Communication Theory Technical Committee Meeting
	             		   ICC 2001
 	                        June 13, 2001
                  Winter Garden Lounge, Fair Center/Holiday Inn
			      Helsinki, Finland

		(Meeting minutes recorded by Khaled Ben Letaief)

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

2. Meeting attendees introduced themselves.

3. Conference Reports

	ICC 2001 (Helsinki, Finland, 6/11-6/15) 
	Regular Conference (S. S. Jamuar and R. Prasad) Prof. Jamuar addressed
        the Committee. A total of 93 papers were submitted to the regular 
        conference in the area of Communication Theory. There were 38 review 
	organizers and 244 reviewers to review these 93 papers. 55 papers 
	were accepted for presentation. Originally Communication Theory was 
	allocated 6 sessions. Since there was a large number of papers with 
	good reviews, a request was made to add another session to the 
	regular conference in the area of Communication Theory, and ICC 2001 
	organizers approved this request. The selection of papers was made 
	on the feedback obtained from at least 2 reviewers. The minimum 
	acceptable point was 6.67 as per the guidelines of the organizers 
	of ICC 2001. The distribution of the scores is as follows:
	1 paper with 8.67, 35 papers with 8.0, 8 papers with 7.33, 9 papers
	with 7.0, and 2 papers with 6.67 (out of a 10 maximum). 55 papers
	were divided into 7 sessions. The session number, session title,
	and number of papers are given below.

	G8	Modulation and Coding			8
	G21	Multiuser Detection			8
	G45	CDMA and OFDM				8
	G54	Antenna and Fading Channel		8
	G58	Selected Topics in Comm Thy I		8
	G67	Turbo Codes and Space-Time Coding	8
	G71	Selected Topics in Comm Thy II		7

	Prof. Jamuar thanked all review organizers and all reviewers for
	completing a very difficult task as per scheduled deadline.

	Communication Theory Symposium (S. Benedetto and K. B. Letaif)
	Sergio Benedetto addressed the Committee. There were 123 papers 
	submitted to the Communication Theory Symposium. The number of 
	accepted papers was 79, and they were organized into 10 sessions 
	(9 with 8 papers and 1 with 7 papers). All papers were rated
	very high (6.67 or above) with an average of 3 reviews/paper. 
	The sessions were very well attended and the quality of papers was 
	overall very good. The issue of the software used for review was
	discussed at length. There were serious compplaints with the software
	used for Globecom 2001, whereas the software used for ICC 2001 was
	considered flawless. ComSoc is moving in the direction of establishing
	the Globecom 2001 software as the one to be used for future 
	conferences. Many members objected to this move. Members who wish to 
	support the use of the Helsinki (ICC 2001) software for the future
	should send an email to ICC 2002 Technical Committee Vice Chair
        Moe Win at win@research.att.com.

	GLOBECOM 2001 (San Antonio, Texas, 11/25-11/29) (C. Georhiades,
	A. Salkintzis and A. Naguib) Hikmet Sari addressed the Committee on 
	behalf of Costas Georghiades. In this conference, all accepted papers 
	in the area of Communication Theory will go to the Communication 
	Theory Symposium. There were 226 submissions and the plan is to have 
	7 papers per session. The Communication Theory Symposium will receive
        20 sessions (140 papers). 
	
	ICC 2002 (New York City, New York, 4/28-5/2) (H. Sari) Hikmet
	Sari is the Chair of Communication Theory Symposium for ICC 2002. 
	The General Chair is Mark Karol and the Technical Program Chair is 
	Malathi Veeraraghavan. During this conference there will be 11 
	symposia and no general conference sessions. There will be a 
	Communication Theory Symposium. The paper submission deadline is 
	August 15, 2001. The year 2002 is the 50th anniversary of Comsoc. 
	ICC 2002 will be part of a series of celebrations for this event. 
	A 2-DVD collection of past ComSoc publications is expected to be 
	handed out to ICC 2002 participants.

