From the Editor-in-Chief.

This issue's column is devoted to the M. Barry Carlton Award. The M. Barry Carlton Award acknowledges what is judged to be the best paper in the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON AEROSPACE AND ELECTRONIC SYSTEMS (TAES). To help identify and assess what TAES paper is best, the Carlton Award considers papers published four years earlier in TAES. As such, this year's Carlton Award is the 2017 M. Barry Carlton Award. The award was established in 1958 after the early death of M. Barry Carlton in an air accident in 1957. The award is a means to honor a man who had dedicated much of his life to promoting the reliability of communications equipment, especially that relating to air transportation. It is one of the IEEE's oldest awards and supports a wonderful tradition of excellence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]