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3. Publication News


Signal Processing Letters Chartering a New Course

The IEEE Signal Processing Letters (SPL) is currently undergoing significant innovation. To better serve our membership and to better reflect the rapid publication nature of Letters, SPL has become an electronic only monthly publication available to all members of the Society since January 2008. As an archival journal delivered electronically, SPL's primary goal is to provide rapid publication of highly original, significant contributions and timely cutting-edge ideas in all areas within the field of interest of the IEEE Signal Processing Society. The SPL's rapid ascend in the Electrical and Electronic Engineering “citations and impact ranking list” suggests a growing number of submissions, increased publication standard, and an attractive opportunity for contributors to disseminate their new ideas and research results possibly well beyond the reach of specialty journals.  Read more about the SPL new initiatives through this in-depth report.
 

Signal Processing Magazine Deadlines:  http://www.ieee-spm.org/?i=cfp 

Special Issue Deadlines of SPS Publications

Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing (website)

• MIMO Radar and its Applications - Deadline: 20 January 2009
• Compressive Sensing - Deadline: 20 February 2009

IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing (website)

• Signal Models and Representations of Musical and Environmental Sounds - Deadline: 15 December 2008
• Voice Transformation - Deadline: 1 April 2009

Recent Issues of SPS Sponsored and Co-sponsored Publications

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4. TC News

Design and Implementation of Signal Processing (DISPS) Technical Committee

The Design and Implementation of Signal Processing Systems (DISPS) Technical Committee promotes and supports activities of the IEEE Signal Processing Society in the areas of design, development, and implementation of signal processing systems; design of algorithms with implementation in mind; and design of software tools and methodologies to support the design of signal processing systems.

The scope of the TC has evolved over the years, largely because pure application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) are rapidly diminishing in their overall contribution to the IC market, and system-on-chip (SoC) devices are increasing even more rapidly. Learn more about the areas of interests and recent activities of the TC through this exclusive in-depth report.
 

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Do you know?  IEEE SPS provides travel support for local chapters to invite SPS Distinguished Lecturers.  See a list of SPS 2007 and 2008 Distinguished Lecturers, and check each issue of the E-News for upcoming SPS Distinguished Lectures near you.  

If you are interested in organizing a new SPS chapter, or participating in activities in a SPS local chapter near you, please check out Local Chapter Resources. Additional questions and comments can be addressed to the SPS Chapters Committee.
 

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6. New Initiatives and Trends

Signal Processing for Cognitive Assistive Technologies in Smart Home

Technological supports for people with disabilities are usually referred to as assistive technology. Although there has been significant work in developing technologies to support people with mobility and sensory disabilities, developing assistive tools for people with cognitive disabilities has not been as widespread. Cognitive disabilities, which can begin at any age and are affecting over 22 million people in U.S., is a substantial limitation in one's capacity to think, including conceptualizing, planning, sequencing thoughts and actions, remembering, interpreting subtle social cues, and manipulating numbers and symbols.

The Exploratory DSP column in the September 2008 issue of the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine features an article on cognitive assistive technologies by M.R. Lightner and D. Erdogmus.  Learn more from this article about smart home technologies and signal processing challenges to assist people with cognitive disabilities.

DVB-H Mobile Broadcast Standard

The digital video broadcasting-handheld (DVB-H) standard is one of the latest transmission standards developed by the digital video broadcasting (DVB) Project. DVB-H is based on the standard for digital terrestrial television (DVB-T) and offers mobile television and other broadcasting services on small portable devices such as mobile phones. The Standards in a Nutshell article by M. Kornfeld and K. Daoud in the July 2008 issue of the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine presents an overview of the DVB-H standard with respect to structure, features, technology, performance, and resources.

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Interested in Network Multicast with Network Coding?  Learn basic ideas, concepts, and power of network coding from the Lecture Notes by E. Soljanin in the September 2008 issue of the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine.

Do you know? The Best of the Web column in the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine presents online resources of interest to signal processing professionals.

