IEEE ComSoc (Vancouver) - September Newsletter

Dave Michelson (dmichelson@ieee.org) Wed, 08 Sep 1999 16:09:12 -0700 

Date: Wed, 08 Sep 1999 16:09:12 -0700
From: Dave Michelson <dmichelson@ieee.org>
Subject: IEEE ComSoc (Vancouver) - September Newsletter



      IEEE Communications Society (Vancouver) Newsletter
                 Vol. 1, No. 5 - September 1999
           http://members.home.net/comsoc-vancouver/

All ComSoc-Vancouver events are open to the entire community.

--------------------------------------------------------------
1.  Technical Presentations - Fall 1999
2.  LinuxFest '99  
3.  Chapter Committees
4.  Seminars and Workshops
5.  Student Activities
6.  ComSoc-Vancouver Announcements List
--------------------------------------------------------------

1.  Technical Presentations - Fall 1999

---------
Inside Inside Rogers@Home - The Evolution of Hybrid Fibre Coax Networks
Dean Patterson, Rogers Cablesystems Ltd.

Monday, September 20, 1999, 7:30 - 9:00 pm
BCIT, Bldg SE6, BC Tel Theatre
-------
The Challenge of Integrating 800 and 1900 MHz Radios into PC Cards
Ron Vanderhelm, Sierra Wireless

Wednesday, October 13, 1999, 7:30 - 9:00 pm
BCIT, Bldg SE6, BC Tel Theatre
-------
Open Standards Interactive Satellite Terminal  (OSIT)
Bob Bucher, President/CEO - Norsat International

Monday, December 6, 1999, 7:30 - 9:00 pm
BCIT, Bldg SE6, BC Tel Theatre (tentative)
-------

(Please see the ComSoc-Vancouver web site for details.)

Speakers for the November 1999 and Spring 2000 meetings have not yet
been scheduled.  Suggestions and volunteers for future presentations are
most welcome. If you would like to volunteer to present or would like to
suggest a topic or speaker, please let me know, either by e-mail or by
telephone (604 985-0214).


2. LinuxFest '99

The IEEE Vancouver Section is participating in LinuxFest'99 at UBC on
Sat, Oct 2, 1999 from 10:00 am - 4:00 pm.  For more details, please see
http://www.linux.bc.ca/.   We will work with the IEEE Student Branch at
UBC to set up an information and recruiting booth in the main display
area in SUB 207/209.  We will also help to staff the Linux in Science
and Engineering booth.  If you would like to volunteer to help set up or
staff either booth, please let me know.


3.  Chapter Committees

We're very fortunate that several ComSoc members have expressed interest
in helping to organize chapter activities, 
including Jim Cavers, Matt Yedlin, Jin Ng, Verona Wong, Mohamed Cherif,
Eric Guetre, Andrew Ng, Mehdi Mahdavi Ardekani, Vincent Wong, and Peter
Chong.

In order to simplify the task of matching people up with their
interests, we're forming four committees:

      Awards and Advancement,
      Technical Presentations,
      Seminars and Workshops, and
      Student Activities.

If *you* have any suggestions or would like to help out in some way,
please let me know, either by e-mail or by telephone (604 985-0214).


4.  Seminars and Workshops.

A recent poll of Comsoc-Vancouver mailing list subscribers showed that
there is a great deal of interest in IEEE-sponsored seminars and
workshops.  Since third generation cellular systems, software for
wireless communications system design, and smart/adaptive antennas were
near the top of the list, we're going to start by organizing events in
these areas.

a.  Mark Hammer and his colleagues from Northwood Geoscience (Nepean,
ON) have expressed interest in presenting a technical seminar on Next
Generation Wireless System Planning Tools in November.  We hope to
interest a terrain-data provider to participate, as well.  We haven't
yet decided whether to offer this as an afternoon event (3-hours) or an
evening event (2-hours).  If you have a preference, please let me know.

b.  Siavash Alamouti and his colleagues from Cadence Design Systems
(Bellevue, WA) will present a full-day technical seminar on third
generation cellular systems and software for wireless communications
system design in either late-November 1999 or early January 2000. 
Although the seminar will be sponsored by Cadence, the presentations
will deal only with technical issues.  While Cadence is best-known for
their commercial CAD tools such as SPW, note that they also support and
feed code back into the freely available Ptolemy package developed at UC
Berkeley.  More details concerning the seminar will follow in the next
month or two.

c.  We are organizing a full-day IEEE workshop on Smart/Adaptive
Antennas to be held in late February 2000.  (Our working 
date is Friday, February 25, 2000.)  A principal aim of the workshop is
to inform service providers and other end-users about 
recent developments in this area. So far, the technical program
committee includes myself, Jim Cavers (SFU), Matt Yedlin 
(UBC), Titus Lo (AT&T Wireless Services), and Brent Sauder (BC ASI). 
The BC Advanced Systems Institute will co-sponsor the 
event.  The venue has not yet been selected.  If you're interested in
helping out with this workshop in one form or another, 
please let me know!


5.  Student Activities

We're in the processing of setting up ComSoc student chapters at UBC and
SFU.  While the existing IEEE student branches 
focus on undergraduate participation, these new ComSoc chapters will
emphasize graduate student participation.  Our main 
objective in all this is to ensure that students (especially grad
students) are kept in the loop regarding local IEEE activities 
such as conferences, workshops, presentations, and seminars. If you're
interested in helping out with the student chapters in 
some way, please let me know!

Mehdi Mahdavi Ardekani (MASc candidate) has volunteered to take on the
task of organizing the SFU chapter. Vincent Wong 
(PhD candidate) and Peter Chong (PhD candidate) have volunteered to take
on the task of organizing the UBC chapter.  If 
you're a student member of ComSoc  at either UBC or SFU, please consider
signing the petition to form a student chapter at 
your school.  Twelve names are required in each case.  Please contact
Mehdi, Vincent, or Peter for details.


6.  ComSoc-Vancouver Announcements List

The ComSoc-Vancouver Announcements List has grown to over 200
subscribers during the past few months.  Once again: In 
order to ensure that we have a reasonable turnout for our speakers, I
would greatly appreciate your help in encouraging 
other members of the communications community in Vancouver to subscribe
to this low volume, announcements-only 
mailing list.

Thanks!


--                                                      -o)
Dave Michelson                                          /\\
dmichelson@ieee.org                                    _\_v