Honorary Member

  Dr. Araki graduated from the Department of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Saitama University in March 1971. Upon completing his doctoral course in the Department of Physical Electronics at the Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) in March 1978, he became a research associate in the Graduate School of Science and Engineering of Tokyo Tech. In April 1985, he commenced a 10-year tenure as an associate professor with the Department of Electronic Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Saitama University, before being appointed professor in the Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology in April 1995. When Tokyo Tech reformed to emphasize the graduate program, he became a professor in the Graduate School of Engineering. Although he retired from the university in March 2014, Dr. Araki still devotes himself to development of the electronics, information and communication fields as a professor emeritus of Tokyo Tech.
   Throughout his career, Dr. Araki has played a central role in the advancement of the electronics, information and communication fields by spearheading research in various topics, including electromagnetic circuits, coding and cryptography theory, and wireless communication systems. His main achievements can be summarized as follows:
(1) Contributions to the design of electromagnetic circuits: As part of his doctorate research, Dr. Araki developed a wideband isolator covering more than one octave, using a simple structure of shunting one end of a strip line on a ferrite substrate. He was the first to propose a figure of merit for circulators and directional couplers based on the concept of circuit invariants. Later, as a postdoctoral fellow at University of Texas, Austin, he studied circular patch antennas and their multi-layer structure, and he derived a mathematically simple solution to their complex resonance frequency and far field directivity by adapting the Hankel transform.
(2) Contributions to the foundation of error correcting codes and cryptographic theory: While Dr. Araki was an associate professor at Saitama University, he used the recursive structure of the Euclidean algorithm to develop a high-speed decoding algorithm for block codes that contain errors and erasures. Using a mathematical tool called the “Fermat-Quotient,” he and mathematician Takakazu Sato jointly developed the world’s first algorithm that can decipher, in polynomial time, a cryptograph that is based on a discrete logarithmic problem on an elliptic curve, which was regarded as the strongest type of cryptograph at that time. This would later be called the “SSSA Algorithm,” an acronym of three groups (in Japan, Russia, and the UK) that developed this algorithm more or less simultaneously.
(3) Contributions to new wireless communications systems: While serving as a professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Dr. Araki worked on software-defined radio, UWB wireless systems, and MIMO transmission with a view to pursuing new possibilities in wireless communication. In particular, he studied integrated circuit design that focused on a discrete-time system for a reconfigurable RF circuit, and MIMO transmission technology from the perspective of orthogonalization of radio propagation channels as spatial resources. Both theoretically and empirically, these researches broke new ground.
(4) Contributions to education and society: Dr. Araki has contributed to the fostering of outstanding scholars by enthusiastically tackling a variety of new fields in education and research at the universities where he has worked. He has played central roles in development of the national information administration policy and advancement of the telecommunications business by participating in a number of councils and study committees sponsored by the government or the radio industry. For example, he served as a vice-chair of the R&D Committee for Expansion of Radio Wave Resources, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. Within the IEICE, he has served in several important positions, including chair of the Technical Committee on Microwave, chair of the APMC National Committee, director of the Tokyo Section, president of the Electronics Society, and Director of Finance. His leadership in the IEICE has contributed significantly to the promotion of scientific activity.
   As mentioned above, Dr. Araki’s contributions to development of the electronics, information and communication fields from the perspectives of research, education, and contributions to society are truly remarkable. Hence, we are confident that he is well qualified to become a fellow, honorary member and we recommend that he be granted that status.