July 1997

Report from the IEEE Communications Society's
Singapore Office

Our Presence at INFOCOM '97

By Jenny Long

INFOCOM '97 (9­11 April, 1997) was held jointly with the Computer Society at the International Convention Centre, Kobe, Japan. This very well organized and highly informative conference lured 544 participants from all over the world. The majority of the conference participants were from the United States and Japan.
Our presence at this distinguished conference has definitely created a sense of awareness of the IEEE ComSoc office for the Asia Pacific region. Many of the conference participants were not aware of our office here in Singapore. Through this conference, I also had the opportunity to meet and interact with conference participants, ComSoc volunteers, and Computer Society staff, which I believe will enhance our working relationship in the future.
It is good exposure for the Communications Society to be present at conferences such as this, and I hope that we will be able to have more of a presence at future ComSoc-sponsored conferences.
See you next at APCC '97 (7­10 December) in Sydney, Australia. We will be setting up a table/booth at APCC '97 to service member and publication enquiries. Please do drop by if you are attending.

Report on David Goodman's Distinguished Lecture Tour of Australia

By Fanny Su Beh Noi

From the feedback of the hosting Chapters, Prof. David Goodman's Distinguished Lecture Tour of Australia (10­31 May, 1997) was very well received and successful. The audience was a balanced mix of students, academia, and industry. In all, the Distinguished Lecture Tour attracted a total of 450-500 attendees.
Enn Vinnal (Victoria Chapter Chair): "Prof. Goodman was excellent: technically and as a presenter."
Prof. Goodman: "ComSoc is doing well in Australia, judging from the large audiences and spirited discussions at my lectures."
Prof. Goodman completed a total of six lectures. Attendance was rated very high with breakdown as follows:
New South Wales (Sydney): 80­100 attendees
Victorian Chapter (Melbourne): 190 attendees
South Australia (Adelaide): 80­100 attendees at the first and second presentations
Western Australia Chapter (Perth): 55 attendees
North Queensland Chapter (Brisbane): 80­100 attendees
Total: 450­500 attendees
The following is an article from the local ComSoc Victoria newsletter on the Distinguished Lecture by Prof. Goodman.

Reflections on "Personal Communications in 2010"

By Enn Vinnal and Craig Skinner
IEEE ComSoc Victoria
Australia, Region 10

In Melbourne on the 15th of May Professor David Goodman, an IEEE ComSoc Distinguished Lecturer, presented a lunchtime talk on PCS in 2010. The aim of the talk was to provoke thought about the way wireless communications will develop in the medium term.
To illustrate possible outcomes, he described a number of research projects being carried out at WINLAB, based at Rutgers University. For many years telcos have been developing networks with not much change being apparent at the consumer interface. However, rapid changes are occurring now and wireless communication operators need to think about what the customer will want in the future and what will be economical for operators to provide. One example is that while the Holy Grail may be service provision "anytime and everywhere," perhaps a more useful goal is "manytime and manywhere." That is, instead of uniform coverage and bandwidth, a more practical approach may be a mix of coverage and bandwidth. For example, your mobile terminal may down-load large files of navigation data only when your vehicle is moving slowly within one of many high-bandwidth but small-coverage-area cells. Another example is to have AlterEgo agents which will learn to control the information flowing to you based on information content, your current means of connectivity, the pricing regime offered at your current location, and your personal preferences.
This well publicized talk was attended by 190 people at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in the heart of Melbourne. The local IEEE ComSoc Chapter turned the event into a networking session with refreshments provided a half hour beforehand. The viewing of an IEEE promotional video was the only price the attendees had to pay and some 100 IEEE and ComSoc membership applications were distributed.
The organization of this event in Australia was coordinated by the IEEE Singapore Office and, thanks to Fanny Su, the Chapters had to arrange only accommodation and local hospitality. If our experience is anything to go by, other Chapters would benefit greatly by taking advantage of such opportunities.
Finally, our thanks go to the IEEE Communications Society for operating the Distinguished Lecturer Program and meeting the cost of airfares.
The next Distinguished Lecture Tour is planned for South East Asia ComSoc chapters in December 1997. More details will follow in the September issue of the Global Communications Newsletter.

