Kees Schouhamer Immink Explained

Birth Name:Kornelis Antonie Schouhamer Immink
Birth Date:18 December 1946
Birth Place:Rotterdam, Netherlands
Known For:Compact disc, DVD, Blu-ray
Field:Electronics, Information Theory
Work Institution:Turing Machines Inc
Philips Research Laboratories
Institute for Experimental Mathematics
National University of Singapore
Alma Mater:Eindhoven University of Technology
Prizes:IEEE Medal of Honor
Emmy Award
Edison Medal
Faraday Medal
AES Gold Medal
SMPTE Progress Medal

Kornelis Antonie "Kees" Schouhamer Immink (born 18 December 1946[1]) is a Dutch engineer, inventor, and entrepreneur, who pioneered and advanced the era of digital audio, video, and data recording, including popular digital media such as compact disc (CD), DVD and Blu-ray disc.[2] He has been a prolific and influential engineer, who holds more than 1100 U.S. and international patents.[3] A large portion of the commonly used audio and video playback and recording devices use technologies based on his work.[4] His contributions to coding systems assisted the digital video and audio revolution, by enabling reliable data storage at information densities previously unattainable.[4]

Immink received several tributes that summarize the impact of his contributions to the digital audio and video revolution. Among the accolades received are the IEEE Medal of Honor "for pioneering contributions to video, audio, and data recording technology, including compact disc, DVD, and Blu-ray", the Edison Medal[4] and an individual Technology Emmy award by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS).[5] [6] Beatrix, Queen of the Netherlands bestowed him a knighthood in 2000. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2007 for pioneering and advancing the era of digital audio, video, and data recording. Royal Holland Society of Arts and Sciences introduced the Kees Schouhamer Immink Prize in 2019 as a means to encourage research on information science and tele-communications.[7]

Currently, Immink holds the position of president of Turing Machines Inc, which was founded in 1998. During his career, Immink, in addition to his practical contributions, has contributed to information theory.[8] [9] He has written over 120 articles and four books, including Codes for Mass Data Storage Media.[10] [11] He has been an adjunct professor at the Institute for Experimental Mathematics, University of Duisburg and Essen, Germany, since 1994, as well as affiliated with the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) as a visiting professor.

Education

Immink obtained an Engineer's degree (Ir.) in electrical engineering (1974, cum laude) and a PhD degree (1985) from Eindhoven University of Technology on a thesis entitled Properties and Constructions of Binary Channel Codes.[12]

Early years at Philips Research

Fresh from engineering school, in 1967, he joined Philips Research Labs in Eindhoven, where he spent thirty years in a fruitful association. The renowned physicist Hendrik Casimir was director of Philips Research till 1972. Immink described the atmosphere at that time: "We were able to conduct whatever research we found relevant, and had no pre-determined tasks; instead, we received full freedom and support of autonomous research. We went to work, not knowing that we would do that day. This view – or rather ambiguous view – on how research should be conducted, led to amazing inventions as a result. It was an innovation heaven".[13] Immink worked in various groups, and in 1974, he joined the research group Optics, where pioneering work was done on optical laserdisc systems. He contributed mainly to the electronics and servo technology of the video disc.[14] [15] [16] In a joint effort, MCA and Philips brought the laserdisc system to the market. Laserdisc was first available in Atlanta in 1978, two years after the VHS and four years before the CD. The Laserdisc never managed a significant presence in market share. The Philips/MCA Laserdisc operation was not successful and discontinued in 1981.

Compact Disc

Around 1976, Philips and Sony[17] showed prototypes of digital audio disc players, which were based on optical videodisc technology. In the interview by Tekla Perry for the IEEE Spectrum, May 2017,[18] Immink explains that he got involved in the CD project at the end of 1979 when Sony and Philips had decided to jointly settle on one design. Both Philips and Sony had shown prototype CD players to the press in 1978. The team at Philips, he says, "needed someone to do measurements of the two competing systems, the quality, how they coped with scratches, how they coped with imperfections of the disc. My job with the LaserDisc was finished, so I said, 'Sure, I could do it.'" Both Philips and Sony had come up with different rules for translating digital audio data to sequences of pits and lands. After a lot of experimentation, Immink improved the playing time by thirty percent by inventing a code that could better cope with the servo systems. The encoding system Immink devised came to be called eight-to-fourteen modulation (EFM).

