SIGMOBILE FY'98 Annual Report
July 1997 - June 1998
Submitted by: Victor Bahl, SIGMOBILE Vice Chair
I. Introduction
SIGMOBILE experienced
a period of impressive growth and acceptance among both
the academic and industrial communities. It easily succeeded
in its primary goals of fostering research and inventions
and of encouraging intellectual discussions among researchers
and practitioners from different areas in the field
of mobile and wireless systems and communications.
SIGMOBILE's
MobiCom
conference also consolidated its position as a premiere
international computer science conference in this field.
Even though this was the first time the conference was
held outside the United States, a record number of high-quality
papers were submitted, and many world-renowned researchers
attended the 5-day event. SIGMOBILE's on-going initiatives
for further growing the field were successful, as it
cooperated with and promoted several international workshops
and meetings related to the mobility of systems, users,
and networks.
SIGMOBILE's official publication,
MC2R,
also continued to gain popularity, as demonstrated by
the increased number of subscriptions and an increased
number of article, paper, and report submissions from
well-regarded researchers in the field. To meet the
demand, MC2R's page budget was increased
50% by the SIG Board. In addition, SIGMOBILE took concrete
steps to improve its internet presence, providing members
with up-to-date information on relevant key activities
and events and a compilation of the first-ever list
of Ph.D's granted in this field.
II. Executive Committee Changes
Citing personal reasons and a need to spend more time
with their families, the following members of the Executive
Committee stepped down in October of 1997:
- Dr. Kazem Sohraby of Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies
- Dr. Anton T. Dahbura of Digital Equipment
Corporation
- Dr. Krishan Sabnani of Bell Labs, Lucent
Technologies
Understanding that there are certain things in life that
take higher priority, we thanked these fine individuals
for the time and energy they spent in getting SIGMOBILE
on its feet and wished them well. We expect them to continue
participating and contributing to SIGMOBILE as members.
While we are sad to lose them, we are delighted to
announce that the following well-known researchers and
leaders in our field have joined the Executive Committee:
- Prof. Dave Johnson of Carnegie Mellon University
as Treasurer
- Prof. Chris Rose of Rutgers University as
Secretary and
- Dr. Ramón Cáceres of AT&T
Labs as Director of Information Services
All three individuals are passionate about mobile communications
and have devoted their careers to this field. Most SIGMOBILE
members are already familiar with Dave and Chris, noting
the excellent job they did as Program Committee Chairs
for MobiCom'97,
and Ramón is a well-known researcher who has published
papers that are often cited by other researchers. Each
of these individuals has clearly demonstrated leadership
and drive, and we eagerly look forward to working with
them in the coming years. Interestingly, with the inclusion
of these three gentlemen, the Executive Committee now
has a healthy balance between industry (Victor, On-Ching,
and Ramón) and university (Imrich, Dave, and Chris)
representation.
In addition, we are also very happy to welcome Dr.
Ravi Jain of Bellcore, who has accepted the position
of Workshop and Conference Coordinator, a position
left vacant by Prof. Chris Rose.
III. Publication Initiatives
Mobile
Computing and Communications Review (MC2R):
Established in April 1997, MC2R has become
the primary news forum for SIGMOBILE members to share
and read about recent research directions and results,
and to follow relevant meetings and events around the
world that they were unable to attend. MC2R
continued to maintain the highest publication standards
by publishing double-blind peer-reviewed journal-style
and tutorial-style papers covering some of the most
important and emerging areas of mobile computing and
wireless networking. Regularly published articles included:
meeting reports from the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF), the Wireless ATM Forum (WATM), IEEE and ACM
conference reports, and book reviews. In addition to
these timely and informative articles, several opinion
columns and essays from established leaders in the field
were also published.
Since the publication of the first issue in April
1997, five additional issues were published between
July 1997 and June 1998. Due to the growing popularity
of this newsletter and in response to a request made
by the editors, ACM's SIG Board approved a 50% increase
in the overall page budget for MC2R in March
1998. Despite this expansion in submitted and ultimately
published papers, MC2R has managed to maintain
an extremely small average turnaround time of less than
6 months between submission and physical publication.
Some of the notable initiatives taken in MC2R
this past year included:
- Cross-Indexing of Articles:
Articles published in MC2R are now indexed
within INSPEC:
INSPEC is easily the most well-used and well-known
science and engineering index. This was thus an
important milestone for MC2R and SIGMOBILE,
as it brings to the forefront the work published
in MC2R to a much larger community of
researchers worldwide. As INSPEC users' keyword
searches hit our articles, we expect that papers
published in MC2R will be cited in future
publications of these researchers, thus enhancing
the reputation of our Newsletter and SIGMOBILE.
- Web Presence:
A leading-edge web site was established for MC2R.
- Our web site has become the focal point for most
author submission activities, providing substantial
document preparation information and feedback. We
are able to maintain short turnaround times by working
exclusively through electronic mail, reducing author,
referee and editor burdens.
IV. Conference Highlights
MobiCom'97,
Budapest, Hungary:
The Third Annual ACM/IEEE International Conference on
Mobile Computing and Networking (MobiCom'97), was held
26-30 September 1997, in Budapest, Hungary. The conference
sessions took place in the beautiful Hungarian Academy
of Sciences building, near the historic Chain Bridge,
in the most scenic part of Budapest.
