IEEE COMMUNICATIONS SOCIETY
Signal Processing and Computing for Communications Technical Committee (SPCC)
Minutes of Technical Committee Meeting at ICC 2021, held by videoconference

Jul. 13, 2021

1. Introductions – The TC meeting was started at 8:00 AM EST. The SPCC Chair Dr. Xianbin Wang introduced the agenda of the meeting and welcomed all SPCC members to the meeting. Instructions to maintain the meeting through the Zoom tool were provided.
2. Minutes of GLOBECOM 2020 – The minutes of GLOBECOM 2020 SPCC TC meeting were approved.
3. SPCC Scope, Objectives and Organization Structure – The Charter and objectives of the TC, structure and P&Ps were presented. Current and past officers were introduced as well.
4. Motion for Policies and Procedures (P&P) Update –A motion was presented by Jingxian Wu to update the P&Ps allowing voting for remote attendees to TC meetings when TC officers are elected. It was seconded and unanimously approved.
5. Technical Program Committee Reports

• SPC Symposium – ICC 2021: Co-chairs for the symposium include Shaodan Ma, George C. Alexandropoulos and Jing Yang. All were recommended by SPCC. The number of submissions was 98, the number of TPC members was 174 and the number of accepted papers was 39, with an acceptance rate of 39.9%. There were 7 sessions.
• SPC Symposium – GLOBECOM 2021: Co-chairs for the symposium include Zhijin Qin (Queen Mary University of London), who was recommended by SPCC. The number of submissions was 122 and the number of TPC members was 113.
• WC Symposium – GLOBECOM 2021: Co-chairs for the symposium include Cong Shen (University of Virginia), who was recommended by SPCC. The number of submission s was 264 and the number of TPC members was 241.

6. Other Endorsed Conferences by SPCC

• CommNet 2021, Virtual Conference, 3 5 December 2021, http://www.commnet-conf.org

SPCE representatives:

• George K. Karagiannidis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki , Greece
  • Mohamed Slim Alouini, KAUST, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
  • Faissal El Bouanani , Mohammed V University , Morocco
• ITU Keleidoscope 2021, Online, 6 10 December 2021, https://www.itu.int/en/ITU T/academia/kaleidoscope/2021/Pages/default.aspx

      SPCE representatives:

• Ana Garcia Armada, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain
  • George Alexandropoulos, National & Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece
  • Jingxian Wu, University of Arkansas, USA
• 2021 15th International Conference on Signal Processing and Communication Systems (ICSPCS), Online, 13 15 December 2021, https://dspcs-witsp.com/icspcs_2021

      SPCE representatives:

• Octavia Dobre, Memorial University, Canada
  • Lajos Hanzo, University of Southampton, UK
  • Nan Yang, The Australian National University, Australia
• 3rd International Conference on Advanced Communication Technologies and Networking (CommNet 2020),  (Marrakech, Morocco, September 2020), http://www.commnet-conf.org

      SPCE representatives:

• George K. Karagiannidis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
  • Mohamed-Slim Alouini, KAUST, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
  • Faissal El Bouanani, Mohammed V University, Morocco
• IEEE International Conference on Wireless for Space and Extreme Environments (WiSEE 2020), https://attend.ieee.org/wisee-2020

      SPCE representatives:

• Tarik Taleb, Aalto University, Finland
  • Telex M. N. Ngatched, Memorial University of Newfoundland
  • Xiangwei Zhou, Louisiana State University
  • Zhu Han, University of Houston
• 14th International Conference on Signal Processing and Communication Systems (ICSPCS 2020) (Adelaide, South Australia, December 2020), https://www.dspcs-witsp.com/icspcs_2020/index.html

      SPCE representatives:

• Octavia Dobre
  • Takahiko Saba
  • Tadeusz Wysocki
• International Conference on Computing, Networking and Communications (ICNC 2020)

      (Big Island, Hawaii, USA), http://www.conf-icnc.org/2020/

      SPCE representatives:

• Tomohiko Taniguchi
  • Cheng Li
  • Jingxian Wu
  • Feifei Gao

7. Update from IEEE GLOBECOM 2021

Ana García Armada (General Chair) and Rui Dinis (Technical Program Co-Chair) presented an update of the conference as it is being planned.

8. Special Interest Group (SIG) Activity Report

SIG Coordinator: Prof. Fang Fang, University of Durham, UK

The following SIGs reported their activity:

• 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:
• SIG on Signal Processing Techniques for Big Data and Wireless Edge Intelligence. Chair: Cong Shen, University of Virginia; Vice Chair: Jie Xu, University of Miami.
• SIG on REconFigurabLE Intelligent Surfaces for Signal Processing and CommunicatIONS (REFLECTIONS). Chairs include Chair: Alessio Zappone (University of Cassino and Southern Lazio); Vice Chair: Daniel B. da Costa (Federal University of Ceará); Vice Chair: Mark F. Flanagan (University College Dublin); Secretary: Alexios Aravanis (CentraleSupelec;) ETC/best readings liaison: Marco Di Renzo (CNRS & Paris-Saclay University).
• SIG on Signal Processing Techniques for Next Generation Multiple Access (NGMA). Chair: Cong Shen, University of Virginia; Vice Chair: Jie Xu, University of Miami. Chair: Yuanwei Liu, Queen Mary University of London, UK; Vice Chair: Zhiguo Ding, The University of Manchester, UK; Vice Chair: Octavia A. Dobre, Memorial University, Canada.
• New SIG on Orthogonal Time Frequency Space (OTFS). Chairs: Weijie Yuan, Southern University of Science and Technology, China; Emanuele Viterbo, Monash University, Australia;Ronny Hadani, Cohere Technologies, USA; Giulio Colavolpe, Parma University, Italy; Zhiqiang Wei, Friedrich-Alexander-University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany.

9. ComSoc student competition

SPCC Representative: Prof. Rui Dinis, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal

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. Application deadline is 15 August

10. SPCC IEEE Standard Activities

• SPCC Representative: Dr. Richie Leo, ZTE Corporation.

Updates about standards of 3GPP, ITU and ETSI were provided.

11. SPCC 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 ninth issue, May 2021, is available at:

https://spcc.committees.comsoc.org/files/2021/06/SPCC Newsletter Issue 9.pdf

12. Distinguished Lecture (DL) Program

The SPCC TC can nominate a maximum of 4 members. Recently selected members:

• Marco Di Renzo, CNRS – CentraleSupelec – Univ Paris-Sud, France
• George Karagiannidis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
• Octavia Dobre, Memorial University, Canada
• Arumugam Nallanathan, Queen Mary University, UK

13. SPCC Awards

The recipients of the SPCC awards 2020 are:

• SPCC Technical Recognition Award: Prof. Rui Zhang
• SPCC Outstanding Service Award: Prof. Xiangwei Zhou.
• SPCC Best Paper Award: Shuai Wang, Rui Wang, Qi Hao, Yik Chung Wu, and H. Vincent Poor, “Learning Centric Power Allocation for Edge Intelligence,” Proceedings of the IEEE International Conf. on Communications (ICC), June 2020.
• SPCC Early Achievement Award: Prof. Yuanwei Liu and Prof. Haijun Zhang.

14. Other Business

Next SPCC meeting will be held during GLOBECOM 2021.

15. Adjourn –The meeting was adjourned at 9:33 AM EST. There were 76 people in attendance.

Attendance List