IEEE Communications Society Offers Travel Grants As an Aid to Conference Attendance

By Koichi Hagashima, Japan

The IEEE Communications Society provides a limited number of travel grants to help its worldwide members with traveling difficulties to attend major conferences of the Society. Five major conferences are currently covered each year by this program: ICC, GLOBECOM, INFOCOM, ICUPC, and NOMS/IM (alternate years). In this program, the world is divided into four major regions:
  • North America (Regions 1­6 for the United States and Region 7 for Canada)
  • Europe, Africa, and the Middle East (Region 8)
  • Latin America (Region 9)
  • Asia Pacific (Region 10)
The basic principle is that the recipients of the grants must reside in a major region other than that in which the conference is held. There are two types of travel grants: student travel grants and professional travel grants. The details are given below.

Student Travel Grants

This grant consists of US$800 plus a complimentary copy of the conference record. To receive the grant the recipient must be the author of an accepted paper at the conference, and actually attend the conference and present the paper. The candidate must be a student member of IEEE or must have applied for student membership, and must also be a full-time student regularly registered toward a degree in related fields at a university. The acceptance ratio varies depending on the number of applications for a particular conference, but it might be one in three for some conferences.
Applications should be submitted by the students, or their advisors, to the Regional Representatives for the major Region in which the applicants reside. The names, addresses, etc. of the representatives should be printed on the application forms and call for papers of the conference. The application forms should be included in the authors' kits for accepted papers. The deadline for the Regional Representatives to receive applications is three months before the day the conference is scheduled to start. The selection of the recipients is based primarily on the review scores of the papers by the conference. These scores should be forwarded to the IEEE Communications Society Vice President of International Affairs shortly after the author kits are mailed. The decisions on how many grants to award and the final decision on which students should receive the awards are also made by the Vice President for International Affairs of the Society.

Grants Within the Same Region

Starting with GLOBECOM '96, special exceptional cases with very restricted conditions are also allowed for students to receive grants to attend major conferences held within the same major region. In this case the grant is US$500 plus a complimentary copy of the record. Examples of special conditions to be considered are:
  • A very high paper review score, or recommendation by the Technical Program Committee Chair, or an author of more than one paper
  • Minimum air fare to attend the conference is very high (for example, the air fare from Turkey to London or from Australia to Tokyo), as verified by the Regional Representative
  • A letter signed by the advisor or another officer of the university indicating that there is no way for the student to obtain travel support locally
The cost of this part of the grant program is not to exceed 15 percent of the total student travel grant budget allocated to each specific conference.

Professional Travel Grants

A very limited number of professional travel grants are also available for those with practical difficulties in attending the conferences. The grant includes US $1000 and a complimentary registration for the conference, including a copy of the conference record. The candidate may be an author of a paper accepted for the conference, a panelist of a panel session, a Chair of a session, or Chair of a Society Chapter.
The candidate must be a member of IEEE or must have applied for IEEE membership. All other requirements and processes for this grant are the same as those for the student grant, except that no application forms are needed and no special exceptional cases for attending conferences within the same major region are allowed.

Time Line

The Student Travel Grant program is administered by Vice President of International Affairs Lin-Shan Lee, who designates the regional representatives and administers the funds designated by the Board of Governors.
The Vice President of International Affairs is assisted by Communications Society staff member Diane Demarzo.

National Mobile Radio Conference (KKRR '97)
Poznanī, Poland

By Andrzej Jajszczyk, Poland

Mobile communications is a booming business in Central and Eastern Europe. Although cellular telephone penetration in Poland hardly exceeds 1 percent of the population (about 400,000 subscribers), the growth rate is impressive. Two digital GSM operators and one analog NMT operator will soon be joined by a company operating an 1800 MHz DCS network. Trunking systems, both analog and digital, are becoming popular as well. 360 representatives of major and smaller players in radio communications from Poland and abroad met in Poznanī from 26­28 May, 1997, at the National Mobile Radio Conference (KKRR '97).
The conference was organized by the Institute of Communication and Information Technologies Ltd. (ITTI), Institute of Communications (belonging to the Ministry of Communications), and Wroclaw University of Technology. The Technical Program Committee, led by Dr. Witold Holubowicz of ITTI, selected 62 papers that were presented at 10 technical sessions. There were also six company-organized sessions. The conference was accompanied by an exhibition of mobile radio equipment. Following the success of the last two conferences of this kind it was decided that the next conference will be also held in Poznanī in May 1998 with a somewhat broader scope that will include broadcasting issues.

