Please join us on Tuesday, September 9th, at 6PM as Baltimore COMSOC kicks off the 2008/2009 academic year with a presentation on high bandwidth free space optical communications. The meeting will be held at the Historical Electronics Museum in Linthicum. Food will be available at 5:30PM. Guests are welcome.

Directions can be found at our web site:

http://ewh.ieee.org/r2/baltimore/Chapter/Comm

Please reply to g_tartanian@ieee.org if you are planning to attend, so that we can get a rough headcount.

Title:

High bandwidth free space optical communications

Speaker:

David W. Young

Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory

Columbia, MD

Abstract:

Implementation of high-data-rate free-space optical communications systems in military environments is starting to become practical. Work carried out by a research team at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, including system design and field tests, is reviewed. A 150 km mountaintop-to-mountaintop link in Hawaii is used to demonstrate air-to-air tactical applications. A high-bandwidth (80 Gbps) link from an aerostat to a moving ground-based platform is used to demonstrate air-to-ground tactical applications.

Biography:

David Young is a member of the Senior Professional Staff at the Johns Hopkins University, Applied Physics Laboratory. His current work is on high bandwidth free space optical communications systems development, focusing on systems and technologies for enabling robust links in high dynamic range environments. Before APL he was at Corvis and Lucent Technologies, focusing on wavelength agile optical networks and novel amplifier architectures. Dr. Young has a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Connecticut.

3. Communications Society and LEOS Joint Meeting for October

Title:

Towards High-Performance and Reconfigurable Optical Communication Networks

Speaker:

Alan Willner

Date:

October 6

Abstract

Optical communications has enjoyed dramatic growth in terms of technical achievement as well as commercial implementation. This presentation will highlight three main topics. Firstly, a broad perspective will be given on some of the technical trends in optical communication systems. Secondly, I will describe technical issues related to stable, robust optical networking, including performance monitoring, channel-degrading effects, efficient modulation formats, and switching. Finally, I will discuss adding flexibility and reconfigurability to different aspects of the base optical technologies.

Biography:

Alan Willner received the Ph.D. from Columbia Univ., has worked at AT&T Bell Labs and Bellcore, and is Professor of EE at USC. He received the NSF Presidential Faculty Fellows Award from the White House, Packard Foundation Fellowship, NSF National Young Investigator Award, Fulbright Foundation Senior Scholars Award, IEEE LEOS Distinguished Traveling Lecturer Award, USC University-Wide Award for Excellence in Teaching, IEEE Fellow, OSA Fellow, and Eddy Paper Award from Pennwell Publications for Best Contributed Technical Article. Prof. Willner has been President of IEEE LEOS, Editor-in-Chief of IEEE/OSA J. of Lightwave Technology, Editor-in-Chief of Optics Letters, Editor-in-Chief of IEEE J. of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics, Co-Chair of OSA Science & Engineering Council, General Co-Chair of CLEO, General Chair of LEOS Annual Meeting Program, and Program Co-Chair of the OSA Annual Meeting. Prof. Willner has 700 publications, including two books and 25 patents.

4. IEEE GOLD

Please join the Baltimore GOLD team for a good time-out at the 'Dog Pub'.

Date:

September 11th, 2008

Location:

8865 Stanford Boulevard, Suite 100

Columbia, MD 21045

Phone: 410-872-0364

Map (copy & paste or just click the link):

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=8865+Stanford+Boulevard,+Columbia,+MD+21045&sll=39.191703,-76.818348&sspn=0.011708,0.019312&ie=UTF8&t=h&ll=39.192817,-76.790485&spn=0.031996,0.077248&z=14&iwloc=addr

Time:

5.30pm

RSVP:

tanner_33@yahoo.com or michaelpearse@ieee.org

5. Signal Processing Workshop

IEEE Workshop on Signal Processing Systems (SiPS2008, http://www.sips08.org/)

This event will be held in the DC area in early October. Register by Aug. 31 for a discounted rate. More info is attached below for your reference.

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

The 2008 IEEE Workshop on Signal Processing Systems (SiPS2008)

Website:

http://www.sips08.org/

Date:

October 8-10, 2008

Venue:

Doubletree Hotel Crystal City-National Airport

Washington D.C. Metropolitan Area, USA

Co-sponsored by:

IEEE Signal Processing Society

IEEE Circuits and Systems Society

Important Dates:

Advance Registration, August 31, 2008

On-site Registration, After August 31, 2008

Registration details at:

https://www.securecms.com/SiPS2008/Registration.asp

Deadline for conference hotel booking at special room rate:

September 8

Hotel booking details:

http://www.sips08.org/Accommodation.asp

Technical Program:

http://www.sips08.org/RegularProgram.asp

6. FE/EIT Exam Prep Course

The FE/EIT exam prep course will begin on Saturday September 6 for 7 weeks in College Park, MD (http://www.LKACC.com/training). IEEE members receive a 10% discount.

