March 2004

Executive Committee’s Desk

Welcome to IEEE Madras Section - The Beginning:

- P.Suresh Chander Pal

A Growing Reputation:

The Section’s small cluster meetings evolved into Congregations with increasing membership and the Annual convention was  held at the Taj Coromandel (1986).  The Secretary Mr.M.V.Chauhan, owned an automobile driveshaft manufacturing company in Thiru Vika Road, Chennai and led the Amateur Radio Club.  Under the stewardship of Mr.E.N.Narayanaswamy (Chairman) & Mr.Chauhan(Secretary), the Section developed to a recognizable level. Mr.P.Bhoja Shetty, of Shibshaw Instruments(81-83) and Mr.Chauhan(84-85), did commendable work to develop the Section. Mr.Sundararaman (founder-member)of M/s Crompton  & Mr. Balasubramaniam (1986) of GEC assisted in the development.

Student branches were formed in various technical institutions by visiting them & explaining the benefits of IEEE membership.   Mr. H. Kalyanasundaram(1987-88), from Best & Crompton and Mr.C.R.Sasi (1989-90) of Presmo Auto Fabrik, took great efforts to increase the educational  and technical activities in the Section and in increasing the Student Branches.

Later, the India Council was formed to co-ordinate the activities of the Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta & Madras Sections and our Section was in the limelight under the Chairmanship of Dr.N.M.Parthasarathy(91-92), ETK Group, Mr. C. S. Ganesan (1993-1994), Dr.S.Ranganathan, Dr.UdayKumar & Mr.S.A.Soundararajan helped through contacts, with the Engineering Colleges for increasing the Student Branches in our Section.  Dr.R.Srinivasan,(Ch.-2002-’03) was successful in streamling the activities, with focus on credibility and accountability.  The new Team  for 2003-Dec’04, under the chairmanship of Mr. P. Suresh Chander Pal, took charge in Sept.’03 and is committed to excellence & hard work, to achieve the Vision, Mission & objectives of IEEE, and to bring the Section to great heights.

We propose to celebrate the completion of our Section Silver Jubilee Year(1978-2003), in a grand manner, honor the past outstanding Chairmen and the members of 25 years’ standing and invite all members to share their information & knowledge on our Section’s past history & achievements & welcome their suggestions.

IEEE Madras Section’s Salient Accomplishments:

- P.Suresh Chander Pal

(1) Facility to pay membership fees in Rupees to the Section, which will arrange to consolidate (convert into dollar) and send it to Head-Office.
(2) Cutting down the delay in the receipt of Journals/Magazines by members to less than 2 months, by convincing the Headquarters, to send them in bulk, to Singapore & distribution done from there.

(3)     Technical Committee                   :K. Kamalakannan,Chair,P.K.Venkatakrishnan & V. Sankaranarayanan

(4)     Educational Committee               :Dr.Shanti Swarup,Chair,Dr.UdayKumar & Sheela C Haran

(5)   Student Activities Committee        :P.Suresh C.Pal,Chair,N.Ravi & Michael Kumar

(6)   Fellowship, Publicity & Public Relations: Dr. G.V. Rao, Chair, R. T. Chari H. R. Mohan & Major Chandrasekaran

(7)   Membership Advancement & Awards: T.S.Rangarajan, Chair. Dr.Shanti Swarup & S.Sundaresh

(8) Publications                                  : Dr.Krishna V.Prasad, Chair, K.Ramanathan & Prof.B.Yegnanarayana

(9) Membership Development               : K.Ramanathan, Chair, Sheela C Haran & Dr.Uday Kumar

(10)  Section Gold Affinity Group           : Auxilia Jansi Rani, Chair, Lavanya & Natarajan

(11)  Section ByLaws                           : Dr.R.Srinivasan,Chair, Dr.Pon Vaikko & K.R.Kanitkar

(12)  Finance                                       : T.S.Rangarajan.Chair, Dr.R.Srinivasan & Dr.Ponnavaikko

(13)  Web-page Committee                   : K.Ramanathan, Chair, Dr.Ponnavaikko, T.S. Rangarajan

The Student Activities Committee will nominate Mentors for groups of Colleges, area wise, for effective follow-up action. 

  The Educational Committee will have special invitees for guidance on continuing education.

It recently conducted a technical lecture on “Introduction on LINUX and its Applications” by Dr.P.Sriram of Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M) on 31st January, 2004 at Hall of Guines’ 68, Anna University, Chennai. GNU/LINUX is fast catching up in the corporate environment as a cheaper, secure and a trust worthy alternative to the commercial competitors. About 70 IEEE members participated in this technical symposium. Dr. P. Sriram is an ardent LINUX enthusiast and one of the earliest members in LINUX User Group (LUG) of Chennai. He introduced GNU/LINUX and its applications in the computing and corporate world to young students and professional community. Also, he elucidated the security, robustness, stability and reliability of LINUX as an ideal environment to run web servers and develop applications. Cross your fingers! IEEE GOLD Madras Section will bring more technical/non-technical activities to engage its members.

