• On-Site Registration Opens:
    30 November 2008

  • Awards Luncheon:
    1 December 2008

  • Exhibit Opening & 
    Welcome Reception:
    1 December 2008

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cisco

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Ladies and Gentlemen,

On behalf of the entire Technical Program Committee, welcome to IEEE GLOBECOM 2008 in New Orleans, USA!  As one of the two major IEEE Communications Society Conferences held annually, IEEE GLOBECOM 2008 is a major event in our field.  With the hard work and dedication of each of the TPC volunteers, we have assembled an excellent technical program for you.

Regular papers presented at IEEE GLOBECOM this year are organized into 11 Symposia using the format established by the IEEE GLOBECOM/ICC Technical Committee and were fully reviewed using a GITC-approved process.  We hope this will further improve the quality of the program.  IEEE GLOBECOM 2008 received submissions from 66 countries: 2854 symposium paper submissions and an additional 112 submissions for other technical events.  We accepted 1051 symposium submissions, for an overall acceptance rate of 36.8%.  Each paper was carefully peer-reviewed by at least three of the 4847 reviewers working with more than 1000 TPC members.  These papers will be presented in blocks of 3 daily sessions with 17 parallel oral sessions and 3 poster sessions in each block, for a total of 153 oral sessions and 27 poster sessions over three days. 

We are particularly excited to also have a Special Session on the History of Telecommunications.  Organized by Professors Jacob Baal-Schem and Mischa Schwartz, we think this will be a particularly interesting and worthwhile addition to the conference technical program.  This session will start with an invited lecture  on The History of OFDM by Dr. Steve Weinstein, and culminate with a panel discussion on The Invention of Radio.  We engineers too often forget our history and the men and women who struggled and worked to create our modern world, and it is sometimes worthwhile to pause and reflect upon our journey to this modern world we often take for granted.

In addition to the regular and special paper and poster sessions, we have a full schedule of excellent Tutorials and Workshops on Sunday and Thursday.  A total of 64 Tutorial and 14 Workshop proposals were submitted and the Chairs of these events have selected 22 tutorials and 9 workshops for you.  We also have an exciting program of 18 Design and Developers Forum sessions on Monday through Wednesday, oriented toward practicing engineers in industry.  In addition, we are co-located with the 2008 World Telecommunications Congress (WTC) and the 2008 IEEE Enterprise Networking Conference (EntNet), providing an even more varied and interesting set of choices and opportunities.  We also encourage you to visit the exhibitions in the Expo area and see what’s new and exciting.  With all of these opportunities, we hope your only problem will be to decide how to fit it all into five days!
                                                  
Such a comprehensive, high-quality program is not possible without the hard work and devotion of a very large number of individuals.  We extend our sincere thanks and appreciation to all TP volunteers and would like to recognize, particularly, the exceptional work rendered by the IEEE GC’08 Symposium co-chairs, Tutorial co-chairs, Workshops chair, and D&D co-chairs.

Yet with all of the interesting technical opportunities available, as New Orleanians we hope you will take a bit of time to explore our City.  We are justifiably proud, we think, of how far we have come since Hurricane Katrina and hope you will enjoy those areas that have recovered, or perhaps choose to visit those areas where unfortunately recovery has not been as rapid.  We are likewise proud of our many world-famous restaurants and invite you to sample that special blend of Creole, Cajun, and Southern Cooking that characterizes New Orleans Cuisine.  Or perhaps you will wish to enjoy jazz at one of our many clubs, take a boat ride down the Mississippi River, ride a streetcar along St. Charles Avenue, or visit out world-famous Zoo, Aquarium, and new Insectarium.

However you spend your time here, we hope you find it memorable and enjoyable and that you will, as we say here in New Orleans, “Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulez” …“Let the Good Times Roll!

Edit Kaminsky

 

 

Edit Kaminsky Bourgeois, Ph.D. 
Technical Program
Co-Chair
IEEE GLOBECOM 2008 

Francis Grozs

 

 

Francis B. Grosz,  Jr., Ph.D., P.E.
Technical Program
Co-Chair
IEEE GLOBECOM 2008