************************************************************************** REPORT OF THE NONLINEAR CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS TECHNICAL COMMITTEE, IEEE CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS SOCIETY, FOR THE PERIOD 7/98--6/99. Date: April 7, 1999. ************************************************************************** CHAIR: (Term in the office: 05/96-05/99) Dr. Michael Peter Kennedy Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering University College Dublin Belfield Dublin 4 Ireland Tel: +353-1-706 1963 Fax: +353-1-283 0921 E-mail: Peter.Kennedy@ucd.ie WWW: http://eleceng.ucd.ie/staff/pkennedy.htm CHAIR-ELECT: (Term in the office: 05/97-05/2000) Prof. Tetsuo Nishi Kyushu University Department of Computer Science/Communication Engineering Kyushu University 6-10-1 Hakozaki Fukuoka 812 Japan Tel: +81-92-642 4041 Fax: +81-92-632 5204 E-mail: nishi@csce.kyushu-u.ac.jp SECRETARY: (Term in the office: 05/98-05/2001) Prof. Guanrong (Ron) Chen Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Room N310, Building-D 4800 Calhoun Street University of Houston Houston, Texas 77204-4793 USA Tel: +1-713-743 4446 Fax: +1-713-743 4444 E-mail: gchen@uh.edu WWW: http://www.egr.uh.edu/Departments/ECE/faculty.dir/chen.html ************************************************************************** In 1998-99 members of the Nonlinear Circuits and Systems Technical Committee participated in sessions at five major conferences and workshops, organized special issues of three international refereed journals, participated in a survey of research directions, and developed member and guest support structures by means of an automatic electronic mail server and website. The committee formally adopted its bylaws in June 1998. Planned activities for 1999-2000 include NCAS sessions at six conferences, four special issues, and organization of the Nonlinear Circuits and Systems Track at ISCAS 2000. A. CONFERENCES -------------- 1. ISCAS'98, 31 May - 3 June, 1998, Monterey: Peter Kennedy and Geza Kolumban organized a special session on ``Communicating with Chaos.'' 2. MTNS'98, 6-10 July, 1998, Padova, Italy: No additional information available 3. NDES'98, 16-18 July, 1998, Budapest, Hungary: This was the sixth international specialist workshop on Nonlinear Dynamics of Electronic Systems. Six tutorial lectures were delivered by Rui de Figueiredo, Leon Chua, Tony Davies, Toshimichi Saito, Peter Kennedy, Geza Kolumban, Herve Dedieu, and Paul Curran. Over presentations were made in eight sessions by particpants from twenty countries. 4. MWCAS'98: No additional information available 5. NOLTA'98, 14-17 September, 1998, Crans-Montana, Switzerland: More than 345 papers were presented in 68 sessions (including 18 special sessions) by over 350 participants from 26 countries at the 1998 International Symposium on Nonlinear Theory and its Applications. Plenary lectures were delivered by Leon Chua, Joos Vandewalle, and on ``The Edge of Chaos,'' ``Important Classes of Nonlinear Systems and Circuits That Are Not Only Useful and Powerful but Also Manageable,'' and ``Information Geometry of Independent Component Analysis-A New Approach to Adaptive Multirate Signal Analysis.'' B. SPECIAL ISSUES ----------------- 1. A special issue of the IEICE Transactions on Fundamentals, on Nonlinear Theory and its Applications (NOLTA'97) (devoted, but not restricted, to papers presented at NOLTA'97), edited by Mitsunori Makino and Toshimichi Saito, appeared in September 1998. 2. A special issue of the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems, Part I, to honor the memory of Sidney Darlington, edited by Ernest Kuh and Irwin Sandberg, appeared in January 1999 (vol. CAS-46, no. 1). 