- P.Suresh Chander Pal

Mr. T .S .Rangarajan, Principal Consultant & Group Manager, TCS, Chennai,& Section Treasurer,spoke on From Barcode to RFID Technology and. Mr. S. Sridharan, GM, Hewlett & Packard, Bangalore, spoke on "Metric & Project Management", on Feb.6th, besides other paper presentations by the students. On 7th Feb, Mr.K.Ramanathan, Consultant & Quality Head, TCS, Chennai & Section Secretary, spoke on Software Project & Quality Management ,and Mr.Rajiv Hira, India Council Member(Treasurer), from Mumbai, spoke on IEEE Student Membership. The Mepco College Student Branch rides itself with the distinction of resentation of 2 papers on "Automatic Damage Detection for Railroad tracks by the application of real-time DSP based Dual analysis System" and "Double Abstraction Level Heuristic Power Optimisation for DSPs using Gas”, at the recent 46th IEEE Mid-West Symposium on Circuits & Systems, at Cairo. They publish a house magazine, viz. RANDOM NOISE Techzine (compilations of interesting technical articles).They were publishing also Dailies ,for the benefit of the participants, during the IAISC. Another interactive session was conducted by the Section Chair, with the Student members, on the 6th evening, along with Mr.Rajiv Hira, IEEE India Council Execom Member and the session were enthusiastically welcomed by the members. On behalf of the IEEE Madras Section, the Section Chair, congratulated the faculty, the Management & the Student Branch members, particularly, Mr.SubaSingh Chelladurai , Correspondent& the 13 Directors, Dr.A.C.R.Djugash, Principal, Prof.S.Balakrishnan, Branch .Counselor , Mr. Srutisagar Chandrasekaran, S.B.Chairman & his team of officers, for the grand success of IAISC-.

From the Editor’s Desk-

“Bio-Informatics” is the most happening technology today. A drop in this vast ocean has been presented as the “Topic of the Month”.

This month’s featured article gives an insight into UMTS and its various modes of  operation. It also briefly dwells on 3rd Generation mobile systems.

IPTV, recently launched by Microsoft, and Low power VLSI circuits are the buzzwords for the month. Grab more information about these in Tech Buzz.

This month’ s brainteasers  are sure to stimulate your gray cells. Mail in your  answers to mailto:ieee_news@yahoo.com.

I would like to thank all the readers for their tremendous response. Keep those letters flowing in!! I hope that you have a great time leading this newsletter.

HAPPY READING!!!

                                                                                          -Raja Mohan (mailto:nraj_15@rediffmail.com)

This column provides insight into the various services and benefits available to IEEE members.Enumerated below are some of the interesting awards given out by IEEE. The RAB Larry K. Wilson Regional Student Activities Award was implemented to recognize a student's outstanding accomplishment associated with student activities. The winner in each Region receives three years' free membership in the IEEE and an award plaque. Award announcements are sent in November to all Branches and Branch Chapters. Send nominations directly to the Regional Student Activities Chairman (RSAC) by January 31st.

The Upsilon Pi Epsilon Student Award for Academic Excellence is presented by the IEEE Computer Society based on a student’s academic record, computer-related extracurricular involvement, and letters of recommendation. Any      Computer Society member who is a full-time undergraduate or graduate student with a minimum 3.0 GPA—the required GPA for

UPE membership—can apply. The deadline for next year’s Larson and UPE competitions is 31 October Selected to receive the honor this year were C. Chandramouli from Sri Venkateswara College of Engineering in Tamil Nadu, India; Min Chen from the University of Panama; Ciudad Octavio Mendez in Pereira, Panama; Federico Moro from Politechnico Di Milano in Italy; and Shivaani Gupta from Punjab Engineering College in Chandigarh,India.

 Featured Article Of The Month: UMTS

-Universal Mobile Telecommunication System-3rd Generation Mobile

                                                                                      -Parthan (mailto:parthan_srp@yahoo.com)

    UMTS is the 3rd generation of mobile access technology featuring high data rates and improved quality of service, promising to     

    revolutionize networks with better frequency and reduced cost. It provides full support for existing technologies i.e. GSM and GPRS.

    It is a very robust and efficient network architecture.

    UMTS Mobile Station: An UMTS mobile station operates in one of the three modes of operation. These modes are however

    different from those of GPRS due to the capabilities of the UTRAN (UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network) to multiplex circuit-

    switched (CS) and packet-switched (PS) connections. The UTRAN sends paging messages for circuit-switched services on the same   

    channel  used for packet-switched services. The MS needs only to monitor that channel. This process is known as paging

    co-ordination. The different mobile station operating modes are

                       * PS/CS Mode (Equivalent to GSM & GPRS)

                       * PS Mode

                       * CS Mode

    The simplest 3G used for talking store all information on the network, while the next versions provide video streaming for news and  

    web content. More sophisticated models enable users to download from the Internet and store data on the device. Top-end devices  

    containing keyboards are mostly wireless, similar to PDAs that exist today. They may run symbian or other  capable OSs. High-end  

    devices will allow video conferencing and may even employ a tiny digital video camera.