The IEEE Communications Society European Operations Corner
By Jacques Kevers

Conferences

ICC '97 advance programs and general ComSoc promotional materials were forwarded for distribution at ICASSP '97. An agreement was reached with the 1997 8th International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC '97), to be held 1­4 September at the Marina Congress Center in Helsinki, Finland. This symposium, co-sponsored by ComSoc, the Finnish IEEE Section, and the University of Oulu, is granting the Brussels ComSoc office a booth free of charge, with tables and poster boards, near the registration and information desks. The Symposium is expected to attract about 600 attendees. Visit the Symposium's Web site (http://www.pimrc.oulu.fi) for more information.
Contacts were made with the organizers of the International Conference on Copper Wire Access Systems, to be held in Budapest, Hungary, on 27­29 October 1997. Full documentation on Comsoc sponsorship possibilities was provided through the New York Headquarters. The conference will focus on on the performance, operation and benefits of xDSL (Digital Subscriber Loop) technology, which is expected to bring broadband services and fast Internet access to the subscribers.

Volunteer Activities

The 1997 ComSoc Community volunteer directory is off press. A limited quantity is currently available from the Brussels office; copies will be sent on request.

World Wide Web

If any chapters in Region 8 would like the Communications Society to host a Web site for them, they should contact the Brussels office. The Society will give them an identification number and password to access the ComSoc server.
The Brussels office would like to develop more volunteer support activities. Any suggestions in this respect, especially from ComSoc chapters within Region 8, are welcome and will be examined carefully.

IEEE Operations Activities

Member Service: The office was hooked up to IEEE's "live" Oracle system, enabling the Brussels staff to effectively respond to member inquiries, to identify/resolve local member problems, and to perform "live" changes of address to clean up and maintain the Oracle database of member addresses. An application processing pilot is planned, which will demonstrate in a first stage the ability of the Brussels office to actually process on-line affiliate membership applications received from prospective members in Region 8. On average, the office answers 350 inquiries per month (90 percent in 2­3 days), makes 125 address changes, and sends 90 back issues of lost periodicals.
Customer Service: The office accepts orders for IEEE products from local customers, processes these orders on a standalone computer system, collects payments, and physically picks, packs, and ships the requested products. An order processing pilot is currently progressing, which should lead, by the end of the year to a remote, stockless order entry system, with all products being shipped from the central IEEE shipping department.
Expected Benefits: Fewer back orders, lower handling and shipping charges, and faster deliveries. Each month, the office currently answers about 100 product-related inquiries and fulfills about 80 orders for IEEE products.
For more details on the above, reactions or suggestions, you can contact the IEEE Communications Society European Operations Center at:
13 Avenue de l'Aquilon
B-1200 Brussels, Belguim
Manager: Jacques Kevers
tel: +32-2-770-66-34; fax: +32-2-770-85-05

