The Costas Loop - Dr. John P. Costas
The Costas Loop and the Best Engineer. By Bill Jones. This paper is to note some of the work of Dr. John P. Costas and to tell of my work and thoughts of my time with John. He was the best engineer that I have ever known. His work was in a relatively narrow field not well known by most engineers. His work was done starting at General Electric in the early 1950’S and continued over his life time. He contributed greatly to several areas of communications, Sonar and mathematics, for example, the Costas Array. He wrote many papers with some being classic. He continued as an inventor even after his retirement. The term Engineer goes back some years, probably to the 1300’s AD. While I do not mean to compare Dr. Costas to these early genius engineers it should be clear that these early engineers did provide the great foundations we have in our present day curriculums. I am thinking of John as a man that used the foundations to invent an outstanding system - the Costas Loop. If y