Mike Fitz - Biography

Michael P. Fitz received his B.E.E. degree (summa cum laude) from the University of Dayton, Dayton, Ohio, in 1983 and his MS and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Southern California in 1984 and 1989, respectively. Dr. Fitz has held several tenured positions in academia and engineering and leadership positions in industry.  In 2005 Dr. Fitz rejoined NGST as a Senior Systems Engineer.

Dr.  Fitz has 20 years of experience in wireless communication systems, 15 year in wireless land mobile communications and 10 years of experience in multiple antennas wireless communications.  Even though Dr. Fitz ventured into academia in 1989, he had been a frequent consultant on commercial wireless communications problems and took a leave of absence in 1997 to work for Sophia Communications as the principle communication architect in a land mobile two-way paging system.  During this time he led a significant effort bringing space-time coding technology into the paging business.  Since returning to NGST Dr. Fitz has been developing protected and high speed communication links.

Dr. Fitz's research work is in the broad area of statistical communication theory. A major component of Dr. Fitz's research program is physical layer communications theory for mobile wireless communications. This effort focuses on coding, demodulation, synchronization, and equalization techniques optimized for mobile or vehicular digital communications. He has authored over 150 journal and conference papers, contributed a chapter to three edited books, and solely authored the textbook “A First Course in Communication Systems.” Dr. Fitz was active in experimental multiple antenna wireless communications and had developed a laboratory to support this work. The laboratory develops algorithms for, analyzes performance, and develops breadboard testbeds of wireless communication systems. Dr. Fitz was awarded the 2001 IEEE Communications Society Leonard G. Abraham Prize Paper Award in the Field of Communications Systems for his work on space-time signaling and channel modeling.

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