CV of W. van Etten

Wim van Etten was born in Zevenbergen, the Netherlands, in 1942. He earned both the MSc and PhD degree at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the University of Eindhoven in respectively 1969 and 1976, both in Electrical Engineering.

From 1966 to 1969 he was employed as a research-assistant in electronics at the University of Eindhoven and 1969 to 1970 by Philips in a development department for oscilloscopes. In 1970 was appointed as an assistant professor at the University of Eindhoven, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and as such engaged in research on the transmission of digital information over coaxial and multiwire cables. Starting from 1976 he was involved in teaching and research in optical fiber communications. In 1985 he was appointed as an associate professor at the same university. His appointment as a full professor in Telecommunication Engineering at the University of Twente, Enschede, was in 1994. In September 2007 he retired. After this retirement he was still active as a supervisor for several PhD students until beginning 2014. Moreover, he remained active as a board member of several professional institutes.

His present interests include: optical communications, microwave photonics, mobile communications, detection, and simulation of communication systems.

He is author or co-author of over 180 scientific papers in international journals, at conferences and symposiums. He is the first author of the book "Fundamentals of Optical Fiber Communications", Prentice Hall, 1991, co-authored by J. van der Plaats, and author of the book "Introduction to Random Signals and Noise", Wiley 2005. In 2002 the IEEE Communication Society celebrated its 50-th anniversary and at that occasion published a list of 57 key papers that were published by the society in the past 50 years. Out of 28,000 papers two of his papers were selected on this list. The papers were basic contributions to the well-known MIMO-concept, that later on was implemented in a.o. Wi-Fi. Nowadays this concept is also applied in VDSL, the succeeder of ADSL. In this field it is known as "vectoring". The 57 key papers were reprinted and published in the book “The Best of the Best”, Wiley/IEEE Press, 2007.

He is a Life Senior Member of the IEEE and member of KIVI (Royal Dutch Institute of Engineers). From 1998 to 2004 he was chairman of NERG (Dutch Society of Electronic and Radio Engineers) and from 1998 to 2022 member of Dutch URSI Committee (NUC). He was a member of the supporting foundation of the NUC from 2007 to 2022 and he chaired this foundation from 2010 to 2022. From 2010 to 2022 he was a member of the executive committee of the IEEE Benelux Section. From 2010 to 2012 he was vice-chairman of this ExCom and from 2012 to 2014 chairman. In 2016 he erected the IEEE Benelux Life Member Affinity Group, of which he was the chairman from 2016 to 2023. Presently he still is a member of the executive committee of this group. He received the IEEE Region 8 2023 Regional Individual Life Member Service Award.

He served as a member or chairman of organizing or program committees of several (inter)national conferences, symposia, workshops, etc. Moreover, he served as a reviewer of several international journals and conference papers in the field of (optical) communications.

After his retirement he devoted his attention also to the history of telecommunications. He gave several presentations on the development of the telegraph and the people who were involved in that. Moreover, he gave presentations on the invention of the telephone and especially the role of Alexander Graham Bell and the Bell Telephone Company (BTC), which later became AT&T.