	GLOBECOM 2002 (Taipei, Taiwan, 11/17-22) (K. Chugg and R. Wesel)
	Keith Chugg and Rick Wesel addressed the Committee. This conference
	will have a number of symposia and general conference sessions.
	There are a number of symposium proposals, including Communication 
	Theory. Which proposals will become actual Symposia will be 
	determined based on paper submissions. Steve McLaughlin asked
	the Committee to consider papers from the Signal Processing for
	Storage Technical Committee to be included in the Communication
	Theory Symposium. There was a brief discussion on this subject,
	without any objections to the proposal. The Call for Papers will 
	reflect papers in the area of Signal Processing for Storage to
	be included in the Communication Theory Symposium.

	ICC 2003 (Anchorage, Alaska, 5/11-15) This conference was 
	announced during ICC 2001 with a Communication Theory Symposium
	as one of the tentative symposia. After ICC 2001, Tolga Duman
	and Moe Win volunteered as Communication Theory Technical Committee
	representatives.

4. Workshop Reports

	Workshop 2001 (La Casa Del Zorro Desert Resort, California,
	4/29-5/2) (S. Miller and C. Georghiades) The report from Scott Miller
	was read. There were 5 sessions (with five papers each) plus the 
	Monday night panel session

	Financial:
	  Total Income = $51,860.00
	  Total Expenses = $48,796.42
	  Net profit (to be returned to IEEE) = $3063.58 (5.9%)

	All seemed to go very smoothly at the workshop.  The resort was
	quite nice and the service was outstanding although the site
	was quite isolated.  Many positive comments were received from
	the participants.              

	Workshop 2002 (G. Stuber, G. Li, S. W. McLaughlin) Steve McLaughlin
	addressed the Committee. Site selection has been completed. The site 
	is Sundial Beach Resort, Sanibel Island, Florida. The room rate is 
	$150/night. Registration fees will be similar to last year, about
	5% higher. Accommodations are in one-bedroom suites, each suite has
	a living room, dining room area, kitchen, and bedroom. Bedrooms can 
	be partitioned off by a movable wall, and the living rooms have
	hide-a-bed sofas. Hence, a one bedroom suite could accommodate an
	extra guest with some minor effort. Two-bedroom suites are also
	available. All suites are in 3-story buildings and privately 
	owned. There are 271 suites available for group leasing. All suites
	for group leasing must pass resort standards on furnishing etc. The
	beach area is fantastic with 30C (86F) water temperature and 
	35C (95F) air temperature. Golfing, fishing, etc are available.

	Workshop 2003 (West Coast) Two proposals were received prior to
	ICC 2001. A team consisting of B. Vasic and W. Ryan from University 
	of Arizona at Tucson proposed a set of locations in Arizona. C.
	Schlegel from Univeristy of Utah proposed Park City, Utah
	(http://www.parkcityinfo.com). University of Arizona proposals
	were discussed at the meeting. There were several objections
	to the proposals made. Some members insisted that the resort
	be small enough to hold only our Workshop. Marvin Simon offered 
	help with site selection criteria, site candidates, etc. He can
	be contacted at marvin.k.simon@jpl.nasa.gov.
	
6. Announcements

   - Norm Beaulieu, the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on
     Communications announced that the 2001 Communications Society
     Stephen O. Rice Prize Paper Award has been awarded to Sirikiat Lek 
     Ariyavisitakul for his paper "Turbo Space-Time Processing to
     Improve Wireless Channel Capacity," which was published in IEEE
     Transactions on Communications, August 2000. Norm Beaulieu
     also announced that a paper by Moe Win and Bob Scholtz was a
     close second.

   - Khaled Ben Letaief announced the launching of a major new archival
     journal, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications in 2002. This
     new journal is a "spin-off" of the IEEE Communications Society's
     current and extremely successful IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in
     Communications - Wireless Communications Series. Authors wishing to
     submit their papers to this new journal should send them to the
     Editor-in-Chief at Twireless@ee.ust.hk (pdf is the preferred format)

	Professor Kaled Ben Letaief
	Editor-in-Chief
	Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
	Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
	Clear Water Bay, Kowloon
	HONG KONG
	Tel: + (852) 2358 7064 Fax: + (852) 2358 1485
	E-mail: Twirless@ee.ust.hk
	
   - Moe Win requested the support of the Committee for the 2002 IEEE
     Conference on Ultra Wide Band Systems and Technologies to be held in
     Baltimore May 20-23, 2002. This request was approved.

7. The minutes of the GLOBECOM 2000 meeting of the Committee were approved.

8. The meeting adjourned at 6:10 PM.