ICC 1999 minutes of meeting

IEEE COMMUNICATIONS SOCIETY
Signal Processing and Communication Electronics Technical Committee (SPCE)

Meeting at ICC99, Vancouver, Canada
Pan Pacific Hotel, Boardroom
7 June 1999, 5:30 PM - 7:30 PM

The meeting began at 5:35 PM.

1. Introductions and welcome to new members
Attendees introduced themselves.

2. Minutes of GLOBECOM98
The minutes of Globecom98 were approved.

3. TPR and Workshop reports

A. ICC99 Vancouver, T. Taniguchi reporting
Final TPC meeting is Wednesday. Nothing to report at this time.

B. GLOBECOM99 Brazil, R. Smith (TPC), J. Elmirghani (Symposium Chair)
44 papers have been assigned for review to SPCE for the general conference. There is a 40% acceptance target which should result in two to three sessions. The Advanced Signal Processing for Communication Symposium has received about 100 papers which should result in five or six sessions.

C. ISPACS99 Thailand, N. Ohta reporting
261 papers from 22 countries have been received. Reviews are due at the end of this month.

D. ISCSDSP99, T. Clarkson reporting
No feedback has been received yet. ComSoc technical co-sponsorship is being pursued.

E. MELECON99, T. Clarkson reporting
A report will be forwarded to the SPCE Secretary.

F. ICIN99, no workshop this year

G. ICDSPA99, no conference this year

H. ATM99, no conference this year

I. MILCOM99, S. Farquhar reporting
SPCE has organized one session of six papers.

J. ICC00 New Orleans, T. Clarkson reporting
TPC meeting is Tuesday. Nothing to report at this time.

K. GLOBECOM00 San Francisco, T. Taniguchi reporting
Plan to follow Symposia structure as in 1999. Request for symposia ideas by October 1999. TPC encourages joint proposals from multiple technical committees.

L. PIMRC00, J. Elmirghani reporting
Personal Indoor Mobile Radio Conference will be held in September, 2000. The web site is at www.pimrc2000.com. The Communications Chapter at King's College London and the local IEEE Chapter are providing financial support. Paper submissions are due in March 2000.

M. ISPACS00, N. Ohta reporting
Will be held in Hawaii, November 6-8, 2000.

N. Other TPRs and Workshops
T. Clarkson may serve on the TPC for Eurocom2000.

4. Tutorial proposals for future conferences
ICC00 is still looking for Tutorial proposals, particularly concerning Internet Provisioning.
B. Daneshrad suggested Tutorial and Workshop ideas of Signal Processing for Wireless (including adaptive antennas) and VLSI or Hardware for Communication (including implementation issues).

5. Symposia proposals for future conferences
ICC00 and Globecom00 need symposia proposals. SPCE should identify symposia chairs who will attend the TPC meetings. S. Roy volunteered to help with ICC00 or Globecom00 symposia and possibly chair. J. Elmirghani agreed to help train the next chair.

B. Daneshrad will work with H. Liu to solicit VLSI papers. Hardware implementation papers are desired for conferences and journals, but generally there are few submissions.

It was suggested to seek multimedia topics with a signal processing flavor. They could include both theory and applications, based on what papers are submitted and their quality. SAS and Panel sessions within symposia are desired.

Symposia ideas were discussed such as Internet, cellular radio, rich media on the Internet, IP over ATM, wireless, speech, video, multimedia, signal processing for wireless (adaptive antennas, array processors). Two symposia titles achieved consensus: "Rich Media on the Internet" (including topics of Internet, IP over ATM, wireless, multimedia, speech and video coding) and "Wireless Signal Processing" (including topics of VLSI circuits and access technology).

6. Communication Magazine, J. Elmirghani reporting
SPCE has been involved with three special issues in the past 18 months. B. Daneshrad organized one in October 1998. J. Elmirghani organized one on wireless. New proposals are needed, there is a long lead time of 12 to 18 months. Short topics of 3 to 5 papers can get into the magazine sooner. Intelligent control of networks was suggested.