• "TeachWare: Audio Resources" by D. Ellis and Y.E. Kim (May 2008)

• "EvalWare: Virtual Reality and Visualization Resources" by W. Jarosz, M. Zwicker, and J. Schulze (July 2008)
   

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Karim G. Seddik (University of Maryland, College Park, USA):
"Diversity in Cooperative Networks: How to Achieve and Where to Exploit?" April 2008.
Advised by Prof. K.J. Ray Liu.

Recently, there has been much interest in modulation techniques to achieve transmit diversity motivated by the increased capacity of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channels. It is affordable to equip base stations with more than one antenna, but it is difficult to equip small mobile units with more than one antenna. In such a case, transmit diversity can only be achieved through user cooperation leading to what is known as cooperative diversity. Cooperation provides a new dimension over which higher diversity orders can be achieved. This thesis considers the design of protocols that allow several terminals to cooperate via forwarding each other's data, which can increase the system reliability by achieving spatial cooperative diversity. We focus on the problem of how to achieve and where to exploit diversity in cooperative networks.

Click here to access the thesis, or contact the author at <kseddik AT gmail.com> for more information.

Kuo-ching Liang (Columbia University, USA):
"Applications of Monte Carlo Signal Processing in Bioinformatics," August 2008.
Advised by Prof. Xiaodong Wang.

This thesis focuses on the application of Monte Carlo methods to solving problems in bioinformatics. More specifically, we want to be able to translate biological, genomic, and proteomic problems into mathematical problems by modeling them using discrete state-space hidden Markov models. Unknown parameters are modeled with prior distributions, and are estimated jointly with the unknown states. Depending on the type of problem, the model can also be formulated in a batched or sequential manner. We show that in most cases, even when the problem is batched in nature, the sequential approach provides better performance, and more efficient in terms of computational complexity. In this thesis, we present applications of this methodology to problems such as DNA sequence base-calling, discovery of motifs in DNA sequences, phasing of haplotypes for diploid organisms, and the prediction of secondary structure for proteins based on amino acid sequences.

Contact the author at <kcliang AT ee.columbia.edu> for more information about the thesis.

Interested in submitting or recommending a recent Ph.D. thesis?
Please prepare the following material and visit the web submission site to provide your input. Contact Associate Editor Prof. Alessandro Piva at <piva AT lci.det.unifi.it> if you have any questions.
(1) thesis author's information (full name, contact, current affiliation, URL if available), Ph.D. granting institution, thesis advisor's name and contact information;
(2) title, URL, and a short summary of the thesis (100-150 words); and
(3) an email from the thesis advisor to Associate Editor at <alessandro.piva AT unifi.it>, confirming that the author has already successfully defended the Ph.D. thesis and that a final version of the thesis has officially been submitted according to the Ph.D. degree requirements of the author's institution.

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Ultra Wideband Signals and Systems in Communication Engineering
by Mohammad Ghavami, Lachlan Michael, and Ryuji Kohno, Wiley, 2nd edition, 2007.

Description from the publisher: Ultra Wideband (UWB) is a hot new topic in wireless communication engineering today. High-speed communication over short distances using sub-nanosecond pulses, rather than conventional sinusoidal waves, has paved the way for cheap wireless transceivers, capturing the imagination of both academics and engineers in industry alike. Ultra Wideband Signals and Systems in Communication Engineering focuses on the basic signal processing that underlies current and future ultra wideband systems, ensuring this text will be essential reading even as UWB applications mature and change or regulations regarding ultra wideband systems are modified.

An in-depth review is available in the September 2008 issue of the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine. Visit the book's website for detailed Table of Contents and ordering information.

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Three-Year PhD Studentship on Variational Bayesian Filtering for Telecommunications
at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland

A PhD studentship is available in the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at Trinity College Dublin, commencing this autumn 2008. The project is at the heart of a collaboration with leading research institutes in Paris and Prague. The aim of the research is to develop new algorithms for Bayesian filtering using the variational Bayes approximation.

