For our August 2018 issue, we cover recent patents granted in the area of Lidar based scene analysis. Patent no. 10,031,231 presents an object-detection system suitable for an automated vehicle which includes a lidar and a controller. The lidar is used to detect a point-cloud that is organized into a plurality of scan-lines. 

Biometrics and multimedia forensics technologies are rapidly becoming an integral part of forensics sciences. This is evident by the increasing number of security applications such as computer and physical access control, digital rights management, homeland security, surveillance, and defence. 

Critical infrastructures such as the smart electric power grid, gas and water utility networks, transportation networks, and communication networks are crucially supporting quality of life and economic growth. Future critical infrastructures are envisioned to integrate sensory data acquisition, communication and computation technologies, and signal processing to offer improved services to their end-users.

The Signal Processing Society (SPS) has 12 Technical Committees and 3 Special Interest Groups (SIGs) that support a broad selection of signal processing-related activities defined by the scope of the Society.

We’re excited to announce that beginning in the 2019 membership year, IEEE students and graduate student members will be able to join the IEEE Signal Processing Society for just one dollar!

The IEEE annual election began on 15 August and ends on 1 October at 1 p.m. EDT USA/17:00 UTC.  The IEEE Signal Processing Society is committed to ensuring that its members are prepared with sufficient information about the candidates in order to make their best informed decisions. Vote now.

The IEEE Signal Processing Society continues to track emerging technical areas. As a result, the Society has decided to create two new SPS Technical Interest Profile (TIP) Code categories in the fields of Data Science and Autonomous Systems to keep pace with the expanding technical disciplines.

In 1882, a banker in Sacramento, Calif., named Frank Miller developed an absolutely unbreakable encryption method. Nearly 140 years later, cryptographers have yet to come up with something better.