Siavash Alamouti

Siavash Alamouti is a wireless communications engineer who created the first space-time block code for two transmit antennas in 1997, a scheme now known as the Alamouti code. Space-time block codes send redundant blocks of data from antenna to antenna across a network so that a receiver can recover good data even when the signal fades, which lets multiple-input multiple-output systems work without extra receiver antennas. The technique became a key enabler for fourth generation OFDM and MIMO wireless systems. Vahid Tarokh later generalized the code and, with Hamid Jafarkhani and A. R. Calderbank, published two papers in 1999 that set off major research, and Jafarkhani added the quasi-orthogonal space-time block code in 2001. The Engineering and Technology History Wiki groups Alamouti, Jafarkhani and Tarokh as a trio whose work improved quality of service and network capacity, and it describes Alamouti as Group Research and Development director at Vodafone in London.