In his January 2012 column for IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, K. J. Ray Liu, then president of the IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS), highlighted the importance of establishing a formal community when individuals come together to create a professional society [1]. He emphasized that the Society’s primary mission, its raison d’être, is to serve its community, and the key to achieving this mission is to serve its members effectively.

As we enter the new year, I would like to take a moment to reflect on our achievements from the past year and celebrate our successes. I am naming this “President’s Message” column the “State of the Society,” which will serve as a platform to share updates about our Society, including our activities, successes, and challenges.

After nearly a century of specialized applications in optics, remote sensing, and acoustics, the near-field (NF) electromagnetic (EM) propagation zone is experiencing a resurgence in research interest. This renewed attention is fueled by the emergence of promising applications in various fields, such as wireless communications, holography, medical imaging, and quantum-inspired systems. 

One year has passed since I began my term as the editor-in-chief (EiC) of IEEE Signal Processing Magazine (SPM). It has been a busy first year, with a rich set of challenges that go beyond those I have experienced in previous volunteer positions. This is welcome: with giving back to our community comes the desire to grow through new challenges and experiences, especially for those of us approaching our wiser years.

As wireless technology begins to utilize physically larger arrays and/or higher frequencies, the transmitter and receiver will reside in each other’s radiative near field. This fact gives rise to unusual propagation phenomena, such as spherical wavefronts and beam focusing, creating the impression that new spatial dimensions—called degrees of freedom (DOF)—can be exploited in the near field.