Georg Böcherer

Georg Böcherer is a Lecturer at the Chair of Communications Engineering at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), under Prof. Gerhard Kramer. He holds a PhD and habilitation in Electrical Engineering. His research focuses on probabilistic shaping, LDPC codes, and fiber-optic communication systems. He has received notable awards including the Bell Labs Prize (2015) and the E-Plus Dissertation Award.

Education: MSc from ETH Zürich, PhD from RWTH Aachen University, habilitation at TUM.

Research Interests

• Coded Modulation with Probabilistic Shaping: Overcoming the shaping gap in communication systems.
• LDPC Codes and Protograph Design: Optimizing low-density parity-check codes for shaped bit-metric decoding.
• Fiber-Optic Systems: Enhancing spectral efficiency through probabilistic amplitude shaping (PAS) and rate-adaptive coding.
• Information Theory: Distribution matching, entropy rate analysis, and algorithmic approaches for random process simulation.

Key Contributions

Developed PAS schemes achieving near-capacity performance, demonstrated experimentally in fiber-optic systems. Co-organized workshops like the Munich Workshop on Coding and Modulation (MCM 2015). Active in teaching courses on channel coding, information theory, and coded modulation.

Awards

• Bell Labs Prize (2015)
• Best Paper Award, ISWCS 2011
• E-Plus Dissertation Award

Grants & Collaborations

Involved in projects like Probabilistic Amplitude Shaping (PAS) and Constant Composition Distribution Matching. Collaborates with institutions like Bell Labs, UCLA, and TU Munich's LNT communications group.