From: Ender Ayanoglu
Communication Theory Technical Committee Meeting
GLOBECOM 2001
November 27, 2001
Salon B, Marriott Riverwalk
San Antonio, Texas


(Notes for meeting minutes taken by Krishna Narayanan)

1. The meeting was called to order at 5:10 PM.

2. Meeting attendees introduced themselves.

3. Ender Ayanoglu stated that due to time conflicts, some announcements will take priority on the agenda, and passed out two handouts. The first handout was about the First Annual Workshop on Autonomous Intelligent Networks and Systems to be held at UCLA on May 8 and 9 of 2002. Izhak Rubin described this workshop and asked for the Committee sponsorship of the workshop. Ender Ayanoglu explained that the new procedures of Comsoc prevent individual committee sponsorship and that the committees can make recommendations to the Technical Activities Council for Comsoc sponsorship. He asked if there were any objections to our committee's recommendation of Comsoc sponsorship for this workshop. There were no objections and Ender Ayanoglu stated he will make the recommendation on behalf of the Committee. The second handout was regarding the Communication Theory Symposium at Globecom 2002. This handout was discussed during the Globecom 2002 slot in Conference Reports.

4. Conference Reports
GLOBECOM 2001 (San Antonio, Texas, 11/25-11/29)
Costas Georghiades addressed the Committee. In this conference there were a total of 20 sessions organized by the Communication Theory Technical Committee, both in the Communication Theory Symposium and in the regular conference. There were 240 submissions received and each paper had at least three reviews. Ender Ayanoglu asked about the number of attendees in the conference, and Costas Georghiades responded that the number of advance registrations was of the order of 1200 and with on-site registrations, the number of attendees was expected to be about 1500. Sergio Benedetto stated there was a large number of no shows. Several views were expressed that the number of no shows was likely high due to the events that took place on September 11 and related travel restrictions, specifically in companies. This was followed by a discussion regarding the logistics of GLOBECOM 2001. Several attendees expressed that the convention center was too big for the conference.
ICC 2002 (New York, New York, 4/28-5/2)
Hikmet Sari gave a status report about ICC 2002. This conference decided to use Expotrack as the software for handling paper reviews. Although they had some problems initially, he remarked that everything was going on well. He commended the committee members on a great job and mentioned that 98% of the reviews were on time. Three days after the review deadline most papers had 3 reviews and some up to 6 reviews. There were totally 293 submissions to the Communication Theory Symposium and we were allotted 30 half sessions. Hikmet Sari mentioned that we will have a total of 128 papers in the conference.
GLOBECOM 2002 (Taipei, Taiwan, 11/17-11/22)
Krishna Narayanan addressed the Committee on behalf of Rick Wesel and Keith Chugg who are the co-representatives of the Committee for this conference. There is a Technical Program Committee, consisting of 18 members. A list of potential session topics is
Multiuser detection
Concatenated codes
Iterative decoding
CDMA
Multiple antennas and diversity
Space-time coding
Coding and signal processing for storage
Fading channels and equalization
OFDM
Modulation and coding
ICC 2003 (Anchorage, Alaska, 5/11-5/15)
Our representatives for ICC 2003 are Tolga Duman and Moe Win. The flyers for this conference already point to a Communication Theory Symposium. Tolga Duman stated that the meeting for this conference during GLOBECOM 2001 was convened but was on general terms of the conference, not on the specifics of the paper handling process or the roles of the committees, etc.
GLOBECOM 2003 (San Francisco, California)
Ender Ayanoglu asked if there were any volunteers to represent the Committee for this conference. Since there were no volunteers during the meeting, he stated volunteers will be requested via email.

5. Workshop Reports
Workshop 2002 (Sanibel Island, Florida, 5/19-5/22)
Gordon Stuber addressed the Committee. The Workshop's web site is http://www.ct02.gatech.edu. The technical sessions will include
Radio Propagation (organized by T. S. Rappaport)
Security (organized by I. F. Blake)
Coding and Signal Processing for Storage (organized by W. E. Ryan)
OFDM and MIMO Communications (organized by V. Tarokh)
Iterative Techniques (organized by G. D. Forney, Jr.)
Recent Results and Hot Topics (chair - S. W. McLaughlin)
Workshop 2003 (West Coast)
There were two proposals for the Communication Theory Workshop in 2003. The first one was by Christian Schlegel. He proposed the Stein Ericsson Lodge in Park City, Utah as the venue and April 13-17 2003 as the dates. The other proposal was by Bill Ryan and the venue is the Arizona Golf Resort and Conference Center at Superstition Springs. The possible dates are April 6-9 or 13-16, 2003. After a description of the proposals, a vote was taken, and based on the voting, it was decided that the 2003 Communication Theory Workshop will be held in Arizona. Ender Ayanoglu suggested that the organizers check for all possible holidays (religious holidays, Mothers' Day, etc) and finalize the date accordingly. Bill Ryan stated that the price would match closely that of Borrego Springs last year.

6. Announcements
Desmond Taylor announced that 2 DVDs containing all the papers that appeared in the journals and magazines published by Comsoc would be available at ICC 2002 in New York. The DVDs will be included in the conference record in all Comsoc conferences in 2002. In addition, for some time they will be available for a price of $69 and then at $130. He also mentioned that there will be a special publication containing 50 selected papers that appeared in Comsoc journals. A list of papers is under consideration and a Call for Nominations had been circulated.
Yeheskel (Zeke) Bar Ness expressed his view that Comsoc has lost touch with the volunteers. He said that the problem is that active people in Comsoc are not heard. He expressed his view to resign from Comsoc. Several attendees suggested it is better to express his views in various fora within Comsoc and not to resign.
Ender Ayanoglu stated that as of January 2002, the new Chair of the Committee will be Sergio Benedetto of Politecnico di Torino, Italy.

7. Minutes of ICC 2001 were approved.

8. The meeting was adjourned at 6:28 PM.