IEEE Signal Processing Magazine

The title of this editorial is borrowed from a popular children’s lullaby from the 1800s, which reads “Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are!” It reminds me of the vast expanse of unexplored space (and science) that lie before us. 

There have been three key revolutions in the way that research has become accessible: publishing, code, and data. The second and third revolutions are still taking place, particularly driven by the rise of machine-learning and artificial intelligence research in the last decade. When I started my research career in 1995, the World Wide Web was still in its infancy. 

The Signal Processing for Communications and Networking Technical Committee (SPCOM-TC) is one of the 12 technical committees (TCs) in the IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS). Our mandate covers all technical areas in communication engineering and network science, including:

The knowledge of spatial distributions of physical quantities, such as radio-frequency (RF) interference, pollution, geomagnetic field magnitude, temperature, humidity, audio, and light intensity, will foster the development of new context-aware applications. For example, knowing the distribution of RF interference might significantly improve cognitive radio systems [1], [2].

Backscatter presents an emerging ultralow-power wireless communication paradigm. The ability to offer submilliwatt power consumption makes it a competitive core technology for Internet of Things (IoT) applications. In this article, we provide a tutorial of backscatter communication from the signal processing perspective as well as a survey of the recent research activities in this domain, primarily focusing on bistatic backscatter systems.

After decades of advances in signal processing, this article goes back to square one, when the word signal was defined. Here we investigate if everything is all right with this stepping stone of defining a signal.

The IEEE Signal Processing Society Sensor Array and Multichannel Technical Committee (SAM TC) promotes activities within the technical areas of sensor array processing and multichannel statistical signal processing, including:

Advances in engineering and health science have brought a significant improvement in health care and increased life expectancy. As a result, there has been a substantial growth in the number of older adults around the globe, and that number is rising. According to a United Nations report, between 2015 and 2030, the number of adults over the age of 60 is projected to grow by 56%, with the total reaching nearly 2.1 billion by the year 2050 [1].

The Internet of Things (IoT ) refers to the wireless connection of ordinary objects, such as vehicles, cash machines, door locks, cameras, industrial controls, and municipal traffic systems, to the Internet. Research firm BI Intelligence predicts that 22.5 billion devices will be connected to the IoT in 2021, compared to 6.6 billion in 2016.