[Download a print friendly version of this report in MS Word 97]

Commission C „Signals and Systems" deals with a variety of topics. Commission C sees its scope in the crossfertilization of radio, signal processing and telecommunications sciences. Whereas it is obvious that many core topics of radio science, e.g. radio astronomy and radar, heavily rely on tremendously sophisticated signal processing methods, signal processing is a science for itself, outside of radio. Telecommunications have seen a paradigm shift in the last decade through radio science, as evidenced by the sweeping success of cellular mobile radio, notably GSM. But telecommunications is also a world by itself. The number of annual international conferences in either field has risen enormously.

This competitive situation makes it extremely difficult to bring together scientists from all three areas, and The International Symposium on Signals, Systems and Electronics (ISSSE), traditionally organized by URSI in between General Assembles, has to compete with many other conferences.

Last year’s ISSSE 01 was made a success by hard work of the Japanese URSI community. Its motto was "Questing more significant harmony and integration: Systems/Devices and Software/Hardware".

The organizers had taken great efforts to put together an interesting program and a nice, hospitable surrounding (and a grand dinner). The fashionable venue, a large hotel in Tokyo, made attendants forget how hot is was outside in the street -even the local residents said it had been unusually hot.

Altogether there were 114 papers, about half of them invited. The bulk came from Asia (58), 39 were authored by Europeans and 12 by North Americans, with the rest divided among South America, Africa, and Oceania. Registration turned out to be disappointing: only 120 persons attended, which was a shame given the fine program offered and the hard work put into the organization.

Topical meetings dedicated to a narrow field of radio science and/or signal processing offer a good value for attendants. The same is true for regional conferences. Therefore, Commission C has supported the following conferences in the last triennium, some of them also financially (see amounts in parentheses).

• Radio Africa '99, Gaborone, Botswana, 25-29 October 1999 (USD 1,500)
• ICCEA'99 - Int. Conf. On Computational Electromagnetics and its Applications, Beijing, China, 1-4 November 1999
• ISRAMT'99 : Int. Symp. on Recent Advances in Microwave Technology, Malaga, Spain, 13-17 December 1999
• 8th Int. Conf. on HF Radio Systems and Techniques, Guildford, UK, 10-13 July 2000
• Second Int. Symp. on Turbo Codes and Related Topics, Brest, France, 4-7 September 2000
• EPMCC 2001, Fourth European Personal Mobile Communications Conference, Vienna, Austria, 20-22 February 2001 (EUR 1,000)
• ISSSE'01 Tokyo, Japan, 24-27 July 2001 (EUR 4,000)
• 2001 Asia-Pacific Radio Science Conference (AP-RASC'01), Tokyo, Japan, August 1-4, 2001 (EUR 1,000)
• ICEAA'01, Int. Conf. on Electromagnetics in Advanced Applications, Turin, Italy, 10-14 Sept. 2001
• Radio Africa 2001 - Fourth Int. Workshop on Radio Communication in Africa, Cape Coast, Ghana, 15-19 October 2001 (EUR 1,000)
• APMC'02 : Asia-Pacific Microwave Conference, Kyoto, Japan, 19-22 November 2002

For ISSSE 2004 there is an offer to hold it in Austria, either Linz or Salzburg.