Enrique Masgrau

Enrique Masgrau is Professor in the area Signal Theory and Communications. He is a Telecommunications Engineer and PhD in Telecommunications Engineering from the UPC My scientific career begins with the completion of my Doctoral Thesis in the field of Adaptive Signal Processing at UPC, carried out between 1978 and 1983 along with my teaching tasks as a professor (.ETSETB center), and culminates with the completion of my PhD. thesis in September 1983. From this milestone, my complete research career has been carried out in the area of Digital Signal Processing and its applications in speech, acoustics and digital communications. The first part of my research life was spent as a professor / researcher at UPC between 1978 and 1992, as an adjunct professor, interim holder and university holder. In August 1992 I moved to the University of Zaragoza as Professor, to collaborate with the implementation of the Telecommunication Engineering degree, at Centro Politécnico Superior (today the School of Engineering and Architecture), where I currently remain. This meant a short parenthesis in my research career, due to the lack of collaborators and scholarship holders as long asthe positions were not consolidated and the first graduates finished. I have participated in 38 research projects funded in public calls, both nationally and internationally (FP7, CICYT, PETRI, PROFIT, FEDER …), 8 of them as principal investigator. I have participated in 38 R&D contracts of special relevance with companies and / or administrations (Telefónica, Lear, Teltronic, CARTV, Cortes de Aragón, IAF, Zaragoza City Council, …), of which 16 have been as principal investigator. As a result of the knowledge transfer activity to the industry, I am inventor in 3 patents for industrial use related to applications of speech and digital communication technologies. I am the author of 17 publications in journals and book chapters, 84 articles in national and international peer-reviewed conference proceedings. I have been advisor of 4 doctoral theses. I have 5 six-year research periods (“sexenios”) and one for technology transfer recognized by CENAI, in addition to 8 five-year teaching (“quinquenios”). I have served as reviewer for conferences and journals in the area of digital signal processing and its applications in speech, noise and digital communications. I have been evaluator for ANEP and several national and regional agencies. I have been president of the organizing committee of the URSI-2000 National Symposium and member of the organizing committees of  various international and national congresses.

My current lines of research focus on robust speech processing in adverse acoustic conditions, signal processing in digital communications, MIMO system, etc. My greatest achievements in the research area, in short, are the following:

• development of adaptive high speed convergence algorithms with lattice structures both FIR and IIR and FxLMS (several high impact publications), including convergence analysis
• adaptive vector coding techniques and algorithms for speech signal (various publications)
• techniques and algorithms for active noise control and speech signal reinforcement in vehicles (several high-impact publications, research projects, technology transfer contracts and a patent exploited by Lear Automotive)
• Adaptive beamforming algorithms in arrays (SIMO channels) using, among others, SVM (Support Vector machines) techniques and capacity analysis in MIMO (Multiple Input multiple output) channels with several high impact publications. Finally, I would like to highlight, in the field of technology transfer, the collaboration with the company Teltronic s.l. in Zaragoza, carried out between 1995-99. With it, and through several technology transfer contracts, we contributed in a very decisive way in the implementation of the TETRA standard for professional digital communications, which today is the main line of business of this company, being one of the only three companies that commercialize this type of products with their own technology. At the time, it allowed them to migrate from the technology of analog professional communications terminals, whose market was languishing, to the new digital technology that has allowed them to consolidate and expand internationally in an important way in the last years. This collaboration resulted in two collaborative patents exploited by Teltronic s.l.