The China Institute of Communications

By Yu Defen, China

The China Institute of Communications(CIC), founded in 1979, is an academic organization of communications scientists and technicians. It holds membership in the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST), and is also associated with the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, P.R.C.
The aim of CIC is to pool the efforts of communications specialists, to develop communications science and technology in China, and to advance cooperation with international academic and technological organizations of communications and information.
The CIC has become actively involved in the communication field by:
  • Organizing and supporting academic exchange of communications in China and abroad
  • Popularizing technical knowledge and organizing technical education of communications
  • Publishing technical journals and books
  • Rendering consulting services about communication technology
  • Developing international academic collaboration and friendly contacts with overseas academic organizations, enterprises, professors, scientists, and technicians
The CIC has 14 societies which conduct special symposia or workshops every year. They are as following:
  • Communication Equipment Manufacturing Techniques Society
  • Communication Lines Society
  • Communication Network Society
  • Communication Signal and Information Processing Society
  • Communication Theory Society
  • Computer Communication Society
  • Economy and Management Society
  • Electric and Magnetic Compatibility Society
  • Microwave and Satellite Communication Society
  • Optical Communication Society
  • Postal Communication Society
  • Power Supply for Communication Society
  • Radio Communication Society
  • Switching Technology Society
The CIC has local organizations in 29 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities. Members of these local organizations are guided by the CIC and integrate their work with local demands for communications techniques.
The CIC supervises the publication of the monthly periodicals Telecommunication Science and Modern Communications and Journal of the China Institute of Communications.
The membership of CIC is currently composed of six grades, namely Fellow, Senior Member, Member, Student Member, Grouping Member, and Overseas Member.
The CIC had over 60,000 members who specialize in the communications field at the end of 1996. The President of CIC is Mr. Song Zhiyuan, the ex-vice minister of MPT. The Secretary General of CIC is Mr. Deng Zhenyin; the Deputy Secretary General is Mr. Zhao Zhian.
The CIC establishes a Secretariat to carry out the decisions of the Council and its routine duties. The Secretariat is placed under the leadership of the Secretary General and the Deputy Secretary General. For further information, please contact:
Prof. Deng Zhenyin
Secretary General
China Institute of Communications
13, West Changan Street
100804, Beijing, China
tel: +86-10-6605-1305
fax: +86-10-6605-1305

International Conferences in the Asia-Pacific Region

The following is the international conference information for the Asia-Pacific region. For more detailed information, visit the Web site at http://onlab.tas.ntt.co.jp/APC

IEEE Malaysia International Conference on Communication (MICC '97)
and IEEE International Workshop on Intelligent Signal Processing and Communication Systems (ISPACS '97)

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

The 3rd IEEE Malaysia International Conference on Communication (MICC '97) and the 5th International Workshop on Intelligent Signal Processing and Communication Systems (ISPACS '97), whose theme is "The Enabling Technology for the Multimedia Superhighway," will be held jointly at Hotel Nikko, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 11­13 November, 1997. Contact information for the conference is:
MICC '97/ISPACS '97 Secretariat
c/o BATC, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
Jalan Semarak
54100 Kuala Lumpur
Malaysia
Attn: Ms. Liza Abd Latif
tel: 603-291-8088
fax: 603-291-1294

3rd Asia-Pacific Conference on Communications (APCC '97)

Sydney, Australia

The Asia-Pacific Conference on Communications provides a forum for greater regional interaction and dissemination of information on the latest developments in the rapidly expanding field of communications.
The 3rd APCC will be held in Sydney, Australia, from 7­10 December, 1997 and will incorporate the Australian Conference on Optical Fibre Technology (ACOFT) and the Australian Telecommunication Networks and Applications Conference (ATNAC), which are major Australian meetings on Telecommunications, each attracting typically well in excess of 200 delegates.
The Asia-Pacific Conference on Communications was successfully launched in Taejon, Korea in 1993. The 2nd APCC, held in Osaka, Japan in 1995, attracted papers from 19 countries in the Asia-Pacific region, North America, and Europe.
The conference will include a post-deadline session for presentation of timely and important new results. Preparation is the same as for normally contributed papers, and papers must be received by the Conference Secretariat by noon on Thursday, 4 December, 1997. The original manuscript must be delivered to the Conference Secretariat at the Conference venue by 10:00 a.m. Monday, 8 December, 1997. The acceptance of post-deadline papers is subject to review by the Technical Program Committee and will be announced during the Conference. Please contact:
APCC '97 Conference Secretariat
IREE Society
Level 1, 118 Alfred Street
PO Box 495
Milsons Point NSW 2061
Australia
tel: +61-2-9929-0099
fax: +61-2-9929-0587
http://www.ozemail.com.au/~ireesoc

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