Communication Theory Technical Committee Meeting
ICC '99
June 8, 1999
Pan Pacific Hotel, Vancouver, BC, Canada
1. The meeting was called to order at 5:33 pm by Ender Ayanoglu.
Ender gave brief updates on the new cabinet (Zeke Bar-Ness as Vice
Chair, Lek Ariyavisitakul as Secretary, and Paul Kakaes as Treasurer),
the committee web site (http://www.comsoc.org/~comt), and the member
and mailing lists.
2. Conference Reports
ICC'99 (Vancouver, Canada, 6/6-6/10) (P. Ho, A. Yongacoglu,
and G. Caire) Paul Ho reported that all the 7 and 1/2 sessions
sponsored/co-sponsored by the committee went smoothly. These
sessions are:
1) Multiuser Receivers and Interference Mitigation (7 papers)
2) Turbo Codes (7 papers)
3) Coding Techniques (8 papers)
4) Multicarrier and OFDM (4 papers)
5) Modulation and Coding I (8 papers)
6) Modulation and Coding II (8 papers; with Radio Communications)
7) Equalization and Synchronization (8 papers)
8) Performance Analysis (8 papers; with Personal Communications)
CTMC'8 (Vancouver, Canada, 6/6-6/10) (Y. Bar-Ness) was the first
CTMC held at ICC. Zeke Bar-Ness, Technical Program Chair, reported
that the mini-conference received 60 submissions and accepted 36
papers. Two reviews were received for each paper. Six sessions
were formed and chaired by our committee members. There were 124
pre-registrants, and a total of 160 attendees, quite a success for
the first CTMC at ICC!
GLOBECOM'99 (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 12/5-12/9) (E. Biglieri,
K. Chugg, and E. Esteves) is being organized as a collection of
9 symposia and a main (the regular) conference. Ezio Biglieri
is the Chair of the Communication Theory Symposium. Our
committee's representatives for the regular conference are
Keith Chugg and Edwardo Esteves.
Information received from Ezio Biglieri was summarized. The
Technical Program Committee members are: V. Cardoso, L. Cimini,
M. Costa, A. Goldsmith, U. Mengali, M. Win, and H. Sari.
137 submissions were received. Overall the conference received
1200 submissions and the acceptance ratio has been set to be
40%. So the CT symposium expects to accept about 55 papers to
form 8 sessions and possibly one additional.
A report was received from Ezio Biglieri after the meeting:
There will be 9 sessions in the Communication Theory Symposium.
- Equalization (7 papers)
- Multiple-Antenna Systems (7 papers)
- Turbo Codes and Iterative Decoding I (8 papers)
- Multi-User Communications (8 papers)
- Coding and Shaping (7 papers)
- CDMA (7 papers)
- Modulation and Demodulation (8 papers)
- Fading Channels (7 papers)
- Turbo Codes and Iterative Decoding II (8 papers)
A report received from Keith Chugg after the meeting: The
CTC reps received 73 submissions and have formed the following
four tentative sessions (with the numbers of accepted/submitted
papers indicated in parentheses):
-Receiver Processing, L. Rasmussen (8/22)
-Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks, A. K. Salkintzis and T. Mathiopoulos
(8/22)
-Channel Modeling, Zeke Bar-Ness (7/13)
-Signal Design for Modern Communication Systems, Nam Phamdo
(7/16)
ICC 2000 (New Orleans, Louisiana, 6/18-6/22) (S. Gelfand for
CT Symposium and J. J. O'Reilly for Regular Conference)
Jim Krogmeier reported for Saul Gelfand that currently there
are 4 symposia in addition to the regular conference:
1) Enterprise Networking
2) Quality of Service
3) Communication Theory
4) Personal Communications
The Conference web site is being set up by Bell South. The
deadline for papers and sessions is Semtember 1. Electronic
submission is encouraged.
There will be SAS (Services, Applications, Systems) sessions
including panels, tutorials, and workshops. Some of the SAS
sessions may be integrated into the symposia. There were no
volunteers from our members for organizing SAS sessions,
although everyone thinks this will benefit the committee.
