven Pietrobon's Space Archive.
EDUC-8 Computer