27. About the Author

Dr. Marc Lichtman is an RF signal processing engineer who specializes in SDR, spectrum sensing, geolocation, and beamforming/array processing. He is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Maryland, where he created and taught a course that served as the basis of this textbook. His course was a senior-year elective targeted towards CS undergrads interested in SDR/DSP. This course led him to better understand how to make heavy material accessible and engaging to students who were great programmers but had little-to-no wireless and signals background. It was not uncommon to begin class with a mini-hackathon, where students had to find or decode hidden signals (transmitted by Marc) using what they had recently learned.

Marc is also one of the leads for the GNU Radio project, an open source SDR framework widely used in academia and defense. GNU Radio can be used to implement advanced DSP apps, and a GNU Radio app or individual block is very easy to share with others.

Marc currently lives in the DC area with his wife and their many cats and dogs. His hobbies include woodworking, machining, laser cutting, clarinet/sax, sailing, gardening, and pinball.

Email: marc@pysdr.org

University of Maryland faculty page: cs.umd.edu/people/sdr