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The IEEE Signal Processing Society is a technical co-sponsor with the Communications, Robotics and Automation, Circuits and Systems, and Microwave Theory and Techniques Societies of the new IEEE Applications and Practice Online Magazine. The Magazine will publish technically reviewed articles, application notes, and technical papers for the engineering practitioner.

The Magazine is published by the IEEE Communications Society and is available through IEEE Xplore under IEEE Communications Magazine. The first two issues of the Magazine focus on RFID technology. The first issue appeared in April 2007 and can be found under "IEEE Communications Magazine, Issue 4 Part Supplement". The second issue will be available in September 2007, including articles on RFID infrastructure, passive RFID, and applications of RFID in Healthcare.

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

Columns/Forums rolling submission deadlines

Special Issue Deadlines of SPS Journals

• "Genomic and Proteomic Signal Processing" - Deadline: 1 September 2007.
  (Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing)
   
• "Distributed Processing in Vision Networks" - Deadline: 15 October 2007.
  (Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing)

Recent Issues of SPS Sponsored and Co-sponsored Publications

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4. TC News

Sensor Array and Multichannel (SAM) Technical Committee

The Sensor Array and Multichannel (SAM) Technical Committee (TC) promotes activities and advancement in the technical areas of sensor array and multi-channel signal processing. The committee interests span the areas of signal detection and estimation, direction-of-arrival estimation, beamforming, blind source separation, source localization and tracking, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems and space-time coding, sensor networks, and multichannel signal processing. The main application areas are focused on radar, sonar, wireless communications, microphone array processing, navigation, seismology, radio astronomy, and biomedicine. Learn more about the SAM TC effort 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 2007 SPS DLs and check below for upcoming SPS Distinguished Lectures near you.
 

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IEEE Mentoring Connection™ Program Seeks Members to Mentor Young Professionals

One of the top IEEE Societies with young professional members includes the IEEE Signal Processing Society. Many of these members would appreciate the opportunity to have an "online" mentor to help guide them in their career planning and professional development. Mentor participation in the IEEE Mentoring Connection Program is open to all IEEE members above the grade of Student Member. Gary Hinkle, a mentor in the program, says "Helping young engineers develop in their careers is very rewarding. Working with some of these individuals has proven to be quite a challenge, because of the diversity among those seeking mentors. I’m glad to be contributing to this program."

The program enables the mentee to select their mentoring partner online from a list of individuals who have volunteered to serve as mentors. After mentors are identified as a potential match, they are contacted and asked to begin establishing a relationship. Interested members can visit the IEEE mentoring website for information on the roles and responsibilities of each mentoring partner, including additional program information and an FAQ page. Potential mentors are asked to review the time and effort commitment to the program necessary to ensure a successful mentoring partnership. The IEEE Mentoring Connection site can be accessed through this URL and use the Group ID "IEEE2006" to enter. Once you enter the site, you will need to set your own user id and password. If you have any questions, please contact Cathy Downer, Regional Activities, at <c.downer AT ieee.org>.
 

Introducing the Banff International Research Station - Now Accepting Proposals for 2009

The Banff International Research Station for Mathematical Innovation and Discovery (BIRS) is a joint Canada-US-Mexico initiative that provides an environment for creative interaction and the exchange of ideas, knowledge, and methods within the Mathematical Sciences, and with related sciences and industry. The BIRS Station is located on the site of the world-renowned Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada. It  provides mathematical scientists a secluded environment, complemented with accommodation and board and the necessary facilities, for uninterrupted research activities in a variety of formats, all in a magnificent mountain setting.

The BIRS Station is hosting a 48-week scientific program in 2009, and is now accepting proposals for its 2009 program. Each week, the station will be running either a full workshop (42 people for 5 days) or two half-workshops (20 people for 5 days). The BIRS provides full accommodation, board, and research facilities at no cost to the invited participants, in a setting conducive to research and collaboration. The deadline for 5-day Workshop and Summer School proposals is October 1, 2007. Full information, guidelines, and online submission forms are available at the website http://www.birs.ca/.

In addition, BIRS will operate its Research in Teams and Focused Research Groups programs, which allow smaller groups of researchers to get together for several weeks of uninterrupted work at the station. Proposals for these programs can be submitted at any time (subject to availability and at least 4 months lead time before the requested start date) and submission by October 1, 2007 is encouraged.
 

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Daniel Edward Clark (Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK)
"Multiple Target Tracking with the Probability Hypothesis Density Filter", October 2006
Advised by Dr Judith Bell

The random-set framework for multi-target tracking offers a distinct alternative to the traditional approach to multi-target tracking by treating the collections of individual targets and observations as finite-sets. The complexity of computing the multi-target Bayes recursion grows exponentially with the number of targets and so a method for approximating the optimal filter using a recursion for the first-order moment of the multi-target posterior, known as the Probability Hypothesis Density (PHD) filter, was developed.

This thesis addresses issues for the PHD filter to be of practical value in multiple target tracking applications. Two implementations of the PHD filter are studied; the Particle PHD filter, which is a Sequential Monte Carlo approximation, and the Gaussian Mixture PHD filter, which provides a closed-form solution. A study of the convergence properties is conducted, giving theoretical justification for the algorithms. Methods to determine the trajectories of the targets for each of the algorithms are developed.

Click here to download the dissertation, or contact the author <dec1 AT hw.ac.uk> for more information.
 

Jon Gudnason (Imperial College, London, UK)
"Voice Source Cepstrum Processing for Speaker Identification", May 2007
Advised by Mike Brookes

Voice source analysis and modeling has played a key role in important speech applications such as speech recognition, speech synthesis and speaker recognition. This work presents a robust algorithm for glottal closure detection and a novel set of voice source features for speaker recognition. A detailed study of group delay functions and their application to the linear prediction residual is presented and the DYPSA algorithm is developed for detecting glottal closure instants (GCIs).

The vocal tract transfer function is estimated using closed-phase analysis, converted to cepstrum coefficients and subtracted from the melfrequency cepstrum coefficients to derive a set of voice source cepstrum coefficients.  These are then used for speaker identification on the TIMIT database. The combination of the voice source and melfrequency cepstrum coefficients reduces the recognition error from 1.51% to 0.16% (Fisher's exact test, one sided, p=1x10-4).

Click here to download the dissertation, or contact the author <jon.gudnason AT imperial.ac.uk> for more information.

Interested in submitting or recommending a recent Ph.D. thesis?
Please prepare the following material and email Associate Editor at <piva AT lci.det.unifi.it>:
(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 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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Wavelets and Subband Coding, by M. Vetterli and J. Kovačević. Open Access Edition.

Speech Enhancement: Theory and Practice, by P. Loizou, CRC Press, 2007.

Blind Image Deconvolution: Theory and Applications, by P. Campisi and K. Egiazarian (editors), CRC, 2007.

VLSI DESIGN OF WAVELET TRANSFORM -Analysis, Architecture, and Design Examples,
by Liang-Gee Chen, Chao-Tsung Huang, Ching-Yeh Chen and Chih-Chi Cheng, World Scientific, 2006.

Multirate Statistical Signal Processing, by O.S. Jahromi, Springer, April 2007.

Local Approximation Techniques in Signal and Image Processing, by V. Katkovnik, K. Egiazarian, and J. Astola, SPIE Press, September 2006.

Embedded Image Processing on TMS320C6000 DSP:
Examples in Code Composer Studio and Matlab,  by Shehrzad Oureshi, Springer, 2005.