Immink took part in the joint Sony–Philips task force, which developed the Compact Disc standard, the Red Book. He contributed to the EFM and CIRC coding schemes.[19] [20]

In the article, "Shannon, Beethoven, and the Compact Disc",[21] Immink presents a historical review of the years leading up to the launch of the CD, and the various crucial decisions made. He refutes the urban legend that the compact disc's diameter was increased from 115 to 120 mm solely to hold the 74 minutes playing time of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler.[22] Commercial disputes also played a part.[23] [24]

After the CD standard was set in 1980, Immink and his co-workers conducted pioneering experiments with magneto-optical audio recording on pre-grooved discs.[25] They also found a simple method to extend the analog videodisc standard with digital sound.[26] The new systems were brought to market as MiniDisc and CD Video. Laserdiscs fabricated after 1984 have digitally encoded sound signals.

DVD and Blu-ray Disc

In 1993, Toshiba engineers developed the Super Density Disc, the successor of the Compact Disc. Immink was a member of the Philips and Sony task force, which developed a competing disc format, called MultiMedia CD. Immink created EFMPlus, a more efficient successor of EFM used in CD.[27] [28] [29] The electronics industry feared a repeat of the format war between VHS and Betamax in the 1980s. IBM's president, Lou Gerstner, urged them to adopt Immink's EFMPlus coding scheme as EFM has a proven record.[30] In September 1995, an agreement was made among the major industries: Philips/Sony surrendered to Toshiba's SuperDensity Disc and Toshiba accepted the EFMPlus modulation. The DVD encompasses the sound-only Super Audio CD (SACD) and DVD-audio formats, developed independently by Sony and Toshiba, which are incompatible formats for delivering very high-fidelity audio content. SACD is in a format war with DVD-Audio, but neither has yet managed to replace audio CDs.

Immediately after the DVD standard was settled in 1996, Philips and Sony, disappointed after the DVD failure, decided to develop a next-generation blue-laser-based digital video recorder (DVR), which would be positioned as DVD's high-density successor.[30] Philips and Sony set up a joint task force, where Immink and his co-workers developed DVRs, later called Blu-ray's, code design.[31] [32] [33] [34] In 2005, seven years after its design, the Blu-ray Disc was brought to market. In 2002, the DVD forum adopted an alternative format, the HD DVD.[35] The two resulting standards had significant differences that made each incompatible with the other. The blue-laser format war with Toshiba's HD DVD was settled in early 2008 when Toshiba withdrew their system effectively ending the high definition optical disc format war.

DV and DCC

In 1985, Immink joined Philips's magnetic recording group, where he contributed to the design of coding technologies of the digital video tape recorder, DV[36] [37] and the Digital Compact Cassette (DCC).[38] [39] The DCC was short-lived: introduced in 1992 and discontinued in 1996. The DV, launched in 1994, has become a popular tape standard for home and semi-professional video production.

Turing Machines

After more than thirty years, Immink left Philips Research in 1998, and founded Turing Machines Inc., where he currently serves as its president. The small research institute has been successful in creating new coding technology and has been granted around ten US patents.[40]

Service to engineering society

Immink has served in officer and board positions for a number of technical societies, government and academic organizations, including the Audio Engineering Society, IEEE, Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, and several universities. He is a trustee of the Shannon Foundation, and was a governor of the IEEE Consumer Electronics and Information Theory Societies. He was on the governors board of the Audio Engineering Society for over 10 years, and was its president in 2002–2003.

Awards and honours

His papers have received several awards:

Selected literature

KHMW Schouhamer Immink Prijs

The Royal Holland Society of Arts and Sciences established the Kees Schouhamer Immink Prize in 2019 as a means to encourage research on information science and telecommunications, two basic pillars of our information society. The prize, consisting of an honorarium and a diploma, is bestowed in recognition of a distinguished PhD thesis defended in the Netherlands.[7]

