Brian Floyd Receives Innovator of the Year Award
Brian Floyd was recognized with the Innovator of the Year award for his trailblazing work in the areas of radio frequency (RF) and millimeter-wave (mmWave) integrated circuits.
October 16, 2023 
Ren Shore
Brian Floyd, the Alton and Mildred Lancaster Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, was recognized with the Innovator of the Year award for his trailblazing work in the areas of radio frequency (RF) and millimeter-wave (mmWave) integrated circuits.
Over the course of his career as a researcher at IBM and NC State, Floyd created several of the first solutions for mmWave radios in silicon technology. Historically, solutions using these frequencies required costly technologies and, therefore, were limited to the military or other specialized applications. At least until Floyd and his colleague’s groundbreaking work, which discovered how to create mmWave radios and radars by utilizing the same low-cost silicon technology found in affordable 3G cell phones — thus enabling new, large markets for mmWave frequencies. Floyd also played a key role in the creation of some of the first solutions for 60 gigahertz (GHz) radios and phased arrays in silicon, which have been licensed to several companies. These also provided a foundation for the industry’s first 5G cellular solution, at 28 GHz, marketed by IBM, Ericsson, and Verizon. His 60 GHz radios are still in production today.
Floyd’s innovative work in high-frequency integrated circuits and mmWave radio and radar systems has enabled improvements in wireless communication rates and improved safety in vehicular radar systems. Floyd’s leadership of impactful research programs at IBM and NC State has resulted in over $30 million in funding. Floyd is also an inventor on 32 issued patents and his IBM patents served as the foundation for several IBM licensing agreements.
He was nominated for the award by Veena Misra, interim head of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and co-director of NC State’s ASSIST Nanosystems Center.
