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 and Turbo 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, Australian Space Research Institute
Member, British Interplanetary Society

PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES:

Coding Theory and Techniques Editor, IEEE Transactions on Communications, (July 1996-)

WORK EXPERIENCE:

May 1997 to present: Institute for Telecommuications Research
University of South Australia, The Levels SA 5095.
Adjunct Research Fellow

Jan. 1990 to Feb. 1997: Satellite Communications Research Centre
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.

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

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

MAJOR PUBLICATIONS:

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. S. S. Pietrobon, "On the probability of error of convolutional codes," IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 42, pp. 1562-1568, Sep. 1996.

9. 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.ps.gz (1,151,742 bytes)

10. 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)

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

12. 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)

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

14. 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)

15. 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)

16. 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)

17. 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)

18. 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)

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