7. Policies and procedures for SPCE
SPCE Policies and Procedures have been approved by TAC.
N. Ohta will provide the latest revision, R. Smith will distribute by e-mail.

8. Recertification of SPCE
SPCE has been recertified by TCRC. A general comment was that there are currently too many TC's (21). It was also noted that IEEE has not responded to our Distinguished Lecturer suggestions.

9. Any Other Business
S. Roy noted that electronic submissions are now accepted for the IEEE Transactions on Communication.

R. Smith noted that SPCE meeting information is on our web page. We need to find ways to publicize our URL, which is http://www.comsoc.org/socstr/techcom/spce/.

10. Adjourn
The meeting was adjourned at 6:50 PM. There were 12 people in attendance.

Attendance List:

Appendices (received after the meeting)

Appendix A. Globecom00 TPC Meeting at ICC99
Date: Wed, 7 Jul 1999 08:47:41 -0700

This summarizes decisions made at the Globecom 2000 Technical Program Committee meeting, which was held on June 7 in Vancouver. I've filled in our general decisions with the necessary details. I apologize for the delay; however, I was traveling overseas for over two weeks following the meeting and when I returned to campus, I found that my office had been moved into our new EE building a bit ahead of schedule. I'm only now digging out from under the boxes.
Regards, Dale Harris, Globecom 2000 Technical Program Chair, harris@isl.stanford.edu

1. The Globecom 2000 technical program will be composed of a series of symposia on identified themes plus the general sessions. There will be no "Mini-Conferences" with separate registration.

2. The symposia will be run with a great deal of independence. All papers (no exceptions) will be submitted to the Globecom 2000 TPC Chair. Those papers whose authors so indicate will be forwarded to the chair of the identified symposium. The symposium chair will be responsible for obtaining the reviews and making the acceptance decisions. The review process must, however, follow the guidelines presented below. The symposium chair will also be responsible for organizing and running the sessions within the symposium.

3. Paper review guidelines. Each symposium and the general sessions will have the same paper acceptance ratio (with some flexibility to fill sessions). There should be three reviews for each paper, with one of the reviews coming from outside North America. No paper will be accepted without two reviews. Papers can be solicited (subject to acceptance through the review process), but cannot be invited (accepted prior to review or without review).

4. The Chairs of the Technical Committees or their representatives should make proposals for a symposium to the TPC chair. The Globecom 2000 TPC chair will have sole responsibility for approving symposia. Approval will be based on the following criteria:
a) the proposed symposium must have an obviously important and timely theme
b) the symposium proposal must be supported by more than one technical committee
c) the proposed symposium must be distinct; that is, it's theme can't overlap significantly with other proposed symposia
d) the proposed chair of the symposium must have the experience and resources to plan and execute the symposium with excellence.

5. Role of the TPC representatives: Each technical committee must have a representative to the TPC. These representatives will be responsible for obtaining reviews of papers submitted to the general sessions. This responsibility remains even if the represented technical committee is sponsoring a symposium. The TPC representative may submit proposals for Workshops and Tutorials to the TPC Chair. The TPC Chair will have the decision responsibility for workshops and tutorials. The representatives are expected to attend TPC meetings in Rio de Janeiro (Globecom 99, Dec. 5- 9) and New Orleans (ICC 2000, June 18 - 22). At these meetings, the representatives will participate in the organization of the general sessions and of the overall conference technical program.

6. Electronic submission of papers will be encouraged, but not required (required electronic submission is not yet supported by our higher-ups in IEEE). All communication with the TPC Chair will be through e-mail except in those cases where hardcopy is the only option.

7. The call for papers will go out on October 11. The symposia must be proposed and approved no later than October 4 since this information must be included in the call. Instructions for proposing a symposium will come in a subsequent email.

Appendix B. How to Propose a Symposium for Globecom00
Date: Wed, 7 Jul 1999 09:43:02 -0700
Dale Harris, Globecom 2000 Technical Program Chair, harris@isl.stanford.edu

The deadline for approving symposia is October 4, so the proposals should be received at least a week prior to that (September 27). The proposal should be sent to me by e-mail and should contain three parts.

