Nonlinear Circuits and Systems Technical Committee (NCAS) – 1998-1999 Annual Report

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: (Click to show email)
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: (Click to show email)

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: (Click to show email)
WWW: http://www.egr.uh.edu/Departments/ECE/faculty.dir/chen.html

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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: (Click to show email) (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.

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Report by: Michael Peter Kennedy, 7 April 1999