MobiCom'97 marked the third consecutive year of growth
for this conference series. We received 101 research
paper submissions, a growth in number of about 10% over
last year, from which 26 "best of the best" papers were
selected for presentation at the conference. The largest
number of submissions came from the United States, although
papers were submitted from 18 different countries, and
well over half of the submitted papers came from outside
the United States, demonstrating the truly international
flavor of the conference and the research area. The
paper review process was double-blind (reviewers were
not provided author information) and almost all papers
received three or more independent detailed reviews
from Technical Program Committee members. All this resulted
in an excellent technical program on the cutting edge
of mobile computing and networking.
Two workshops were held in parallel on the day following
the conference on 1 October 1997:
- The Second International Workshop on Satellite-based
Information Systems (WOSBIS'97) and
- The First International Workshop on Discrete Algorithms
and Methods for Mobile Computing and Communications
(DIAL-M).
Overall, MobiCom'97 featured an excellent technical program
on the cutting edge of mobile computing and networking.
We also had an enjoyable, fun-filled social program, that
included a welcoming reception at the Museum of Ethnography,
the conference dinner banquet at Visegrád
(featuring a 13th century castle with a medieval knight's
tournament before a dinner), and a dinner cruise on the
Danube River.
The SIGMOBILE Executive Committee approved a request
by ACM to provide the past and present MobiCom conference
proceedings to ACM DIGITAL LIBRARY subscribers.
V. Workshops/Symposiums
In an effort to attract a wider audience and to foster
exchange of ideas and research in upcoming areas, ACM
SIGMOBILE is promoting four workshops which will be
co-located with MobiCom'98. These workshops will be
held in parallel on October 30, 1998:
- The Second International Workshop on Discrete Algorithms
and Methods for Mobile Computing and Communications
(DIAL-M'98)
- The Third International Workshop on Satellite-Based
Information Services (WOSBIS'98)
- Workshop on Wireless Mobile Multimedia (WOW-MOM)
- Workshop on Service Discovery in the Internet
In addition, ACM SIGMOBILE "cooperated" with several international
workshops this last year, including:
- The
First International Symposium on Wearable Computers
(ISWC'97), Cambridge, MA, USA, 13-14 October 1997
- Rutgers
WINLAB's first international meeting on newly allocated
U-NII band (Focus'98), Long Branch, New Jersey,
USA, 22-23 June 1998
- The
First Workshop on Wireless Broadband Testbeds (DEMO'98),
Berlin, Germany, 15 October 1998
- The Third
International Workshop on Multiaccess, Mobility and
Teletraffic for Wireless Communications (MMT'98),
Washington, DC, USA, 21-23 October 1998
VI. Awards
This year's SIGMOBILE Outstanding Contribution Award
was given to Professor David J. Goodman, the
Director of the Wireless Information Networking Laboratory
(WINLAB) at Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA. Professor
Goodman has been a leader in the field of wireless networking
for the past twenty years, with far-reaching achievements
as researcher, manager, teacher, and visionary. In particular,
this Award recognizes David's contributions to multimedia
wireless communication technology, as exemplified by
his pioneering concept of Packet Reservation Multiple
Access (PRMA), and his vision and formation of WINLAB,
a well renown research laboratory dedicated to advances
in wireless information networks.
The principal nominator was Prof. Raymond Steele,
Chairman of Multiple Access Communications, Inc., and
head of Communications Research, University of Southampton,
U.K. The other nominators were Dr. On-Ching Yue from
Lucent Technologies, Dr. Larry Greenstein, Head of wirelesss
communications research at AT&T, Prof, Jack Holtzman
from Rutgers University, and Dr. Sanjeev Nanada from
Lucent Technology.
This year's Best Student Paper Award at MobiCom'97
went to Todd D. Hodes, a graduate student in
the EECS Department at the University of California,
Berkeley, for his paper titled, "Composable Ad Hoc Mobile
Services for Universal Interaction".
VII. Collaborative Efforts with Other SIGs or Sibling
Societies
MobiCom'97 was co-sponsored by ACM SIGCOMM, the IEEE
Communications Society, and the Hungarian Academy of
Sciences, with support from HP,
IBM, and Westel 900.
MobiCom'98 is being co-sponsored by ACM SIGCOMM and
the IEEE Communications Society, with support from Microsoft
Research.
VIII. Future Plans
Our membership experienced notable growth after MobiCom'97.
Our retention rate has also been fairly high, and when
we consider that there were no major membership promotion
campaigns during this period, this is very encouraging.
This year, we intend to aggressively pursue plans to
attract new members. Our Director of Membership is working
closely with the MobiCom'98 registration chair to come
up with innovative ways of attracting new members.
Our flagship conference, MobiCom'98, will be held
October 25-30, 1998, in Dallas, Texas. The number of
papers submitted to the conference this year was an
all-time high of 148, an increase of 46% over last year's
conference. This indicates a substantial increase in
interest and coverage for both SIGMOBILE and MobiCom.
Also this year, one of our corporate supporters donated
funds for the Best Student Paper Award. These funds
will enable us to create plaques for all the winners
of this Award since 1995. The 1998 Award plaque (along
with an honorarium) will be presented during the conference
in Dallas, while winners from previous years will be
mailed their plaques shortly thereafter.
MobiCom'99 will be held in Seattle, Washington, and
MobiCom 2000 is planned for Europe.
IX. Listing of Computer and Other Equipment Purchases
None.
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