The 2016 39th International Conference on Telecommunications and Signal Processing (TSP), 27–29 June, 2016, Vienna, Austria

By Karol Molnar - TSP 2016 General Chair and Norbert Herencsar - TSP 2016 Deputy Chair and IEEE Czechoslovakia Section CAS/COM/SP Joint Chapter Chair

The 39th International Conference on Telecommunications and Signal Processing (TSP) was hosted by the pulsing city of Vienna, Austria 27–29 June, 2016. Under the patronage of IEEE Region 8, the IEEE Austria Section, the IEEE Czechoslovakia Section, the IEEE Czechoslovakia Section SP/CAS/COM Joint Chapter, the IEEE Croatia Section Communications Chapter, industrial partners and exhibitors, CESNET Czech Republic, Flaxcom Holding Corporation Hungary, and Honeywell International s.r.o. Czech Republic, the TSP 2016 Conference was organized by eleven universities from the Czech Republic, Hungary, Turkey, Poland, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Croatia, Bulgaria, and Japan. The Conference serves as a premier annual international forum to promote the exchange of the latest advances in telecommunication technology and signal processing.

TSP 2016 General Chair, Assoc. Prof. Karol Molnar (Honeywell International s.r.o., Czech
Republic) with Dr. Peter Nagy (IEEE Region 8 Conference Coordination Subcommittee Member,
HTE, Hungary), Ms. Aslihan Kartci (Vice-Chairman of IEEE Student Branch of Brno University
of Technology, Czech Republic), Prof. Ahmed Elwakil (University of Sharjah, UAE), Assoc.
Prof. Norbert Herencsar (IEEE Czechoslovakia Section CAS/COM/SP Joint Chapter Chair and
TSP 2016 Deputy Chair), Prof. I. Cem Goknar (Isik University, Turkey), Prof. Costas Psychalinos
(University of Patras, Greece) and his students.

The mission of the TSP Conference is to support both novice and experienced scientists in gaining and sharing professional expertise, to establish new partnerships in a friendly and collaborative environment, to collect new ideas, and to create new cooperation between research groups from universities, research centers, and the private sector. In line with this mission statement, TSP 2016 provided a great opportunity to more than 180 researchers from 38 countries around the world to demonstrate their exciting achievements in fast evolving research fields. From a total of 274 submissions, the Technical Program Committee (TPC) of the Conference accepted 170 papers after a careful review process, including 130 oral and 40 poster presentations scheduled in 20 oral and 3 poster sessions, respectively. The technical sessions of the conference were focused on various topics, from information systems, network services and technologies, telecommunication systems, modelling, simulation and measurement, to analog, audio, speech, language, biomedical, digital, image, and video signal processing. All presented papers will be indexed by IEEE Xplore®.

Best Student Paper Award Ceremony during Gala Dinner.

One of the important factors for the success of the TSP 2016 Conference was the presence of three world leading keynote speakers. First, during the opening day ceremony, Prof. Ray-Guang Cheng from the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (NTUST), Taiwan, delivered a speech entitled “Machine Type Communications: Challenges and Perspectives.” This keynote speech addressed challenges and analytical tools for designing and analyzing the random-access channel for 5G cellular networks. At the beginning of second day, Prof. Ram M. Narayanan from the Department of Electrical Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, USA, delivered a keynote speech entitled “Sensing and Communications Using Ultrawideband Random Noise and Chaotic Waveforms.” It was followed by another keynote speech related to a hot topic, “Fractional- Order Circuits and Systems: An Emerging Interdisciplinary Research Topic,” by Prof. Ahmed Elwakil, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Sharjah, UAE. This talk aimed to provide an overview of the current status of research in this area, highlighting specific problems that need to be addressed and future perspectives.

Participants of the TSP 2016 Conference in Vienna.

In addition to regular sessions, the TSP 2016 Conference also featured the “6th SPLab Workshop of Signal Processing Laboratory” of Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic, and hosted four special sessions: “Fractional-Order Systems: Theory, Design and Applications,” by Assoc. Prof. Jaroslav Koton, Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic, et al.; “Signal and Image Processing for Biometric Human Recognition: Theory, Methods, Applications and Systems,” by Dr. Larbi Boubchir, University of Paris 8, France, and Prof. Ahmed Bouridane, University of Northumbria, UK; “Monitoring and Control Based on Image Processing,” by Dr. Loretta Ichim and Prof. Dan Popescu, University Politehnica of Bucharest, Romania; and “Photonic Networks and Services: Theory, Design, Modeling, and Applications,” by Dr. Josef Vojtech, CESNET a.l.e., Czech Republic, and Dr. Petr Munster, Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic. These special sessions provided a great opportunity to meet several prominent representatives of these areas, and have thrilling discussions on state-of-the-art results and future challenges of these emerging scientific disciplines.

Finally, in cooperation with the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society and the IEEE Czechoslovakia Section CAS/COM/SP Joint Chapter, to recognize outstanding technical contributions by students, as evidenced by the quality of the papers, their presentations, and their technical excellence, the main authors of the best four student papers received awards from the TPC during the Conference. The Best Student Paper Award consists of a certificate and an IEEE Student or IEEE Graduate Student membership for 2017.

Preparing for the 40th anniversary of TSP Conference, the organization committee kindly invites all telecommunications and signal processing professionals to the TSP 2017 event, which will be held in July 2017 in Barcelona, Spain. For more information please visit http://tsp.vutbr.cz/.