3. A special issue of the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems, Part II, on ``Advances in nonlinear electronic circuits,'' edited by Peter Kennedy and Angel Rodriguez-Vazquez, appeared in March 1999. C. WWW SITE AND MAILING LIST ---------------------------- We have created an majordomo list (automatic mailing system) for the NCAS technical committee members and guests. The list is private, can support geographically diverse membership, and the members can subscribe and un-subscribe via e-mail. It also allows for keeping the list archive and/or digest. It currently has 50 subscribing members. Our email address is: ncastc-ieee@sfu.ca (physically located at Simon Fraser University, Canada). The NCAS TC WWW page: http://diva.eecs.berkeley.edu/~ljilja/tcncas contains TC news, TC meeting minutes, conference reports, useful information regarding past and future conferences, and links to other sites of interest. D. RESEARCH SURVEY ------------------ An extensive survey of current and future research directions in nonlinear circuits and systems was carried out at NDES'98. The details are reported in G. Kolumban and M.P. Kennedy, ``NDES'98 explores attendees' views on research issues,'' IEEE Circuits and Systems Newsletter, vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 1, 4-5, 23-24, September 1998. E. BYLAWS --------- The NCAS TC bylaws proposed by Prof. Alan Willson were formally adopted at the meeting of the Committee in Monterey on 1 June, 1998. (Please see the NCAS TC WWW page: http://diva.eecs.berkeley.edu/~ljilja/tcncas for the current version.) It was suggested at the latest TC Chairs meeting to limits the number of a technical committee members to 25. The opinion of this committee was that we would not like to impose such a limit. F. PLANNED ACTIVITIES FOR 1999-2000 ----------------------------------- 1. CONFERENCES: The following conferences are supported by the NCAS Technical Committee: 1. 1999 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS'99), Orlando, Florida, USA, 30 May - 2 June, 1999: WWW site: http://iscas99.engr.ucf.edu/ 2. Building on the success of last year's workshop in Budapest, the seventh international specialist workshop on Nonlinear Dynamics of Electronic Systems (NDES'99) will take place in Roenne, Bornholm, Denmark, on 15-17 July, 1999. WWW site: http://www.iee.et.tu-dresden.de/~ndes99/ 3. The 42nd Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems will take place in Las Cruces, New Mexico, USA, 8-11 August, 1999: WWW site: http://www.mwscas99.nmsu.edu/ 4. The 14th European Conference on Circuit Theory and Design (ECCTD'99) will take place in Stresa, Italy, 29 August - 2 September, 1999: WWW site: http://www.eln.polito.it/events/ecctd99/ 5. The 6th IEEE International Conference on Electronics, Circuits and Systems will take place in Paphos, Cyprus, 5-8 September, 1999: WWW site: http://www.vlsi.ee.upatras.gr/~icecs99/ 6. The 1999 International Symposium on Nonlinear Theory and its Applications (NOLTA'99) will take place the Hilton Waikoloa Village, Waikoloa, Hawaii, USA, 28 November - 2 December, 1999: WWW site: http://hawk.ise.chuo-u.ac.jp/NOLTA/1999/ 2. SPECIAL ISSUES: Members of the NCAS Technical Committee are editing four special issues: 1. A special issue of the IEICE Transactions on Fundamentals, on Nonlinear Theory and its Applications (NOLTA'98) (devoted, but not restricted, to papers presented at NOLTA'98), edited by Tohru Kohda, is scheduled to appear in September 1999. 2. A special issue of Analog Integrated Circuits and Signal Processing on ``DC operating points of electrical circuits,'' edited by Ljiljana Trajkovic, is scheduled to appear by the end of 1999. 3. A special issue of International Journal of Bifurcation and Chaos on ``Chaos Control and Synchronization,'' edited by Guanrong Chen, is scheduled to appear in 2000. 4. A special issue of the International Journal of Circuit Theory and Applications on ``Communications, Information Processing and Control using Chaos,'' edited by Martin Hasler and Joos Vandewalle, is expected to appear in early 2000. 3. ISCAS 2000 TRACK: Peter Kennedy will chair the track on Nonlinear Circuits and Systems at ISCAS 2000. Members of the Committee have volunteered to assist in this task. ************************************************************************** Report by: Michael Peter Kennedy, 7 April 1999