Answers to the previous article of Brainteasers:

• History of the Internet
• Pipes
• Unix
• YACC - Yet Another Compiler-Compiler
• Mauchly
• Mouse Activated Computer
• The JAVA.class file
• MANDELBROT Set
• BYTE
• Gulliver’s Travels
• Gee Whiz
• Nerd
• 1 and 0
• Adobe Systems
• Compaq
• RISC
• Ethernet
• stdio.h
• Floppy Disk
• Information

Topic Of The Month: Bio-Informatics

                                              -Amit(mailto:mindschild@hotmail.com)

  The subject area Bio-Informatics can be defined as the application of techniques from computer science to solve problems in molecular  

   biology. This exciting area is a relatively young field, and the pace of research is driven by the large and rapidly increasing amount of

   data being produced from, for example, efforts to sequence the genomes of a variety of organisms. The areas where computer science

   can be applied range from assembly of sequence fragments, analysis of DNA, RNA and protein sequences, prediction and analysis of

   protein sequence and function, and the analysis and simulation of general metabolic function and regulation. Bio-Informatics is

   certainly not number-crunching for molecular biologists, but is about the application of techniques from computer science such as 

   modeling, simulation, data abstraction, data manipulation and pattern discovery techniques in order to analyze biological data. The

   data generated by the experimental scientists requires annotation and detailed analysis in order to turn it into knowledge that can

   then be applied to improving health care via, for example, new drugs and gene therapy, medical practices, and food production - all of

   which are now high-profile issues nationally.

  As a consequence of the large amount of data produced in the field of molecular biology, most of the current Bio-Informatics projects 

   deal with structural and functional aspects of genes and proteins. Many of these projects are related to the Human Genome Project

   (see also the homepage of the Weizmann Institute Genome Project) First, the data produced by the thousands of research teams all

   over the world are collected and organized in databases specialized for particular subjects. Well-known examples are: GDB ,

   SWISS-PROT , GenBank , and PDB. The latter - for example - deals with three-dimensional structures of biological molecules. For

   details about new concepts for databases like PDB, ask Jaime Prilusky (email: lsprilus@weizmann.weizmann.ac.il), the head of this 

   "http://dapsas.weizmann.ac.il/uni/staff/people.html".

  In the next step, computational tools are needed to analyze the collected data in the most efficient manner. For example, many

   Bio-Informaticists are working on the prediction of the biological functions of genes and proteins (or parts of them) based on

   structural data. As an example for sequence analysis tools, have a look at our Hydrophobicity Search and Comparison Server. In

   recent years, many new databases storing biological information have appeared. But this has not only positive effects: nowadays

   many scientists complain that it gets increasingly difficult to find useful information in the resulting 'data labyrinth'. This may

   largely be due to the fact that the information gets more and more scattered over an increasing number of heterogeneous resources.

  To ameliorate this situation, computational tools have been developed that integrate the scattered information in new types of web

   resources. The principal idea is that these databases should enable the scientific user to get a quick idea about the current knowledge

  that has been gathered about a  particular subject.

LOW POWER VLSI CIRCUITS

Sreekar (mailto:scorpion_reddy@hotmail.com)

       The evolutions in VLSI Technology lead to the shrinkage in dimensions of the MOS transistors. This facilitated high packing density and faster circuits with low power dissipation that led to the use of portable systems like mobile phones and PDAs. Since circuit density is nevitable to house the functionalities, power dissipation is inevitable. As most of the portable systems are battery powered, reducing power consumption is a very important requirement and necessity. This has led to the low power design techniques. Among many techniques available now, the focus is shifting towards

1.  Minimizing capacitance in the design at the technological level

2.  Avoiding unnecessary switching activities at the logical and architectural level 

3. Reducing voltage and frequency at the system level

The power consumption depends on the functionality that

Microsoft TV – Bringing In Digital Experience 

- Parthan (mailto:parthan_srp@yahoo.com)

            Microsoft TV is a new technology that brings digital technology into Television, giving customers a digital experience and service. It is he prototype of IPTV-Internet Protocol TV, delivering next-generation TV services using existing broadband networks. To deliver this kind of digitalized service, a set-top box  with client software having a multimedia program guide and a virtual picture-in-picture functionality with standard definition  TV video in addition to instant channel-changing, high-definition television, digital video, recording and video-on-demand functionality, is used.

IPTV System

• Content & Services – contents vary from video programs, interactive applications, and news to online games.

EDITORIAL TEAM:

• Aparna Murali
• Amit Mohan Easow
• Rajamohan N.
• Parthan S. R.
• Prabhu Britto Albert
• G. Sreekar
• Tittu Matthew Abraham
• Dr.Krishna V.Prasad
• T.S.Rangarajan
  
  

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