News from the Signal Processing for Communications and Networking (SPCOM)-TC

Contributed by Chandra Murthy (Chair, SPCOM newsletter subcommittee)

The Signal Processing for Communications and Networking Technical Committee (SPCOM TC) promotes activities that address signal processing challenges in communications and networking. These activities form a liaison between the IEEE Signal Processing (SPS), Communications (COMSOC), and Information Theory (IT) Societies.

The main workshop of the SPCOM TC is the IEEE International Workshop on Signal Processing Advances in Wireless Communications (SPAWC). The 16th edition of SPAWC was held in Stockholm, Sweden, in June 2015 (http://www.spawc2015.org). The KTH Royal Institute of Technology at Stockholm provided the venue for unraveling some of the latest scientific results on wireless communication systems and networks. The technical program, featuring a balance between contributed and invited poster sessions as well as plenary presentations by Sara Mazur, Wolfgang Utschick, Neal Patwari, Daniel Bliss and Klaus Doppler, and tutorials by Robert Heath Jr., Erik G. Larsson, Emil Bjornson, Dirk Slock and Petros Elia, was hosted in KTH's historical main buildings. Keeping with the tradition of the previous SPAWCs, the social program featured a welcome reception at the Stockholm City Hall and a workshop banquet at the beautiful Vasa Museum, home of the 17th century Swedish warship Vasa.

It is our pleasure to announce that the 17th edition of SPAWC will be held in Edinburgh, UK, from the 3^rd to the 6^th July 2016. We encourage you to add this event to your conference calendar. The deadline for paper submissions is Feb. 22, 2016.

We are also happy to share the good news that our TC's nomination of Rui Zhang and Chin Keong Ho for the IEEE Marconi Prize Paper Award for 2015 was successful (http://www.comsoc.org/about/memberprograms/comsoc-awards/marconi). Moeness Amin, a past TC member, was selected for the SPS Technical Achievement Award. Last, but not least, we would like to congratulate the current and former SPCOM TC members that were elevated to IEEE Fellow this year, namely Biao Chen and David Love.

During Fall 2014, the SPCOM TC elected three new members, who started their terms in January 2015. We warmly welcome to Yindi Jing, Wing-Kin (Ken) Ma, and Alejandro Ribeiro. In addition, Urbashi Mitra and Rui Zhang were re-elected to serve a second term, and Erik G. Larsson took over from Tim Davidson as the Chair of the SPCOM TC. We thank retiring members Shuguang (Robert) Cui, Aldo Scutari and Dirk Slock for their valuable contributions during their terms. We would like to offer a special vote of thanks to Tim Davidson for his exemplary service and leadership as Chair of the TC.

The SPCOM TC is currently seeking nominations of technically strong members of the Society who have a broad perspective on the interactions between signal processing and communication systems and networks for its annual election. This year there will be 8 open positions. The details of the nomination process can be found on the TC’s web site (http://www.signalprocessingsociety.org/technical-committees/list/spcom-tc/committee-members-2/nominate-member/)

The SPCOM TC maintains a job opportunities (http://www.signalprocessingsociety.org/technical-committees/list/spcom-tc/SPCOM-TC-Job-Opportunities) website. We invite you to consider posting any job openings or post-doc positions that your organization may have. For this and other information, please visit the SPCOM TC webpage (http://www.signalprocessingsociety.org/technical-committees/list/spcom-tc).