IEEE COMMUNICATIONS SOCIETY
Signal Processing and Communications Electronics Technical Committee (SPCE)
Minutes of Technical Committee Meeting at ICC, Shanghai, 2019

May 23, 2019

1. Introductions – The TC meeting was started at 12:00 PM. The SPCE Chair Dr. Xianbin Wang introduced the agenda of the meeting and welcomed all SPCE members to the meeting. Attendees introduced themselves. The Charter of the TC and current officers were introduced as well.
2. Minutes of GC 2018 – The draft minutes of Globecom 2018 SPCE TC meeting were shown and the Chair checked with the audience if there were any corrections. There were no requests for modification or other comments and the minutes were then approved to be posted on the SPCE web site.
3. Technical Program Committee Reports

• SPC Symposium – ICC 2019: Co-chairs for the symposium include Jingxian Wu (University of Arkansas, USA), Yongming Huang (Southeast University, China) and Yi Ma (University of Surrey, UK). Jingxian Wu was recommended by SPCE. The number of submissions was 169, the number of TPC members was 310, and the number of accepted papers is 65, with an acceptance rate of 38.5%. There will be 8 oral sessions and 2 interactive sessions.
• WCS Symposium – ICC 2019: Co-chairs for the symposium include Feifei Gao (Tsinghua University, China), Xu (Judy) Zhu (University of Liverpool, UK), Harpreet Dhillon (Virginia Tech, USA), Julian Cheng (University of British Columbia, Canada), and Andreas Knopp (Universität der Bundeswehr München). Feifei Gao was recommended by SPCE. The number of submissions was 428, the number of TPC members was 636, and the number of accepted papers is 170, with an acceptance rate of 39.7%. There will be 27 oral sessions and 4 interactive sessions.
• SPC Symposium – GLOBECOM 2019: Co-chairs for the symposium include Ana Garcia Armada (Carlos III University, Spain), Haijun Zhang (University of Science and Technology, China), and Abdelhamid Mellouk (University of Paris-Est Créteil, France). Ana Garcia Armada and Haijun Zhang were recommended by SPCE. The number of submissions was 172 and the number of TPC members was 169.
• SPC Symposium – ICC 2020: Co-chairs for the symposium include Tomoaki Ohtsuki (Keio University, Japan), Xiaoming Tao (Tsinghua University, China) and Santiago Mazuelas (BCAM, Spain). Tomoaki Ohtsuki was recommended by SPCE.
• WCS Symposium – ICC 2020: Co-chairs for the symposium include Simon Pun (Chinese University of Hong Kong, China), Xiangyun (Sean) Zhou, (Australian National University, Australia), Changchuan Yin (Beijing University of Posts and Telecom., China), Yuan Shen (Tsinghua University, China) and Paulo Cardieri (Unicamp, Brazil). Xiangyun (Sean) Zhou was recommended by SPCE.

4. Other Endorsed Conferences by SPCE

Tenth International Conference on Wireless Communications and Signal Processing (WCSP 2019) (Hangzhou, China, October 2019). http://www.ic-wcsp.org SPCE representatives:

• Hai Lin
• Lajos Hanzo
• Jinhong Yuan

IEEE International Conference on Wireless for Space and Extreme Environments (WiSEE 2019) (Ottawa, Canada, October 2019). http://sites.ieee.org/wisee-2019/ SPCE representatives:

• Marco Chiani, University of Bologna, Italy
• Rui Dinis, University Nova de Lisboa, Portugal
• Xu Zhu, University of Liverpool, UK
• Yik-Chung Wu, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

13th International Conference on Signal Processing and Communication Systems (ICSPCS 2019 (December 16-18, Surfers Paradise, Australia). https://www.dspcs-witsp.com/icspcs_2019/index.html SPCE representatives:

