Empowering the Growth of Signal Processing: The evolution of the IEEE Signal Processing Society

Signal processing (SP) is a “hidden” technology that has transformed the digital world and changed our lives in so many ways. The field of digital SP (DSP) took off in the mid-1960s, aided by the integrated circuit and increasing availability of digital computers. Since then, the field of DSP has grown tremendously and fueled groundbreaking advances in technology across a wide range of fields with profound impact on society. The IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS) is the world’s premier professional society for SP scientists and professionals. Through its high-quality publications, conferences, and technical and educational activities, the SPS has played a pivotal role in advancing the theory and applications of SP. It has been instrumental in promoting cross-disciplinary collaboration and knowledge sharing among researchers, practitioners, and students in the field. This article highlights the SP advances between 1998 and mid-2023 and the evolution of the SPS to empower the growth of SP.

Introduction

Without hyperbole, SP is behind much of the digital world we live in today. The field of DSP took off in the mid-1960s, aided by the integrated circuit of Kilby and Noyce in the 1950s, the microprocessors of Texas Instruments and Intel in the 1960s, and the increasing availability of digital computers. A big push into the field can be attributed to the fast Fourier transform (FFT), by James Cooley and John Tukey, which reduced from O(N2) to O(N log N) the computation time of the FT. This allowed many SP algorithms that were already available to be implementable in close to real time. Around the same time, the first book on DSP, by Ben Gold and Charles Rader, appeared [1]. Since then, the field of DSP has grown tremendously and fueled groundbreaking advances in technology across many fields with profound impact on society. For example, DSP has revolutionized the way we create, store, and transmit audio and video content.