Possible SAS sessions were proposed:
- Software Radio
- Broadband Access Networks, H. Sari
- Wideband CDMA, F. Adachi
GLOBECOM 2000 (San Francisco, California, 11/27-12/1) (M. Win
and G. Chrisikos) Moe Win reported that there were oppositions
for having symposia at GLOBECOM 2000. The committee may need
to send a complete proposal to Dale Harris, the Technical
Program Chair of the Conference, for having a mini-conference
approved. We should also lobby for overflowing rejected papers
from the mini-conference to the regular conference.
ICC 2001 (Helsinki, Finland) Sergio Benedetto volunteered to be
the General Chair of the CT Symposium and Khaled Ben Letaif
volunteered to be the Technical Program Chair. The committee
is looking for regular conference representatives.
MILCOM (G. Saulnier) Information received from our MILCOM rep
Gary Saulnier: Our committee is sponsoring the following sessions
for MILCOM '99 (Atlantic City, 10/31-11/3)
-Advanced Modulation Techniques
-Interference Suppression in Spread Spectrum
-Advanced Coding Techniques
-Multicarrier and OFDM Techniques
-Multi-user Detection
-Techniques for Fading/Multipath Channels I
-Techniques for Fading/Multipath Channels II
3. Workshop Reports
Workshop'99 (Aptos, California, 5/23-5/26) (C. Robertson,
A. Goldsmith, and L. Cimini) Andrea Goldsmith reported that
there were 5 sessions and 71 attendees with 20 guests. The
technical program received good feedback (see recent Meeting
Minutes of the Workshop). There was a follow-up discussion
regarding the registration policy--whether to permit prorated
fees according to time spent. There were comments regarding
making the policy clear and resolving any conflicts prior to
the Workshop, not after. The members generally felt that
brief attendance is not appropriate for a focused workshop that
encourages interactions, and such a partial payment policy would
require some policing. There were suggestions to make every
registrant pay the full registration fee. There was an argument
to have invited speakers who would not be expected to pay in
special situations. The issue was put to a motion and the members
almost unanimously approved a strict policy that does not permit
partial payment, but allows for exceptions in very special cases.
Workshop 2000 (Florida, 5/7-5/10) (D. Schilling, R. Pickholtz, and
K. Dominiak) Workshop 2000 will be held at Grenelefe Resort,
Central Florida (http://www.grenelefe.com). The room rates are
$89 (single), $109 (1 bedroom suite), and $198 (2 bedroom suite).
Breakfast and dinner (but not lunch) will be included. A package
deal for tennis may also be available.
Session and talk proposals should be sent to the Program Chair,
Ray Pickholtz (pickholt@seas.gwu.edu).
Workshop 2001 will be the 30th Workshop! In the past, there was
a big 20th Anniversary celebration during the Workshop in Ojai,
California. The committee received the following proposal to
organize Workshop 2001 from Texas A&M University.
-General Chair: S. Miller
-Technical Program: C. Georghiades
-Treasurer: X. Wang
-Local Arrangements: K. Narayanan
-Administrative: S. Simpson
-Location: most likely in Texas, but are open to finding a site
in California or even Arizona or New Mexico.
There was a long discussion about the location. The participants
expressed a strong interest in California for the location of
this workshop.
4. Announcements
- Our committee was recertified by ComSoc on April 20, 1999.
- Summary of the TAC (Technical Activities Council) meeting:
* There was a presentation on staff support issues. ComSoc
has been relying on support from volunteers. However, with
recent corporate restructuring in many organizations, some
of these companies no longer recognize "free time" spent for
IEEE activities. There were suggestions on how to increase
the efficiency of the volunteer role, and a request for each
committee to submit a recruitment description for all elected
positions.
* Co-sponsoring conferences will be limited to those ComSoc has
financial interest in. The concern was that too many
co-sponsorings would undercut ComSoc's flagship events.
* The results of a recent survey of all committees were given.
* The Technical Information Reference Committee (TIC) has been
recently formed (in January 1999) to set up the ComSoc web
site. TIC is seeking inputs from individual technical committees
to specify hot areas and add details to the web site.
5. The minutes of the GLOBECOM '98 meeting of the Committee were approved.
6. The meeting adjourned at 6:35 PM.