Alfonso Farina

Alfonso Farina FREng (born January 25, 1948) is an Italian electronic engineer. He is most noted for the development of the track while scan techniques for radars and generally for the development of a wide range of signal processing techniques used for sensors where tracking plays an essential role. He is author of more than 550 publications. His work was aimed to a synergistic cooperation between industry and academy.

Alfonso Farina was born in Petrella Salto, a small town near Rieti in 1948. He obtained a laurea in electronic engineering on 1973 at University La Sapienza in Rome. In 1974 he joined Selenia, a Finmeccanica company then become Selex ES. Here he held the role of director of the analysis of integrate systems unit and then chief engineer of large business systems division. More recently, he has been the senior VP CTO of the company and then senior advisor to the CTO.

From 1979 to 1985 he held the chair of associate professor of radar techniques at the University of Naples.

The activity of Alfonso Farina spans a wide range of arguments in the area of radars and sensors. His pioneering work on track while scan, now widely used in all radars, was recounted in a classical set of two booksthat due to their widespread relevance have gone published also with Russian and Chinese translations. A more recent publication by him also accounts for these ideas.

He has also been the contributor to the article on ECCM, invited by Merrill Skolnik, in the second edition of the Radar Handbook (Ch. 9) and the third (Ch. 24)

He is considered the "father" of Italian industrial PCL radar. From 2004 to 2014, he led the team of engineers in conceiving, designing and implementing successive generations of improved PCL radar systems, extensively tested over several years.

He has been the organizer and general chairman of 2008 IEEE-AESS Radar Conference held in Rome. This was the first time that such conference has been held outside US since its inception on 1974.

Farina is IEEE Fellow since 2000 and International Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering since 2005, the latter with the citation "Distinguished for outstanding and continuous innovative in the development of radar signal and data processing techniques and application of these findings in practical systems". He received the award from the hands of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. From 1997 he is Fellow of IET. Since 2010 he is also Fellow of EURASIP.

He won the following awards:

• Fred Nathanson Memorial Radar Award, 1987, with the motivation

For development of radar data processing techniques.

• Honour of Maestro del Lavoro with decoration of "Stella al Merito del Lavoro" presented to him by the President of Italian Republic in recognition of his outstanding professional career, 2003.
• First Prize Award for Innovation Technology of Finmeccanica Group, 2004, team leader of the winner team presented by the Italian Ministry of Instruction, University and Scientific Research.
• IEEE Dennis J. Picard Medal for Radar Technologies and Applications, 2010, with the motivation

For continuous, innovative, theoretical and practical contributions to radar systems and adaptive signal processing techniques.

• IET Achievement Medals, 2014, with the motivation

For outstanding contributions to radar system design, signal, data and image processing and data fusion.

• Recipients of the Fred Nathanson Memorial Radar Award
• Recipients of the Dennis J. Picard Medal
• Recipients of the IET Awards - Achievement Medals