Commentary

Dallas IEEE CVT Meeting: Voice Over Wireless Local Area Networks (Sept. 18)

The Dallas Chapter of the IEEE Communications and Vehicular Technologies Society will be featuring a presentation by Jerry D. Gibson of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of California, Santa Barbara during their meeting at 11am on September 18 at the Holiday Inn Select, 1655 N. Central in Richardson. There is a $5 charge for IEEE members and a $10 charge for non-members.

Wireless local area networks (WLANs) are rapidly becoming part of our networking infrastructure, and although these networks have been designed primarily with data in mind, they are already being required to support the reliable transport of voice traffic as well. While considerable work has been performed to accommodate voice in these networks, there are several important issues that are not widely recognized nor considered in the design and analyses of these networks to support voice communications. We investigate the transmission of G.711 and G.729 voice traffic over IEEE 802.11a WLANs for a realistic fading channel model. We calculate the maximum voice capacity of an IEEE 802.11a WLAN and illustrate the tradeoffs when considering transmitted bit rate, channel conditions, throughput, payload size, retransmissions, packet loss rate, and delivered voice quality. We also address the challenges and issues for voice communications over tandem connections of digital cellular, VoIP, and voice over WLANs, and point out the principal limitations on voice quality and performance in such tandem networks.

Jerry D. Gibson is Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author, co-author, and editor of several books and handbooks, including Principles of Digital and Analog Communications (Prentice-Hall, second ed., 1993) and Digital Compression for Multimedia (Morgan-Kaufmann, 1998). He was Associate Editor for Speech Processing for the IEEE Transactions on Communications from 1981 to 1985 and Associate Editor for Communications for the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory from 1988-1991. He was President of the IEEE Information Theory Society in 1996, and he is an elected Member-at-Large on the IEEE Communications Society Board of Governors for 2005-2007. Dr. Gibson is a Fellow of the IEEE and a past recipient of The Fredrick Emmons Terman Award from ASEE. He was co-recipient of the 1993 IEEE Signal Processing Society Senior Paper Award for the Speech Processing area, and he is an IEEE Communications Society Distinguished Lecturer for 2007-2008. For more information, see http://www.cvt-dallas.org/.

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NanoTX'07 to Feature Important Printed Electronics Summit (Oct. 3-4)

After a successful Chicago inaugural conference in April, top minds in the emerging technology of printed electronics will hold a Summit at nanoTX'07 October 3-4. "This is a world-class line-up of international speakers from commercial and academic innovators in thin film, organic, and printable electronics," says Ray Pementel, the Summit's chair.

A broad range of industries are being transformed as never before by these rapidly advancing micro- and nanotechnology developments, including aerospace, chemicals, consumer goods, electronics, food & beverage, medical devices, packaging and semiconductors. The audience will include senior executives from the corporate world, and institutional venture capital executives will also be present. "The real promise of printed electronics is in the inherent lower capital requirements and unit manufacturing costs compared with the traditional photolithography processes used in silicon-based electronics," said Pimentel.

In much the same way that the printed word had such a profound impact on the world beginning in the 15th century, printed electronics now has the potential to revolutionize electronics and manufacturing through innovative advances in equipment, processes, and materials. "Advances in printed electronics are being driven by the unprecedented convergence of industries that have never before been so intricately linked, including semiconductors, aerospace, electronics, packaging, printing and consumer goods," echoed Peter Balbus, a recognized expert in nanotechnology commercialization.

The exciting future of printed electronics is that it will enable a wide range of next-generation products including photovoltaics, batteries, and fuel cells; medical diagnostic and therapeutic applications; radio frequency identification (RFID) tags and other components; smart cards, smart labels, and smart packaging; lighting; display applications such as flexible displays, advertising and point-of-purchase displays, and components for high-end LCD and OLED displays.

Perhaps the most ongoing area of technological debate to be addressed during the Summit will be whether ink-jet printing or conventional analog graphic arts processes such as screen printing, gravure, offset printing and flexography will prevail. There are strongly held opinions on both sides of the argument.

The Printed Electronics Summit continues the work begun in Chicago to bring all these industries together in one common forum to discuss the factual state of the art in printed electronics and identify the technological and business hurdles to be solved next. The aim is always to separate hype from reality and identify where the real opportunities are emerging from a product and market development perspective.

NanoTX'07 means business, and succeeds by working closely with Industry, Capital, Governments, Universities and R&D labs (www.nanotx.biz). Featured are the major four co-locating Expos: Defense/Homeland Security/Aerospace, BioMed/Health Science/Nanohealth, Energy/Chemical/Environment, Semiconductor/MEMS/NEMS.

Trends/Finance/Investing are also thoroughly covered, and featured this year are one-on-one sessions with VCs and other investors.

NanoTX'07 is the one nanotechnology conference & trade expo during International Nanotechnology Week, hosted at the Dallas Convention Center October 3-4, 2007, created to highlight the world's commercial micro and nanotechnology initiatives. Exhibitors at nanoTX show their brands as major industry leaders in science, technology, engineering, and the Global Nanotech Business Community. This vital conference attracts attention from thousands of technology leaders in the Americas and abroad. Here top minds from around the world confer at important Summits, not only in Printed Electronics, but also in Advanced Materials, Energy, Health, Environment, CMOS, etc. The kick-off is a Nobel Laureates Legends Reception, the industry's premier networking event, which hosts luminaries of the business and scientific community under one roof, bringing nanotech issues to the forefront while sharing knowledge and solutions.

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BioPartnering Europe (BPE) Calls for Applications to Present (Oct. 7-9)

Technology Vision Group LLC (TVG) calls for applications to present at the 15th Annual BioPartnering Europe conference (BPE), to be held in London, England on October 7-9, 2007. BPE offers innovative ways for emerging biotechnology companies to showcase their businesses to top decision makers from leading pharmaceutical, biotechnology, service, and financial organizations.

Applications to present can be submitted online at: http://www.techvision.com/bpe/registration/presenter/apply.php. This year, BioPartnering Europe has increased their onsite meeting space capacity by 50% in order to accommodate the number of one-to-one meetings expected. Last year over 1200 international delegates attended BPE, where they participated in well over 4000 one-to-one meetings that were facilitated through biopartnering.com, Technology Vision Group's state-of-the-art partnering software.

Full details about BioPartnering Europe can be found online at: http://www.techvision.com.

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2007 IEEE Dallas Engineering in Medicine and Biology Workshop (Nov. 11-12)

The IEEE Dallas Chapter of Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society is conducting a two day workshop to provide a forum for sharing ideas related to research and development in EMBS related fields. The workshop will be held on the campus of The University of Texas at Dallas. The workshop will provide a forum for and welcomes original technical papers on the engineering applications towards advancement of life and health science systems. Global leaders from academia, industry, and government will be invited to address novel technologies. For more information, see http://www.eac.utdallas.edu/biomed