John P. Costas

Infobox Scientist
name = John P. Costas
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birth_date = 1923
birth_place = Wabash, Indiana
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residence = United States
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nationality = American
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field = Engineering Radar
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alma_mater = Purdue BS 1944, M.E.E. 1947 MIT PhD 1951
doctoral_advisor = Norbert Weiner
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known_for = Costas loops Costas arrays
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John P. Costas (1923, Wabash, Indiana – ) is an American engineer.

Costas invented, among other things, the Costas loop and Costas arrays.

Biography

Costas studied at Purdue University as an undergraduate. During World War II, he was involved in radar engineering, serving in the U.S. Navy as a radar officer. He was a graduate student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he worked on interference filtering [ [http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/1721.1/4872/1/RLE-TR-185-14236201.pdf] – "Interference Filtering" John P. Costas, TECHNICAL REPORT NO. 185, MARCH 1, 1951, RESEARCH LABORATORY OF ELECTRONICS, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS] and linear systems coding ["Coding with Linear Systems", John P. Costas, TECHNICAL REPORT NO. 226, FEBRUARY 20, 1952, RESEARCH LABORATORY OF ELECTRONICS, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS] . While there, he worked with Norbert Wiener, R. M. Fano, J. B. Wiesner and Y. W. Lee. He worked for General Electric from 1951 until the early 1980s, and for Cogent Systems, Inc. He is currently retired.

Work

During the 1950s, he invented the Costas loop, a type of phase locked loop, work which was described as having "... had a profound effect on modern digital communications" [ [http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/5/22249/01037569.pdf?arnumber=1037569] – "Introduction to “Synchronous Communications” A Classic Paper by John P. Costas", D. Taylor.]

In the 1960s, he helped solve the mystery concerning poor performance of sonar systems. He found that the rapidly time-varying channel made coherent processing inappropriate. His solution involved a kind of permutation array, now known as a Costas array, which has ideal properties for the problem.

Costas was made a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 1965 for "contributions to communications theory and techniques."

Publications

Among Costas' most notable publications are the following,
* 1984, "A Study of a Class of Detection Waveforms Having Nearly Ideal Range-Doppler Ambiguity Properties" in "Proc. IEEE, vol. 72, no. 8, pp.996-1009, Aug. 1984".
* 1975 "Medium constraints on sonar design and performance". Technical Report Class 1 Rep. R65EMH33, GE Co., 1965. a synopsis of this report appeared in the Eascon. Conv. Rec., 1975, pp. 68A--68L
* 1966 "Project Medior – A medium-oriented approach to sonar signal processing". "Lockheed Martin Marine Systems and Sensors", 1966.
* 1956 "Synchronous Communications". In "Proceedings of the IEEE", December 1956. Republished in same journal in Vol 90, no. 8, August 2002 as classic paper.

References

External links

* [http://www.costasarrays.org/costasrefs/rickard06open.pdf] – "Open Problems in Costas Arrays", S. Rickard.

Persondata

NAME=Costas, John P.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=
SHORT DESCRIPTION=American engineer
DATE OF BIRTH=1923
PLACE OF BIRTH=Wabash, Indiana