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The IEEE Milestones program honors significant technical achievements in all areas associated with IEEE. Milestones are proposed by any IEEE member, and are sponsored by any one or more IEEE Organizational Unit(s) (OU) such as IEEE section(s), society(ies), chapter(s) or student branch(es).
To be proposed as an IEEE Milestone, an achievement must be at least 25 years old, have benefited humanity, and must have had at least regional importance (defined as an area of more than 500 square kilometers). Currently just over 180 IEEE Milestones have been approved and dedicated around the world.
During
a ceremony held at Qualcomm’s Corporate Headquarters in San Diego, Dr. James H.
Thompson, Qualcomm’s Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, and
Dr. Kathleen Kramer, IEEE Region 6 Director, unveiled the IEEE Milestone
plaque. The plaque will reside permanently outside the company’s main lobby at Morehouse
Campus in San Diego. The city of San Diego also designated November 7, 2017 as
“Qualcomm’s Mobile Leadership Day” in the city.
Photo Courtesy of Brian A. Berg
After
the plaque was unveiled, attendees enjoyed a memorable panel discussion about
the development of CDMA and its public demonstration in 1989. The panel
included Qualcomm Founders Irwin M. Jacobs and Andrew Viterbi, and some key
technical players from the company’s early years including Roberto Padovani, Ed
Tiedemann, Butch Weaver, and Chuck Wheatley.
Photo Courtesy of Timothy Lee
Following
Qualcomm’s invitation, I had the pleasure and honor to represent the IEEE
Vehicular Technology Society at this memorable event. VTS is proud to have
participated in the development of CDMA through our publications and
conferences, and I would like to sincerely thank Dr. Ed Tiedemann, Senior Vice
President of Engineering at Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. for having invited VTS
to be part of this event.
Photo Courtesy of Timothy Lee Between
1989 (the year of Qualcomm’s CDMA public demonstration) and 1995 (the year
Hutchison Telephone launched the first commercial CDMA service in Hong Kong),
more than 275 papers related to CDMA were presented at our conferences and
publications. We are very proud to have published in 1991 in the IEEE
Transactions on Vehicular Technology, the very relevant paper entitled ‘On the
capacity of a cellular CDMA system’ by Gilhousen, Jacobs, Padovani, Viterbi,
Weaver and Wheatley. According to IEEE databases, this paper is the most cited
by papers CDMA publication in IEEE. I was very pleased to see this issue of our
TVT in Qualcomm’s museum in San Diego.
Photo Courtesy of Javier Gozálvez Some
of you might also remember the packed CDMA sessions at VTCs, and the very
lively and intense TDMA versus CDMA panels and debates. CDMA has had a
tremendous impact and has helped transform cellular technologies and the way
people communicate. VTS has always recognized such impact, and in fact, we are
very proud to count among the recipients of the VTS Hall of Fame award, CDMA
pioneers Dr. Jacobs and Dr. Viterbi, as well as Dr. Lee, whose contribution and
support to CDMA while at PacTel was very significant.
Congratulations
to Qualcomm and the CDMA pioneers for their outstanding work and for receiving
this prestigious and well deserved IEEE recognition!
You can find Qualcomm’s press release of the event at: https://www.qualcomm.com/news/onq/2017/11/07/ieee-recognizes-qualcomms-milestone-achievement-wireless-technology
More information about the process to propose an IEEE
Milestone can be found at: http://ieeemilestones.ethw.org/Main_Page
You can also find a list of existing IEEE Milestones at: http://ethw.org/Milestones:List_of_IEEE_Milestones | 
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