7. Notes from the Chair of the Baltimore Section

The following are notes from Bill Semancik, chair of the IEEE Baltimore Section.

“Change of the Column Name

First you will notice that the title of this column has been changed. For those who know me, the title was supposed to be a not-too-veiled reference for how my desk really looks both at work and at home. One of the members sent a note correctly pointing out just how silly the title came off without that context. The point was taken and hopefully this is an improvement.

IEEE National and Local Elections

The most important thing coming up for IEEE members of which our membership needs to be cognizant of is the elections both at the national and section level. You should have already received your national IEEE ballot with votes due in by September 25. You will also notice that the posting has hit the web site for the Section officer elections with votes due by 30 November. Please take the time to vote in each of these elections. The IEEE can only be effective at serving you if the people who run the organization reflect your views on what the organization should be doing.

At the national level, the most important election to you as members is the Region Director. We belong to Region 2. Region2 stretches from Southern New Jersey south to Northern Virginia and West to Ohio. The region is the bridge between the local interests of the members and the national functions of IEEE. The region chairs actually serve for 6 years, first as Director-Elect, the Director, and then Past-Director. They attend six weeks of national level meetings serving as members of various committees on your behalf. These folks are all volunteers and give of their personal time to serve you.

At the region meeting, I had a chance to meet all the candidates whom I previously had not met. All are strong candidates. They each have their vision as to how they want the organization to grow. Each of those visions is somewhat different. You should take the time to read their statements and make a choice.

As a Section Chair, I get requests from all the candidates asking for an endorsement. I thought long about whether I would make such a public statement. In the end, I believe that those of us who have had a chance to meet and talk with the candidates owe the membership the benefit of our insights. I believe that Murty Povalarapu, the current South Area Chair, has an agenda that will allow him to make real progress for our membership. He deserves your serious consideration as you make your choice.

I would also like you to take the time to vote in the local election. Do you know that less than 2% of Baltimore Section members vote in the election? I would consider it quite a success if at some point in time we had an active enough membership that we could offer multiple candidates at each position and that the vote represented a significant amount of our membership.

Computer Society News

Nataki Roberts of Lockheed Martin will be re-starting the Computer Society. She takes over for Boniface Nwugwo who was forced to give up the chapter chair because of travel demands from work. I looked at statistics and there are over 2700 Baltimore Section members of Computer Society. We should be able to have a vital organization that serves many diverse interests. Please look for the announcements of future meetings and participate.

Annapolis Subsection Being Closed

Annapolis Subsection is being closed after its long existence. The current officers served many years and needed to respond to other demands on their times. With no other people being willing to step in, it was time to officially declare an end to the organization.”

8. Baltimore Region Conferences

The following conferences are planned for Maryland, Washington, DC, and Northern Virginia. This list can be used for planning purposes and also represents potential volunteering opportunities.

2008 IEEE International Symposium on Modeling, Analysis & Simulation of Computer and Telecommunication Systems (MASCOTS)

07 Sep - 10 Sep 2008

Tremont Suite Hotels

Baltimore, MD

http://www.mascots-conference.org/

2008 IEEE 25th Symposium on Mass Storage Systems and Technologies (MSST)

22 Sep - 25 Sep 2008

Sheraton Inner Harbor

Baltimore, MD, USA

www.storageconference.org

http://webapps1.ieee.org/conferenceSearch/www.storageconference.org

2008 Second IEEE International Conference on Biometrics: Theory, Applications and Systems (BTAS)

29 Sep - 01 Oct 2008

Hyatt Regency Crystal City

Washington, DC, USA

http://www.cse.nd.edu/BTAS_08

2008 3rd International Conference on Malicious and Unwanted Software (MALWARE)

07 Oct - 08 Oct 2008

Hilton Alexandria Mark Center

Alexandria, VA, USA

http://isiom.wssrl.org

2008 IEEE Workshop On Signal Processing Systems (SIPS)

08 Oct - 10 Oct 2008

Radisson Hotel Reagan National Airport

Arlington, VA, USA

2008 37th IEEE Applied Imagery Pattern Recognition Workshop (AIPR 2008)

