This report is intended as a brief summary of the activities of Commission C: Signals and Systems, of the International Union of Radio Science (URSI), for the period following the XXIV General Assembly, Kyoto, September 1993, until March 1996.
Commission C sponsored and supported a number of symposia and meetings during the period. These include the Second International Conference on Digital Signal Processing for Communications, Adelaide, Australia, April 1994; IGARSS, Pasadena, U.S.A., August 1994; Fifth International Symposium on Recent Advances in Microwave Technology (ISRAMT'95), Kiev, Ukraine, September 1995; European Conference on Synthetic Aperture Radar (EUSAR'96), Königswinter, Germany, March 1996; and Fourth International Symposium on Spread Spectrum Techniques and Applications, Mainz, Germany, September 1996. However the major commitments were to COMMSPHERE '95 and ISSSE'95.
COMMSPHERE '95 was organized by L. Barclay, United Kingdom, P. Delogne, Belgium, and J. Shapira, Israel, under the Chairmanship of Dr. Shapira, and in collaboration with ITU-R and IAU. It was held at Eilat, Israel, January 22-27, 1995. It is an international forum of leading scientists, experts and administrators, for discussion of the future of telecommunications and other electromagnetic radiation usages in view of the growing congestion of the spectrum. This was the third meeting. The program ranged over topics of interest to a range of commissions, but with the focus on telecommunications, was of special interest to Commission C. There were five plenary sessions and five workshops with 115 participants from 25 countries. The conference was a success and will be held again January 20-23, 1997 in Geneva, Switzerland with Dr. Shapira, Chair of the Technical Program Committee
The INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON SIGNALS, SYSTEMS AND ELECTRONICS (ISSSE'95) was jointly organized by Commissions D and C, and held in San Francisco, October 25-27, 1995. This was the third in the series of joint symposia which are being held every three years, and the first to be held outside of Europe. In addition to the URSI sponsorship, their was sponsorship from a range of IEEE societies and financial support from United States Government organizations. The conference was under the Chairmanship of J.W. Mink, with Vice Chairmen T. Itoh from Commission D and P. Wittke from Commission C. The technical program was under the direction of A.N. Willson, Jr., for Commission C and M. Shur for Commission D. Each day started with an outstanding keynote session. On the first day, Charles Rush of the United States spoke on "Global information infrastructures: challenges and realities", which described issues arising from the much-touted information superhighway. A. Viterbi of the United States, spoke on "Universal wireless communication: convergence of technology and market forces", and on the final day A. Seeds of the United Kingdom, gave the keynote address, "Mining the optical fibre bandwidth goldmine". The conference consisted of four parallel sessions on each of the three days and an evening poster session. The meeting was attended by 175 scientists and engineers including eight Young Scientists who received support.
During the past year major effort has been devoted to preparation for the upcoming General Assembly which will be held in Lille, France, August 28 - September 5, 1996. The programs for nine Commission C sessions have been organized covering the wide range of commission activity. There are an additional 7 joint sessions involving Commission C and Commission C is taking the lead in organizing two of these joint sessions. Professor R. Pickholtz, U.S.A., will give the commission tutorial on "Communications by Means of Low-earth Orbiting Satellites".
Prof. P.H. Wittke, Chair