OREANDA-NEWS. Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) and NTT DOCOMO, INC. announced that Dr. Yoshihisa Okumura, a former leader of the mobile radio laboratory at then Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation (NTT Public Corporation) and currently professor emeritus at Kanazawa Institute of Technology, became the first Japanese individual to win the 2013 Charles Stark Draper Prize for pioneering contributions to the world’s first cellular telephone networks, systems and standards.

The Charles Stark Draper Prize, often referred to as the Nobel Prize of engineering, has been awarded for outstanding achievements in engineering since 1989. Along with Dr. Okumura, four others were awarded for contributions to the development of cellular telephony this year. They received their awards in a ceremony at Union Station in Washington, D.C. on February 19, 2013 (U.S time).

His highly acclaimed field strength curves were adopted as a Comite Consultatif Internationale des Radiocommunications (CCIR) recommendation by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). The “Okumura Curves” have been used for the practical design and establishment of various mobile radio systems the world over. Propagation prediction formulae based on the Okumura Curves are used in the radio link design for current mobile phone systems. Also, his methods for analyzing data from field experiments are widely used for area-quality assessment and optimization.