1998-99 was a successful year for the Technical Committee on Analog Signal Processing (TC-ASP), with involvement in numerous conferences, workshops, short courses and special issues. The committee membership list currently stands at just over 30 members; this number is slightly down on recent years because the membership list has been updated to remove those names who have missed three consecutive meetings. The current committee members are renowned experts in the analog signal processing field, who are both committed to, and active within, the ASP field.
Alison Payne (Imperial College, London, UK) took over from Terri Fiez as Chairman for 1999, with Ramesh Harjani (University of Minnesota, USA) as Chairman Elect.
ISCAS is one of the major international conferences for the CAS-ASP community, and thus nearly all members of the TC-ASP are involved in the organisation or reviewing process.
Around 25-30% of the papers submitted to ISCAS 99 were in the analog signal processing field. The high percentage of analog papers within ISCAS shows that the profile of ASP is currently high within the CAS society. The reviewing of papers in this track was co-ordinated by TC-ASP members Gordon Roberts and Chris Toumazou. The papers were divided into sub-topics (amplifiers, filters etc.) which were then allocated to other TC-ASP members, who in turn selected three reviewers in each case. Nearly all the TC-ASP members were involved in the actual review process. This system seems to work well and is seen as one of the roles of the ASP committee. The acceptance rate within the analog track was around 60%; this is very close to the overall acceptance rate, and the acceptance rate within most other tracks. Between 25-30% of the sessions at ISCAS are related to the ASP field.
The Special Sessions chair for ISCAS 99 was TC-ASP member Phil Allen. Plenary Sessions/Guest Speakers chair was TC-ASP member John Choma.
Two special sessions at ISCAS were directly organised by TC-ASP members:
Around 12 sessions at ISCAS 99 were chaired by TC-ASP members.
Tutorial short courses at ISCAS 99 organised by members of the TC-ASP:
The ASP technical committee members have been actively involved in the organisation of various other IEEE sponsored and co-sponsored conferences, including:
June 1998 saw the first IEEE-CAS Workshop on Wireless Communication Circuits and Systems, co-organised by TC-ASP member Markus Helfenstein, and held in Lucerne, Switzerland. The workshop combined presentations by invited experts in the field from academia and industry as well as panel and informal discussions. The workshop was a great success, with registration of over 130 participants from 19 countries, and the material from this workshop is currently being edited into a book (entitled ‘Wireless Communication Circuits and Systems’, Kluwer). The success of this workshop has meant that the 2nd IEEE-CAS Workshop ‘Emerging Technologies in Circuits and Systems’ has been organised in conjunction with the Communications Society; the CAS-COM Workshop on High-Speed Data over Local Loops and Cables will be held in New Jersey, USA in June 1999.
November 1998 saw the debut of the IEEE CAS Advanced Continuing Education (ACE) initiative, held in Bangkok, Thailand. The ACE courses were originally conceived by TC-ASP member Chris Toumazou. Local arrangements were co-ordinated by TC-ASP member Jitkasame (‘Rang’) Ngarmnil. The short courses were presented by experts in the field from industry and academia, and proved very successful with over 150 attendees. It is hoped that these ACE courses will become a regular fixture in Thailand, particularly to provide local continuing education courses to IEEE members (and non-members) in Asia. Planning for the next series of courses is currently underway.
TC-ASP members were also involved as ACE short course presenters:
Members of the TC-ASP have been active this year in promoting ASP activities through the organisation of special issues of IEEE journals. Some of these special issues have been organised in conjunction with other CAS technical committees, to promote the collaboration and cross-fertilisation of ideas between TCs. These special issues include:
The main activities for the ASP technical committee are seen to be:
The ASP technical committee plans to continue focusing on these activities. In order to enable the committee members to work together more effectively, we are currently creating a new TC-ASP homepage with an updated database of members’ details and technical interests. This will also contain links to other IEEE activities relevant to the field of analog signal processing. We hope to have this homepage located on the CAS server so that it can be easily updated as the committee chair changes from year to year. In addition we aim to create an email list to which any IEEE CAS members interested in analog signal processing can subscribe. This will provide a simple and effective means of providing information about workshops, conferences, journals etc. which may be of interest to the analog signal processing community.