Sources

External links

Videos

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Perry . Tekla S. . 20 April 2017 . Kees Immink: The Man Who Put Compact Discs on Track . IEEE Spectrum.
  2. http://www.nae.edu/nae/naepub.nsf/Members+By+UNID/61495E13777F46518625727D0076BD26?opendocument National Academy of Engineering
  3. Web site: Immink's home page . 2017-02-19 .
  4. Web site: Kees A. S. Immink . IEEE Global History Network . IEEE . 25 July 2011.
  5. http://www.emmyonline.org/mediacenter/tech_2k3_winners_data.html Winners 2003 Emmy Award.
  6. http://www.ce.org/Press/CEA_Pubs/932.asp CEA Digital audio pioneers
  7. Web site: KHMW Kees Schouhamer Immink Prize . 20 May 2019 .
  8. https://scholar.google.nl/citations?hl=nl&user=Kq6H2mQAAAAJ Immink’s literature
  9. http://www.ifp.uiuc.edu/~junchen/sum98.pdf IEEE Information Theory Society Golden Jubilee Awards for Technological Innovation
  10. Book: Codes for Mass Data Storage Systems. Second fully revised. Shannon Foundation Publishers. Eindhoven, The Netherlands. November 2004. 978-90-74249-27-0. Kees A. Schouhamer Immink. Kees Schouhamer Immink. 2018-02-04. registration.
  11. http://www.sciencep.com/gb/node/2007-09/03/default.htm Codes for Mass Data Storage Systems (Chinese).
  12. Web site: Properties and Constructions of Binary Channel Codes, PhD Thesis, 1985. 2014-06-17. https://web.archive.org/web/20150623205712/http://www.narcis.nl/publication/RecordID/oai%3Alibrary.tue.nl%3A196456/genre/doctoralthesis/uquery/schouhamer/id/1/Language/EN. 2015-06-23. dead.
  13. Web site: NatLab's History . 27 November 2014 . https://web.archive.org/web/20170430114850/http://baltanlaboratories.org/article/report/back-to-the-future%3A-natlab-%26-the-history-of-electronic-music . 30 April 2017 . dead . dmy-all.
  14. Control loop for videodisc.
  15. Optical scanning apparatus with focussing system.
  16. Optical videodisc read unit with tracking and focussing wobble
  17. Web site: A Long-Play Digital Audio Disk System. March 1979. 2008-02-19.
  18. Kees Immink: The Man Who put the Compact Disc on Track. Tekla . Perry. IEEE Spectrum . 2017. 2017-06-21.
  19. , EFM Patent, Compact Disc, CD-R, MiniDisc, 1985.
  20. Error correction system, CIRC, 1984.
  21. IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter. 57 . 2007. Shannon, Beethoven, and the Compact Disc. K. Schouhamer Immink . 42–46. 2018-02-05.
  22. Journal of the Audio Engineering Society. 46. 5. 1998. Compact Disc Story. K. Schouhamer Immink. 458–460. 2018-02-06.
  23. News: Great Lengths . Cassidy . Fergus . reprint . . 2005-10-23 . 2007-12-21 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20071222060145/http://www.ferguscassidy.ie/ethos-23-Oct-2005.html . 2007-12-22 .
  24. Nature Electronics. 1. 2018. How we made the compact disc. K. A. Schouhamer Immink. Kees Schouhamer Immink. 2018-04-16. An international collaboration between Philips and the Sony Corporation lead to the creation of the compact disc. The author explains how it came about.
  25. J. Audio Eng. Soc.. 32 . 1984. Experiments Toward an Erasable Compact Disc. K. Schouhamer Immink and J. Braat. 531–538. 2018-02-02.
  26. Web site: Digital audio modulation in the PAL and NTSC video disc formats, J. Audio Eng. Soc. vol. 32, pp. 883, 1984. October 1983. 2008-02-21.
  27. EFMPlus: The Coding Format of the MultiMedia Compact Disc . IEEE Trans. Consumer Electr. . 41 . 3 . 491 - 497 . August 1995 . 10.1109/30.468040 . Immink . K.A.S. .
  28. , EFMPlus Patent, DVD, DVD-RW, and SACD.
  29. SMPTE Journal. 1996. The Digital Video Disc (DVD): System Requirements and Channel Coding. K.A.S. Immink. 483–489. 2019-02-05. 10.5594/J09550.
  30. http://dvdhub.blogspot.com/2007/07/blu-ray-vs-hd-dvd-state-of-division.html Blu-ray vs HD DVD: State of the Division.
  31. , Blu-ray base code.
  32. , Blu-ray base code.
  33. , Blu-ray base code.
  34. Web site: Sony Shows 'DVR-Blue' Prototype . 2008-02-25 . 2000-10-11 . cdrinfo.com . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20080229014148/http://www.pcworld.com/article/id%2C105534-page%2C1/article.html . 2008-02-29 .
  35. Web site: DVD Forum backs Toshiba-NEC format . 2008-02-21 . 2003-11-28 . theinquirer.net . unfit . https://web.archive.org/web/20070621131847/http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2003/11/28/dvd-forum-backs-toshiba-nec-format . 2007-06-21 .
  36. Channel code with embedded pilot tracking tones for DVC-R, IEEE Trans. Consumer Electronics, vol. CE-41, no. 1, p. 180, 1995. K. A. S. Immink and J. Kahlman. 10.1109/30.370325.
  37. https://www.smpte.org/about/awards-programs/progress-winners List of Winners SMPTE Progress Medal.
  38. , DCC code.
