Minutes of Annual Meeting of the
Nonlinear Circuits and Systems Technical Committee

Monday, May 29, 2000, 13:00 - 14:30 PM
Intercontinental Hotel, Nations Room
ISCAS'00 Geneva, Switzerland
List of attendees:
Dmitry Altshuller, Guanrong (Ron) Chen (Chair, Elect), Geoffrey Coram, Tetsuro Endo, Rui J. P. de Figueiredo, Marco Gilli, Michael Green, Leonid Goldgeisser, Naohiko Inaba, Kenya Jinno, Peter Kennedy (Past Chair), Henry Leung, Wolfgang Mathis, Gian Mario Maggio, Shinsaku Mori, Tetsuo Nishi (Chair), Yoshifumi Nishio, Maciej Ogorzalek, Kai Pahlke (spell OK?), Irwin W. Sandberg, Arturo Sarmiento Reyes, Martin Streitenberger, Mamoru Tanaka, Ljiljana Trajkovic, Joos Vandewalle, Alan Willson, Armen Zemanian.

Agenda:

1. Chair's report on the past year's activities of the Technical Committee:

The report can be found at http://divine.EECS.Berkeley.EDU/~ljilja/tcncas/reports/tc-report00.html

REPORT OF THE NONLINEAR CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS TECHNICAL COMMITTEE, IEEE CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS SOCIETY, FOR THE PERIOD 6/99 - 5/00.

During 1999 the members of the Nonlinear Circuits and Systems Technical Committee (NCAS TC) participated in major conferences and workshops, organized special sessions, and edited five special issues of CAS related journals and two books.

At the 1999 European Conference on Circuit Theory and Design (ECCTD'99: August 29 - September 2, 1999, Stresa; General Chairman: P. P. Civalleri, Technical Program Chairman: C. Beccari)

  • - H. Dedieu and M. Ogorzalek organized a special session on ``Nonlinear Tools for Signal Analysis''
  • - M. P. Kennedy organized a special session on ``Communicating with Chaos'',
  • - J. Vandewalle and J. Suykens organized a special session on ``Neural Networks for Classification''
  • - T. Roska organized a special session on ``CNN Applications''.
    More than 350 papers were presented in 47 regular and 10 special sessions to over 400 delegates. Eight tutorials were presented by outstanding scientists, and a full-day lecture on ``Cellular visual Microprocessors'' was organized by T. Roska with the support of the CAS society. The European Circuit Society conferred the Best Paper Award to G. M. Maggio, O. De Feo and M. P. Kennedy for their paper entitled ``An Explicit Expression for the Amplitude of Oscillation in the Colpitts Oscillator''.

    The beautiful Hilton Waikoloa Village Hawaii was the wonderful surrounding for the 1999 International Symposium on Nonlinear Theory and its applications (NOLTA'99: November 28 - December 2, 1999; General Chairman: S. Shinoda, Technical Program Chairman: M. P. Kennedy). More than 230 papers were presented in 39 regular and 9 special sessions. Once again, the members of our committee actively contributed to the success of the event by organizing the following special sessions:

  • - ``Chaos Control and Synchronization'', (J. Vandewalle and J. Suykens)
  • - ``Cellular Neural Networks'' (T. Roska and A. Ushida)
  • - ``Space-Time Chaos: Characterization, Synchronization, Control and Applications'' (M. Ogorzalek).
    The success of the symposium also benefited from two very effective keynote lectures presented by L.O. Chua and I. Sandberg.

    The seventh International Specialist Workshop on Nonlinear Dynamics of Electronic Systems was held in Ronne, Denmark, (NDES'99: July 15-17, 1999; General Chairman: E. Lindberg, Technical Program Chairman: W. Schwarz), where 61 contributions were presented.

    In 2000, the NCAS TC is supporting:

  • 2000 International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS'2000: May 28-31, 2000; General Chair: Martin Hasler; Technical Program Chair: J. Vandewalle, Geneva, Switzerland). Special Sessions: ``Controlling chaotic dynamical systems, I, II''.

  • The 8th International Specialist Workshop on Nonlinear Theory and its Applications (NDES'2000: May 18-20 Catania; General Chairman: L. Fortuna, Technical Program Committee: G. Mazzini, R. Rovatti, G. Setti). Eighty-five contributions were submitted and fifty-seven papers were presented in ten oral and two poster sessions. The three keynote lectures were given by I. Pitas, S. Isola and M. Ogorzalek.

  • COC '2000 (International Conference on Control of Oscillations and Chaos, St. Petersburg, Russia, July 5-7, 2000).

    Five special issues of CAS-related journals were prepared during the last year.

  • (a) IEICE Transactions on Fundamentals, Special issue on ``Nonlinear Theory and its Applications (NOLTA'98)'' (devoted, but not restricted, to papers presented at NOLTA'98), Guest Editor: Tohru Kohda, September 1999.
  • (b) Analog Integrated Circuits and Signal Processing Special issue on ``DC operating points of electrical circuits,'' Guest Editor: Lj. Trajkovic, scheduled for 2000
  • (c) International Journal of Circuit Theory and Applications Special issue on ``Communications, Information Processing and Control using Chaos,'' Guest Editors: Martin Hasler and Joos Vandewalle, November 1999.
  • (d) International Journal of Bifurcation and Chaos Special issue on ``Chaos Control and Synchronization,'' Guest Editors: Guanrong Chen and Maciej Ogorzalek March 2000.
  • (e) IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems -- Part I Special issue on ``Noncoherent Chaotic Communications'' Guest Editors: Peter Kennedy and Geza Kolumban.

    Two books were also edited during 1999.

  • (a) ``Controlling Chaos and Bifurcations in Engineering Systems,'' CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, USA, 1999 Editor: Guanrong Chen.
  • (b) ``Chaotic Electronics in Telecommunications,'' CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, USA, 2000 Editors: M. P. Kennedy, R. Rovatti, G. Setti.

    Discussion:
    Peter Kennedy proposed to implement a ``Student Challenge fund''. The idea has been proposed some time ago by Michael Green but nothing was done to implement it. The main idea is to post several challenging problems facing nonlinear and general circuits and systems on the Internet, and to associate some money for students who approach and resolve some of those problems. The idea seems to be good and might bring some interest to the problems we are facing. No details have been discussed yet.

    Elections of the TC officers (term ending at ISCAS 2001):
    Prof. Tetsuo Nishi was appointed Past-Chair.
    Prof. G. Ron Chen was elected Chair.
    Dr. Gianluca Setti was appointed Chair-Elect.
    Dr. Leonid Goldgeisser was elected Secretary.
    Dr. Gian Mario Maggio was appointed Track Chair for Nonlinear Circuits and Systems at ISCAS 2001.