Part 1 - The symposium title and description
This doesn't need to be long, but it must be specific enough so that it is easy to determine what is to be included in the symposium, and of equal importance, what is not. Certainly a page ought to do it.

Part 2 - The names of the proposing committees and endorsements by the committee chairs.
A symposium should have the support of more than one technical committee; however, load balancing of the responsibilities between the committees is completely up to those involved. The chair of each participating committee must endorse the symposium and I would like to receive these endorsements by e-mail directly from the committee chairs.

Part 3 - The name and bio of the proposed symposium chair
The bio of the symposium chair should make it clear what experience he or she has in organizing symposia or conferences. The bio should also make it clear what resources the chair will have at his or her disposal in carrying out the duties of the chair. This is obviously a key position of some responsibility. At the minimum, these responsibilities include obtaining the required reviews of all papers submitted to the symposium, organizing the sessions, recruiting session leaders to run each session, and communicating with the accepted speakers to make sure they are aware of the details of their session assignment. Recommending lunch panels, workshops, and tutorials to be held in conjunction with the symposium theme is also a duty. If there are to be solicited papers or any advertising independent of the general conference, that too will be up to the symposium chair. The chair must also identify a vice-chair who would take over in case of an emergency of some kind.

The chair and/or the vice-chair must attend the Globecom organizing meetings in Rio de Janeiro (Globecom 99, Dec. 5 - 9) and New Orleans (ICC 2000, June 18 - 22). Because of the importance of this position, no symposium will be approved without the prior identification of a chair with the appropriate credentials.

Appendix C. ICDSPA98 Report
Dear Prof. Trevor Clarkson, We are very grateful for your IEEE ComSoc SPCE Tech Committee sponsors’s supporting of the 1st DSPA’98 International Conference has been held in Moscow from June 30 – July 3, 1998. The DSPA’98 was highly successful event taking into account that the conference on DSP was the first one in Russia after the Soviet Union collapse in 1991.

The conference has gathered 85 papers presented at one full-day plenary session and seven problem-oriented sessions:

1. THEORY OF SIGNALS AND SYSTEMS
2. DIGITAL FILTERING AND STATISTICAL SIGNAL PROCESSING
3. DIGITAL SIGNAL PROCESSING IN TELECOMMUNICATIONS SYSTEMS
4. DIGITAL SIGNAL PROCESSING IN RADAR AND HYDROACOUSTICS
5. DIGITAL IMAGE PROCESSING
6. DIGITAL PROCESSING OF MEASUREMENT INFORMATION. INFORMATION SECURITY
7. NEW MICROPROCESSOR SYSTEMS FOR DIGITAL INFORMATION PROCESSING: DIGITAL PROCESSING SYSTEMS DESIGN
8. DIGITAL RADIO BROADCAST

The attendees have came from 12 countries. The number of registered participants – 276 people.
The DSPA’98 proceedings were published in 7 volumes edition (total 1634 pages) in English and Russian languages. All Russian papers are published in both languages.
The limited number copies of the DSPA’98 proceedings are available from ICSTI (Moscow 121252 Russia, Kuusinen Str. 21-B, fax: +7-095-943-0089, e-mail: enir@icsti.su, web: www.icsti.su).
Concurrently with the conference the small DSPA’98 Exhibition has been held. At the Exhibition ten Russian companies demonstrated DSP hardware and software products produced some foreign firms (Texas Instruments, Hewlett-Packards) and Russian labs. The Exhibition has been visited by 950 people.
The next DSPA’99 conference will be held in Moscow, 21-24 September 1999.
The Call for Papers enclosed.
We would be very thankful for your help in advertising and promotion the DSPA’99 conference. We invite you Prof. Clarkson to participate in the Technical Program Committee of the DSPA’99 conference. Could you recommend us some other people to join the Committee or to give a speech as an invite speaker at the DSPA’99.
All your advices and any ideas will be highly appreciated.
We would be glad to send to you the complimentary copy of the DSPA’98 Proceedings if you give us your post address.
Thank you for your kind attention and great assistance.
Yours Sincerely, Dr. Juri Gornostaev, Co-chair of the DSPA’99 Orgcom