15 Oct - 17 Oct 2008

Cosmos Club

Washington, DC, USA

http://www.aipr-workshop.org/ <http://www.aipr-workshop.org/>

2008 IEEE 58th Annual Broadcast Symposium (BTS)

15 Oct - 17 Oct 2008

The Westin Hotel

Alexandria, VA, USA

http://www.ieee.org/bts/symposium

2008 IEEE Biomedical Circuits and Systems Conference - Intelligent Biomedical Systems (BioCAS)

20 Nov - 22 Nov 2008

Location: TBD

Baltimore, MD, USA

http://www.biocas2008.org

2009 IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition - APEC 2009

15 Feb - 19 Feb 2009

Marriott Wardman Park Hotel

Washington, DC, USA

http://www.apec-conf.org

2009 43rd Annual Conference on Information Sciences and Systems (CISS)

18 Mar - 20 Mar 2009

The Johns Hopkins University

Baltimore, MD, USA

http://ciss.jhu.edu

2009 Integrated Communications, Navigation and Surveillance Conference (ICNS)

13 May - 15 May 2009

TBD

Crystal City, VA, USA

http://i-cns.org/

2009 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO)

02 Jun - 04 Jun 2009

Baltimore Convention Center

Baltimore, MD, USA

http://www.i-leos.org

2009 International Quantum Electronics Conference (IQEC)

June 2-4, 2009

Baltimore Convention Center

Baltimore, MD, USA

http://www.i-leos.org

2009 IEEE Pulsed Power Conference (PPC)

28 Jun - 02 Jul 2009

Renaissance Mayflower Hotel

Washington, DC, USA

http://web.ece.missouri.edu/ppc2009

2009 IEEE Workshop on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Enterprise: Economics Measures and Indicators (STEM Measures)

15 Sep - 18 Sep 2009

TBD

Washington, DC, USA

2011 IEEE AUTOTESTCON

September 19-22, 2011

Baltimore Convention Center

Baltimore, MD, USA

http://www.autotestcon.com

2009 IEEE 59th Annual Broadcast Symposium (BTS)

14 Oct - 16 Oct 2009

The Westin Hotel

Alexandria, VA, USA

http://www.ieee.org/bts/symposium

9. Continuing EE Education

We are re-running this request for interest in a continuing education program. This program will be in the format of seminars focused on a particular topic of interest. The seminars may run either during the week after work hours or possibly on Saturday. The idea for the program is described below.

Name of project: Continuing EE Education (“CEEE”)

Goal: A section-level program aimed at:

Updating the IEEE members on new developments in the EE field.

Familiarizing engineers with basic new tools, products and techniques as well as giving them the initial knowledge and skills to use them.

Inviting representatives from different vendors to present leading novel products.

Giving tutorials in new areas.

Helping IEEE fellow members become more competitive, especially in times of uncertain jobs, off-shoring and salary stagnation.

Facilitating networking.

Broadening the horizon of each IEEE member.

Fostering collaboration between members of different societies as well as generation of new ideas (“cross-pollination” element).

The program should be open to all IEEE members, including students. It is meant to be a cross-societies initiative, i.e. should not be limited to narrow topics serving the interests of a single chapter only. Emphasis should be placed on meeting with experienced experts from different fields. Critical comparisons between different solutions of EE problems are expected to be made, and trends should be discussed.

Potential topics of interest could include, but are not limited to:

Software tools:

Programming languages

Compilers

Real-Time Operating systems

Debuggers

Emulators

Hardware tools:

Novel electronic components

Single-Board Computers (SBC)

Embedded solutions

FPGAs

Printed circuit board design (schematics capture, layout)

Circuit simulation (PSPICE)

Portable devices

Signal and image processing (examples, tools, help)

Wireless devices:

Theory

Standards

Available OEM products

Trends

Internet-based methods and devices:

Standards

Available tools

Web Page Design

Contemporary design tools (like AutoCad and Solid Works)

Reliability and Compliance issues

We plan to invite qualified speakers from academia, industry and governmental institutions. The speakers will be professionals who can give first-hand information and share front-line experience on the technology, methods and tools being presented.

We plan to organize 2-4 meetings annually. Each meeting is planned to last for 2 hours or more. We could meet on weekdays, or on Saturdays.

Please send us your suggestions and preferences regarding topics, time and place of meetings, the name/acronym of the program etc.

Boris Gramatikov

Baltimore Section

Bgramat@jhmi.edu