Neil H. E. Weste is an Australian inventor and engineer, noted for having designed a 2-chip wireless LAN implementation and for authoring the textbook Principles of CMOS VLSI Design. He has worked in many aspects of integrated-circuit design and was a co-founder of Radiata Communications.

Life

Weste grew up in the Riverland Region

Riverland

The Riverland, is a region of South Australia. It covers the area near the Murray River from where it flows into South Australia downstream to Blanchetown.The major town centres are Renmark, Berri, Loxton, Waikerie and Barmera...

 of South Australia. He received a BSc in Physics in 1974, a BE in 1976, and a Ph.D. in 1978, all from the University of Adelaide

University of Adelaide

The University of Adelaide is a public university located in Adelaide, South Australia. Established in 1874, it is the third oldest university in Australia...

.
Weste worked at a number American technology firms, including Bell Telephone Laboratories

Bell Labs

Bell Laboratories is the research and development subsidiary of the French-owned Alcatel-Lucent and previously of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company , half-owned through its Western Electric manufacturing subsidiary.Bell Laboratories operates its...

, Microelectronics Center of North Carolina, Symbolics

Symbolics

Symbolics refers to two companies: now-defunct computer manufacturer Symbolics, Inc., and a privately held company that acquired the assets of the former company and continues to sell and maintain the Open Genera Lisp system and the Macsyma computer algebra system.The symbolics.com domain was...

, Agile Systems, and TLW.
He was also at Duke University

Duke University

Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James B...

 and the University of North Carolina

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a public research university located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States...

.

In 1995 he returned to Australia as a professor at Macquarie University

Macquarie University

Macquarie University is an Australian public teaching and research university located in Sydney, with its main campus situated in Macquarie Park. Founded in 1964 by the New South Wales Government, it was the third university to be established in the metropolitan area of Sydney...

. In 1997 he started Radiata Communications with David Skellern where the first 802.11a chip was designed. The company was acquired by Cisco Systems

Cisco Systems

Cisco Systems, Inc. is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Jose, California, United States, that designs and sells consumer electronics, networking, voice, and communications technology and services. Cisco has more than 70,000 employees and annual revenue of US$...

 in 2001.
After the acquisition, Weste remained with Cisco for 2 years and then founded NHEW R&D, a technology-investment and consulting firm that he continues to manage.

In 2011, Weste joined a small company called OzRunways to help develop aviation mapping applications for the Apple iPad.

Inventions

Weste has 14 U.S. patents to his name, including a number of methods for doing wireless communication in CMOS integrated circuits.

In 1998, Weste produced a CMOS chipset for the IEEE 802.11a wireless LAN.
He did the conception, managed the project, and participated in the design.

CMOS Textbook

Weste's textbook, Principles of CMOS VLSI Design (initially coauthored with Kamran Eshraghian

Kamran Eshraghian

Kamran Eshraghian is an electronic engineer notable for being a key early pioneer of VLSI in Australia. He is one of the fathers of CMOS VLSI design and his books have been influential on a par with the Mead & Conway revolution.-Education:...

 but now coauthored with David Harris) is a standard textbook in integrated-circuit design courses.
It has been translated into Japanese, Greek, and Chinese.

Other Publications

• Weste, N., "MULGA-An Interactive Symbolic Layout System for the Design of Integrated Circuits," in The Bell System Technical Journal, Vol. 60, No. 6, July-Aug. 1981, pp. 823–857.

• Weste, N. and B.D. Ackland, "The Edge Flag Algorithm - A Fill Method for Raster Scan Displays," IEEE Transactions on Computers, Vol. C-30, No. 1, Jan. 1981, pp. 41–48.

• Weste, N., D.J. Burr, and B.D. Ackland, "Dynamic time warp pattern matching using and integrated multiprocessing array," IEEE Trans. on Computers, Vol. C-32, Aug. 1983, pp. 731–734.

• Weste, N. and J. Mavor, "M.O.S.T. Amplifiers for Performing Peripheral Integrated-Circuit Functions," IEEE Journal on Circuits and Systems, Electronic Circuits and Systems, Vol. 1, No. 5, Sept. 1977, pp. 165–172.

• Weste, N., D.J. Burr, and B.D. Ackland, "Array Configurations for Dynamic Time Warping," IEEE Proc. Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing, Vol. ASSP-32, No. 1, Feb. 1984, pp. 119–128.

• Weste, N. and P. Kollaritsch, "TOPOLOGIZER: An Expert System Translator of Transistor Connectivity to Symbolic Cell Layout" IEEE JSSC, Vol. SC-20, No. 3, June 1985, pp. 799–804.

• Leonard, J., N. Weste, L. Bodony, S. Harsto,n and R. Meaney, "A 66-MHz DSP-Augmented RAMDAC for Smooth-Shaded Graphic Applications," IEEE JSSC, Vol. 26, No. 3, March 1991, pp. 217–228.

• Edwards, B., A. Corry, N. Weste, and C. Greenberg, "A Single Chip Video Ghost Canceller," IEEE JSSC, Vol. 28, No. 3, March 1993, pp. 379–383.

• Skellern, D.J., L.H.C. Lee, T. McDermott, N.H.E. Weste, J. Dalton, J. Graham, T. Wong, A.F. Myles, T.M.P. Percival, and P.J. Ryan, "A high-speed wireless LAN," Micro, IEEE, Vol. 17, Issue 1, Jan.-Feb. 1997, pp. 40–47.

• Weste, N. and D.J. Skellern, "VLSI for OFDM," Communications Magazine, IEEE, Vol. 36, Issue 10, Oct. 1998, pp. 127–131.

• Harrison, J. and N. Weste, "A 500 MHz CMOS anti-alias filter using feed-forward op-amps with local common-mode feedback," Solid-State Circuits Conference, 2003. Digest of Technical Papers. ISSCC. 2003 IEEE International, Vol. 1, 9-13 Feb. 2003, pp. 132–483.

• Harrison, J. and N. Weste, "350 MHz opamp-RC filter in 0.18 um CMOS," Electronics Letters, Vol. 38, Issue 6, 14 March 2002, pp. 259–260.

Miscellaneous

• Weste is an IEEE
  Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
  The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers is a non-profit professional association headquartered in New York City that is dedicated to advancing technological innovation and excellence...
  
   fellow as well as a fellow in the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering
  Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering
  The Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering is an independent non-government organization dedicated to the promotion in Australia of scientific and engineering knowledge to practical purposes. Professor Robin Batterham is the current President of ATSE....
  
   (FTSE).

• Weste is the recipient of a 2010 Clunies Ross
  Ian Clunies Ross
  Sir Ian Clunies Ross, CMG is described as the 'architect' of Australia's scientific boom, for his stewardship of Australia's scientific organisation the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation - CSIRO.-Family:...
  
  Medal http://www.cluniesross.org.au.

• Weste is married to Avril Weste; they have three daughters and 4 grand-daughters.