Professor Alan Willson is a Recipient of 2012 Darlington Best Paper Award

Alan Willson, the Charles P. Reames Professor of EE, is the recipient of the 2012 Darlington Best Paper Award, an annual award given by the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society.   The award, presented to Prof. Willson on May 22 at the IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems in Seoul, Korea, is for his paper entitled “Desensitized Half-Band Filters,” published in the January 2010 issue of the “IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems.”  The paper concerns Willson’s entirely new method for the design and implementation of lowpass FIR half-band filters wherein the filter’s frequency response is provided with a significant insensitivity to the filter’s tap-coefficient values.  This method leads to circuits having lower power consumption, higher operating speeds and smaller IC area.

The Darlington Award recognizes the best paper bridging the gap between theory and practice published in the “IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems.”  The award is based on general quality, originality, contributions, subject matter and timeliness.

Among Professor Willson’s other recent accolades are the IEEE Leon K. Kirchmayer Graduate Teaching Award and the IEEE CAS Society’s Charles A. Desoer Technical Achievement Award, and the Mac Van Valkenburg Award.