• Octavia Dobre
• Takahiko Saba
• Tadeusz Wysocki

5. Special Interest Group (SIG) Activity Report – The following SIGs have been organized recently:

• SIG on Signal Processing Techniques in 5G Communication Systems. Chairs include Chau Yuen, SUTD, Singapore; Woon Hau Chin, Toshiba Research Lab, UK; Yan Zhang, Simula Research Lab, Norway; Linglong Dai, Tsinghua University, China and Shiwen Mao, Auburn University, USA. Recent activity of the SIG includes:

Published

• IEEE JSAC, Special Issue on mmWave, June and July of 2017
• IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, Special Issue on Video over Future Networks: Emerging Technologies, Infrastructures, and Applications, Oct. 2017.
• IEEE Access, Special Issue on Cooperative and Intelligent Sensing, Jan 2018.
• IEEE Access, Special Issue on The Internet of Energy: Architectures, Cyber Security, and Applications
• IEEE Access, Special Issue on Deployment and Management of Small Heterogeneous Cells for 5G.
• IEEE Wireless Communications, Special Issue on Wireless Big Data: Technologies and Applications, Feb 2018.
• IEEE Wireless Communications, Special Issue on NOMA, April and May, 2018.
• IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing, Special Issue on hybrid analog-digital signal processing for hardware-efficient large scale antenna arrays, May and June, 2018.

To appear

• IEEE Access, Special Section on Network Resource Management in Flying Ad Hoc Net-works: Challenges, Potentials, Future Applications, and Wayforward, to appear.
• IEEE Access, Special Section on Urban computing and intelligence, to appear.
• Springer Neural Computing and Applications Journal, Special Issue on Multi-access Edge Computing Enabled Internet of Intelligences, to appear.
• IEEE/CIC China Communications Journal, Special Issue on Quality of Experience for multimedia communications, to appear.

Submission closed

• Elsevier Future Generation Computer Systems, Special Issue on “Computation Intelligence for Energy Internet,“ submission closed.
• IEEE Vehicular Technology Magazine, Special Issue on “Mobile Edge Computing for Vehicular Networks,” submission closed.
• IEEE Network Magazine, Special Issue on “AI for Network Traffic Control,“ submission closed.
• IEEE Communications Magazine, Special Issue on “Multi-Access Mobile Edge Computing for Heterogeneous IoT,“ submission closed.
• IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, Special Issue on “Blockchain for Industrial Internet of Things”, submission closed.
• IEEE Access, Special Issue on “Emerging technologies on vehicle to everything (V2X)“, submission closed.

Ongoing

• IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, special issue on “Security and Privacy in Industry 4.0” (deadline: 30 June, 2019)
• IEEE Network Magazine, special issue on “Blockchain and AI for Beyond 5G Networks” (deadline: 30 November, 2019)
• IEEE JSAC, special issue on “Wireless Networks Empowered by Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces” (tentative deadline: 15 December, 2019) – CFP soon

Other activities

• IEEE VTS and Comsoc Joint Workshop on 6G (Apr 2019)
• IEEE Asia Pacific Wireless Communications Symposium 2019 (Aug 2019)
• SIG on Signal Processing Techniques for Big Data in Wireless Networks. Chair: Jingxian Wu, University of Arkansas; Vice Chair: Huaiyu Dai, North Carolina State University. Proposed activity plan includes Journal special issues: JSAC, IEEE Access, EURASIP WIN; Conference workshops and special sessions: Globecom, ICC, WCNC, GlobeSIP. Recent activity of the SIG includes:

Technical scope of SIG includes:

• Low-dimensional and sparse signal representations in wireless systems
• Signal processing based on graphic models
• Advanced interference coordination techniques with cloud computing
• Distributed optimization algorithms over wireless networks
• Resource management (energy, storage, bandwidth, complexity, etc.)
• High-dimensional statistical learning for wireless signals
• Scalable and decentralized optimizations in ad hoc networks
• Randomized algorithms
• Bad data detection/Intrusion detection in sensor networks
• Security and privacy in big data
• Fundamental limits: convergence, consistency, robustness, and performance guarantees

6. ComSoc student competition

• SPCE Representative: Prof. Sinem Coleri Ergen, Koc University, Turkey

Goal is to recognize students who demonstrate the capacity to improve the lives of people through the application of communication technology. A team led by a Student Member or Graduate Student Member of IEEE Communications Society is eligible. A number of 33 applications were reviewed by 45 reviewers.

