Whitecar, John

2009 Distinguished Alumni Award

For contributions in DSP technology applied to automotive software radio and infotainment technology, and service to those with need.

John Whitecar joined Texas Instruments in 2004 to lead the architecture and system development for new Integrated Circuits and systems targeting the automotive Infotainment and Digital Radio markets. A key focus of this effort was to develop a software defined receiver design for mobile broadcast receivers driving both RF tuner architecture as well as digital IC design and soft­ware algorithms for digitally based receivers.

Prior to joining Texas Instruments, Mr. Whitecar was a Technical Fellow at Ford Motor Company and subse­quently Visteon Corporation, where he developed system architectures for a number of telematics, infotainment, and radio products. While at Ford, Mr. Whitecar led the effort to develop DSP (digital signal processing) based automotive receivers including the design of two custom mixed signal DSP-based automotive receiver ICs result­ing in the first DSP-based radio in OEM production in 1991 and the first digitized IF receiver in OEM production in 1998. For the latter development, he received the Hen­ry Ford Technology Award from Ford Motor Company.

In addition to his Illinois degree, John received Master of Science in Engineering degree from Arizona State University focusing on acoustic signal processing. He holds 33 patents covering audio, acoustic, and receiver signal processing technologies and is a Senior Member of the IEEE, AES (Audio Engineering Society), and ASA (Acoustical Society of America).