  39. A Comparison of Rotary-and Stationary-Head Video Tape Recorders, IEEE Trans. Consumer Electr., vol. CE-42, p. 998, Nov. 1996. K. A. S. Immink and G. van den Enden. 10.1109/30.555805.
  40. http://www.turing-machines.com/indeximmink.html Immink's US patents.
  41. Web site: IEEE Medal of Honor 2017 . https://archive.today/20130415063345/http://www.ieee.org/about/awards/bios/moh_recipients.html . dead . 15 April 2013 . Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) .
  42. Web site: IET Achievement Award winners announced, 2015. 10 February 2015. 15 October 2015 .
  43. Web site: Finalist for the European Inventor Award, 2015. 19 May 2015 .
  44. Web site: Digital pioneer Prof Immink inspires UJ engineering graduates. UJ Newsroom. 16 June 2014.
  45. Web site: IEEE Chester Sall Award 2011 .
  46. IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics. 55 . 2 . 2009. DC-free Multimode Code Design Using Novel Selection Criteria for Optical Recording Systems. J. Lee and K.A.S. Immink. 553–559. 2019-02-05. 10.1109/TCE.2009.5174421 . 8633888 .
  47. Web site: Foreign Associates of the NAE, 2007. 29 July 2015 .
  48. Web site: SMPTE Progress Medal Past Recipients . 2008-02-17 . https://web.archive.org/web/20070927224118/http://www.smpte.org/resources/awards_program/progress_winners . 2007-09-27 . dead .
  49. Web site: AES Heyser Lecture "From Analog to Digital". 29 July 2015 .
  50. Web site: IEEE Honors Ceremony, London, 1999. . 17 January 2014 . 25 July 2014.
  51. Web site: Golden Jubilee Awards for Technological Innovation . . July 14, 2011.
  52. Web site: Kees Schouhamer Immink . Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences . 17 July 2015 . 21 July 2015 . https://web.archive.org/web/20150721005315/https://www.knaw.nl/en/members/members/4764 . dead .
  53. https://web.archive.org/web/20070715103120/http://www.ieee.org/portal/pages/about/awards/pr/ibukapr.html Winners of the IEEE Masaru Ibuka Consumer Electronics Award.
  54. IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics. 55. 2009. DC-free Multimode Code Design Using Novel Selection Criteria for Optical Recording Systems. K. A. Schouhamer Immink and J. Lee. Kees Schouhamer Immink. 2021-04-16. DC-free runlength limited codes have been the cornerstone of all three generations of optical recording, CD, DVD and BD. .
  55. IEEE Transactions on Communications. 56. 2008. A general construction of constrained parity-check codes for optical recording. K. A. Schouhamer Immink and K. Cai. Kees Schouhamer Immink. 2021-04-16. This paper proposes a general and systematic code design method to efficiently combine constrained codes with parity-check codes for optical recording..
  56. IEEE Communications Letters. 28. 2019. Efficient balanced and maximum homopolymer-run restricted block codes for DNA-based data storage. K. A. Schouhamer Immink and K. Cai. Kees Schouhamer Immink. 2021-04-16. We analyze codes for DNA-based data storage which accounts for the maximum homopolymer repetition length and GC-AT balance..
  57. IEEE Journal Sel. Areas on Communications. 28. 2010. Very efficient balanced codes. K. A. Schouhamer Immink and J. H. Weber. Kees Schouhamer Immink. 2021-04-16. The prior art construction of sets of balanced codewords by Knuth is attractive for its simplicity and absence of look-up tables, but the redundancy of the balanced codes generated by Knuth's algorithm falls a factor of two short with respect to the minimum required..
  58. IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. 60. 2014. Minimum Pearson Distance Detection for Multilevel Channels With Gain and/or Offset Mismatch. K. A. Schouhamer Immink and J. H. Weber. 2021-04-16. The performance of certain transmission and storage channels, such as optical data storage and non-volatile memory, is seriously hampered by the phenomena of unknown offset (drift) or gain..
  59. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications. 19. 2001. A Survey of Coding Techniques for Optical Disc Recording. K. A. Schouhamer Immink. Kees Schouhamer Immink. 2021-04-16. We report on 20 years of development of codes for optical disk recording systems. A description of the state-of-the-art and feasible options for future extensions and improvements are given..
  60. IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. 44. 1999. Codes for Digital Recorders. . 2021-04-16. Constrained codes are a key component in digital recording devices that have become ubiquitous in computer data storage and electronic entertainment applications..
  61. Proceedings of the IEEE. 78. 1990. Runlength-Limited Sequences. K. A. Schouhamer Immink. Kees Schouhamer Immink. 2021-04-16. Coding techniques are used in communication systems to increase the efficiency of the channel..

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