IEEE COMMUNICATIONS SOCIETY
Signal Processing and Communications Electronics Technical Committee (SPCE)
Minutes of Technical Committee Meeting at GLOBECOM, Abu-Dhabi, 2018

Dec. 9, 2018

1. Introductions – The TC meeting was started at 12:30 PM. The SPCE Vice-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 ICC 2018 – The draft minutes of ICC 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 – GLOBECOM 2018: Co-chairs for the symposium include Caijun Zhong (Zhejiang University, China), Ali Grayeb (TAMU, Qatar), and Arafat Al-Dweik (Kalifa University, UAE). Caijun Zhong was recommended by SPCE. The number of submissions was 162, the number of TPC members was 163, and the number of accepted papers is 62, with an acceptance rate of 38.3%. There will be 10 oral sessions and 3 interactive sessions.
• 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 168 and the number of TPC members was 310.
• 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.
• 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.

4. Other Endorsed Conferences by SPCE

• ICSPCS 2018 (Cairns, Australia, December 2018), SPCE members involved: Octavia Dobre, Jinhong Yuan, Takahiko Saba
• ICNC 2019 (Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, February 2019), SPCE members involved: Stefano Basagni, Ebrahim Bedeer, Hsiao-Chun Wu
• WiSEE 2019 (Ottawa, Canada, October 2019), SPCE members involved: Marco Chiani, Rui Dinis, Xu Zhu, Yik-Chung Wu

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.
  • Published: A number of special issues have been developed, including IEEE JSAC, special issue on mmWave;  IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, Special Issue on Video over Future Networks: Emerging Technologies, Infrastructures, and Applications, to appear; IEEE Access Journal, Special Issue on Cooperative and Intelligent Sensing; IEEE Wireless Communications Magazine, Special Issue on Wireless Big Data: Technologies and Applications; IEEE Access, Special Issue on Deployment and Management of Small Heterogeneous Cells for 5G; IEEE Wireless Communications, special issue on NOMA; IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing, Special Issue on hybrid analog-digital signal processing for hardware-efficient large scale antenna arrays.
  • To appear: IEEE Access Journal, Special Section on Network Resource Management in Flying Ad Hoc Net-works: Challenges, Potentials, Future Applications, and Wayforward; Springer Neural Computing and Applications Journal, Special Issue on Multi-access Edge Computing Enabled Internet of Intelligences; IEEE/CIC China Communications Journal, Special Issue on Quality of Experience for multimedia communications.
  • Submission closed: Elsevier Future Generation Computer Systems, Special Issue on “Computation Intelligence for Energy Internet”; IEEE Vehicular Technology Magazine, Special Issue on “Mobile Edge Computing for Vehicular Networks”; IEEE Network Magazine, Special Issue on “AI for Network Traffic Control”; IEEE Communications Magazine, Special Issue on “Multi-Access Mobile Edge Computing for Heterogeneous IoT”.
  • Ongoing:  IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, Special Issue on “Blockchain for Industrial Internet of Things”; IEEE Access, Special Issue on “Emerging technologies on vehicle to everything (V2X)”.

• 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 include:
  • 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
• The goal of the ComSoc Student Competition is to recognize students who demonstrate the capacity to improve the lives of people through the application of communication technology. The eligibility is: a team led by a student member or graduate student member of IEEE communications society.
• There were 33 eligible applications and there were 45 reviewers.
• First Prize: Bitterschulte Kai (TU Dortmund University, Germany, Passenger Flows: Crowd Mobility Analytics with Edge Computing in Public Transport); Second Prize: El-Wakeer Amr (Queen’s University, Canada, iDriveSense: Towards Efficient Road Information Services); Honorary mention certificates were awarded to the remaining 6 projects selected for Phase II of the review process and 2 additional projects.

     7. SPCE IEEE Standard Activities

• SPCE Representative: Dr. George C. Alexandropoulos, Huawei Technologies France
• 3GPP: Next meeting information, previous meeting reports, and documents are provided for Radio Access Networks (RAN), Services and Systems Aspects (SA), and Core Networks and Terminals (CT).
• The details about IEEE Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality Working Group is provided, which include
  IEEE P2048.1™ – Device Taxonomy and Definitions, IEEE P2048.2™ – Immersive Video Taxonomy and Quality Metrics, IEEE P2048.3™ – Immersive Video File and Stream Formats, IEEE P2048.4™ – Person Identity, IEEE P2048.5™ – Environment Safety, IEEE P2048.6™ – Immersive User Interface, IEEE P2048.7™ – Map for Virtual Objects in the Real World, IEEE P2048.8™ – Interoperability between Virtual Objects and the Real World, IEEE P2048.9™ – Immersive Audio Taxonomy and Quality Metrics User Interface.

     8. SPCE TC Newsletter

• Editor: Prof. Ana Garcia Armada.
• 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 4th issue of the newsletter has been published in Nov. 2018, it is available at http://spce.committees.comsoc.org/files/2018/11/SPCE-Newsletter-Issue-4-v2.pdf 

     9. Distinguished Lecture (DL) Program

• The SPCE TC can nominate a maximum of 4 members. For 2018-2020, the SPCE nominee is George Karagiannidis (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece).

     10. Awards

• The IEEE SPCE Technical Recognition Award was given to Professor George Karagiannidis (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece) for outstanding contribution to the area of signal processing for communications.
• The IEEE SPCE Outstanding Service Award was given to Prof. Xianbin Wang (Western University, Canada)
  for continuous and outstanding contribution to the technical activities sponsored and endorsed by the SPCE technical committee.

11. SPCE Election

• Election of new SPCE officers has been held at this TC meeting. The newly elected officers are
  Chair: Xianbin Wang
  Vice Chair: Jingxian Wu
  Secretary: Ana Garcia Armada

     12. Other Business

• Next SPCE meeting will be held during ICC 2019 in Shanghai, China.

     13. Adjourn – Dr. Octavia Dobra thanked SPCE members for the support in the past years. The meeting was adjourned at 1:45 PM. There were 44 people in attendance.

    14. Attendance List