The successful applicant will be a national of any country and have a primary degree with a strong mathematical emphasis. Course credits in statistical signal processing, probability and telecommunications will be desirable, but not essential. The candidate will ideally be available to begin their studies in October 2008, and will spend one month each with collaborating partners in Paris and Prague, in 2009 and 2010 respectively. The studentship will be up to the value of EUR 17,000 per annum, and all university fees will be paid. A travel stipend for the collaborative visits (above) and for conference presentations will also be provided. Candidates should contact Dr. Anthony Quinn [aquinn AT tcd.ie]. The formal application is by way of a full CV, with the names of two referees, and the deadline is 25th September 2008. In addition to this PhD studentship, a post-doctoral research post of 18 months duration will be available from October 2009. Anyone interested is encouraged to contact Dr. Quinn at [aquinn AT tcd.ie].

Postdoctoral Researcher Positions on Video Event Detection and Retrieval
at Columbia University, USA

Columbia University Digital Video and Multimedia group is looking for a postdoc researcher to join projects on video event detection and retrieval. Candidates with strong analytic background and software prototyping skills are preferred. Experiences with video content analysis, video event detection, and machine learning are required. The DVMM Lab at Columbia University is dedicated to research of new systems, algorithms, and theories for multimedia content analysis, search, protection, and transmission. Current research activities focus on multimedia retrieval, semantic concept detection and search, image forensics, and emerging Internet media computing applications. Interested candidates may send research statement and resume to Prof. Shih-Fu Chang <sfchang AT ee.columbia.edu>.

Postdoctoral and Ph.D. Researcher Positions on Multi-sensor Signal Processing
at Darmstadt University of Technology, Germany

The Communication Systems Group at Darmstadt University of Technology (Germany) invites applications for Postdoctoral and Ph.D. researcher positions in the field of multi-sensor signal processing. The positions will be available from the beginning of 2009. The research will be supervised by Prof. Alex Gershman. We offer very competitive salaries and facilities that are among the best in the world. Candidates are expected to have a strong academic record, and should demonstrate their solid knowledge in math, statistics and probability theory, estimation and detection theory, and signal processing. Knowledge of communication and information theories will be an asset. Graduates from internationally well-known universities with top 5% records in their classes are particularly encouraged to apply. Candidates should send their full CV to Prof. Gershman at [gershman AT nt.tu-darmstadt.de]. More information about the Signal Processing Group at Darmstadt University of Technology can be found here.

Ph.D. Research Assistantship to Explore the Potential of DSP for Digital Terrain Elevation Data
at the Netherlands Defense Academy and Delft University of Technology

With today’s digital signal processing capabilities, it becomes possible to optimize the performance parameters of a navigation system for a particular set of intended applications. The Netherlands Defense Academy and the Delft University of Technology are providing an opportunity of a Ph.D. research assistantship to explore opportunities in the field of Terrain Reference Navigation (TRN) by using digital signal processing techniques that were originally developed for the acquisition and tracking of GPS signals. The goal of the research is to contribute to the creation of a design framework which can be used to match technology and processing concepts to a particular set of navigation system performance requirements. The focus lies on exploring the potential of various digital signal processing concepts for matching a set of distance measurements with a stored database of the environment.

The candidate should hold a Master’s degree in electrical engineering, computer science, applied mathematics or any other relevant study with substantial knowledge on data processing. Research will be conducted both at the Netherlands Defense Academy and at Delft University of Technology. Leaders of the project are established researchers in the field of applied mathematics, geomatics and electronics. Contact Prof. P.J. Oonincx, Netherlands Defense Academy, at [pj.oonincx AT nlda.nl]. More information about the Netherlands Defense Academy can be found here.

• Ph.D. Research Fellowship in Ocean Tomography at Technical University of Lisbon

• Ph.D. Research Assistantship in Statistical Signal Processing at Uppsala University, Sweden

• Research Associate in Systems and Control at Uppsala University, Sweden

Interested in advertising graduate scholarship, post-doc positions, or funding opportunities?
Please prepare a short text of the announcement (150-200 words) and visit the web submission site to enter your input. It is recommended to include the deadline or valid period of the announcement, and an URL for more information such as group/research description and detailed qualification expectation. Contact Associate Editor Prof. Alessandro Piva at <alessandro.piva AT unifi.it> if you have any questions. Note that advertisements on faculty and other full-time position are in the domain of IEEE job advertisement (http://careers.ieee.org/); the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine also provides opportunities for paid advertisement.

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