In Phase I a ranking of applications is done based on evaluations considering five different aspects, namely social impact, technical content, originality, practical applicability, and quality of presentation. In Phase II voting of the best 2 projects among the top 8 projects. The results wre as follows:

• First Prize: Passenger Flows: Crowd Mobility Analytics with Edge Computing in Public Transport, Bitterschulte Kai, TU Dortmund University, Germany.
• Second Prize: iDriveSense: Towards Efficient Road Information Services, El-Wakeer Amr, Queen’s University, Canada
• Honorary mention certificates to the remaining 6 projects selected for Phase II and 2 additional projects

7. SPCE IEEE Standard Activities

• SPCE Representative: Dr. George C. Alexandropoulos, University of Athens, Greece

3GPP

• Radio Access Networks (RAN): Next meeting information and previous meeting reports and documents are available here. List of Tdocs
• Services & Systems Aspects (SA): Next meeting information and previous meeting reports and documents are available here. List of Tdocs
• Core Network & Terminals (CT): Next meeting information and previous meeting reports and documents are available here. List of Tdocs
• 3GPP Keywords and Acronyms
• 3GPP Latest Release: Release 15
• ETSI 5G NR detailed description

IEEE Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality Working Group

• IEEE P2048.1™ – Device Taxonomy and Definitions and more…

IEEE DySPAN Standards Committee

• IEEE 1900.7 Working Group and more…

IEEE 802 Standard

• IEEE 802.11 Working Group and more…

IEEE 1906.1-2015 – Recommended practice for nanoscale and molecular communication framework

8. SPCE TC Newsletter

• Editor: Prof. Xiangwei Zhou.
• Goal: to share important information for the members of the committee; to have some brief contact approximately every six months; to become a useful communication tool; it will be brief and at the same time open for everybody to contribute.
• The 5th issue of the newsletter has been published in May 2019, it is available at http://spce.committees.comsoc.org/files/2019/05/SPCE-Newsletter-Issue-5.pdf

9. Distinguished Lecture (DL) Program

The SPCE TC can nominate a maximum of 4 members. For 2018-2020, the SPCE successful nominees were:

• Marco Di Renzo, CNRS (CentraleSupelec – Univ Paris-Sud, France).
•  George Karagiannidis (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece).

10. SPCE Awards

SPCE gives the following two annual awards:

• SPCE Technical Recognition Award
• SPCE Outstanding Service Award

11. Presentation of End-of-Term Certificate

The end-of-term certificate was presented to Professor Octavia Dobre For outstanding service as the chair of SPCE during Jan. 2017- Dec. 2018, thanking her for her dedication and outstanding work to the SPCE TC.

12. Discussions

Ideas to make the SPCE TC more successful were discussed. Also, information was provided about SPCE recertification. SPCE TC Officers have been notified that the SPCE TC will be recertified in 2019. A detailed questionnaire will be answered and sent to ComSoc Recertification Committee for evaluation and feedback.

IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc) has required all technical committee members to provide TC member information. As a subscriber of the Signal Processing & Communications Electronics (SPCE) technical committee mailing list, members are requested to fill in the technical committee member information below.

https://www.comsoc.org/form/comsoc-technical-committee-member

13. Other Business

Next SPCE meeting will be held during Globecom 2019 in Hawaii, USA.

14. Adjourn –The meeting was adjourned at 14:30 PM. There were 36 people in attendance.

15. Attendance List