Robert W. Heath, Jr.

Biography

The technical contributions of Robert W. Heath, Jr. and Jeffrey G. Andrews have shaped the field of modern wireless communications and are paving the way to next-generation mobile data systems. An early pioneer of multiple antenna systems for wireless communications, Heath has made contributions to systems that operate at lower- and millimeter-wave frequencies. His work demonstrated how the antenna arrays in such systems can be adapted to increase data rates and to provide robustness against channel impairments, improving performance in commercial wireless systems. Heath is well known for his work on channel feedback, developing the concept of limited feedback for efficiently compressing critical channel state information and providing this information to the transmitter. Andrews developed an innovative framework for modeling and characterizing the signal-to-interference-plus-noise (SINR) of wireless communication systems, which previously was mathematically intractable. He was also a pioneer of hierarchical cellular network design, which combines the capacity benefits of small cells with the coverage provided by large cells. For these multi-tier cellular networks, Andrews created new analytical techniques and characterized fundamental limits, as well as practical methods for interference avoidance and load balancing between the tiers. Heath and Andrews have also collaborated extensively, including contributions to the design and analysis of multi-cell multi-antenna communication systems.

An IEEE Fellow, Heath is the Cullen Trust for Higher Education Endowed Professor of Engineering (No. 6) at the University of Texas, Austin, TX, USA.