************************************************************* IEEE CAS Technical Committee on Nonlinear Circuits and Systems TCNCAS Technical Committee Officers Report Date: May 22, 1997. ************************************************************* Chair: (Term in the office: from 05/94-05/97) Prof. Maciej J. Ogorzalek Department of Electrical Engineering University of Mining and Metallurgy al. Mickiewicza 30 30-059 Krakow Poland Tel.: +48-12-17 36 13 Fax: +48-12-34 48 25 E-mail: maciej@zet.agh.edu.pl Chair-Elect: (Term in the office: from 05/95-05/98) Dr. Ljiljana Trajkovic University of California, Berkeley Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences 213 Cory Hall Berkeley, CA 94720-1770 Tel.: +1-510-643 8351 Fax: +1-510-642 2739 E-mail: ljilja@eecs.berkeley.edu WWW: http://diva.eecs.berkeley.edu/~ljilja Secretary: (Term of Office: 05/96-05/99) Prof. M. Peter Kennedy Dept. of Electronic and Electrical Engineering University College Dublin Belfield Dublin 4 Ireland Tel.: +353-1-706 1963 Fax: +353-1-283 0921 E-mail: Peter.Kennedy@ucd.ie WWW: http://vdp.ucd.ie/personnel/cv-mpk.html ************************************************************* Technical Committee on Nonlinear Circuits and Systems TCNCAS 1996 Committee Activities 1996 was another successful year for the Technical Committee on Nonlinear Circuits and Systems, with support for nonlinear activities at eight major conferences and workshops, and the creation of our home page. This year, Prof. Michael Peter Kennedy and Prof. Maciej Ogorzalek have organized a special session on ``Applications of Chaos in Communications'' (SS3/Track 2) at ISCAS'97 9--12 June, 1997. Building on the success of last year's workshop in Seville, the fifth international specialist workshop on Nonlinear Dynamics of Electronic Systems (NDES'97) will take place in Moscow, Russia, on 26--27 June, 1997. For the past two years, this exciting meeting of mathematicians and engineers from eastern and western Europe, the US and Japan, has been supported by the TCNCAS. There will be two special sessions devoted to nonlinear dynamics at ECCTD'97, which will take place in Budapest, Hungary, from 30 August to 3 September, 1997: ``Nonlinear analyst's tools for practical circuits and systems,'' and ``Spread spectrum communications and chaos.'' The 1997 International Symposium on Nonlinear Theory and its Applications (NOLTA'97) will be held in the Hilton Hawaiian Village, Hawaii, from 29 November through 3 December, 1997. Two special issues of the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems are also in preparation. There has been an overwhelming response to the Call for Papers for the special issue of Part I on ``Chaos Synchronization, Control, and Applications''. This special issue will appear in October 1997. A Call for Papers has been issued for an application-oriented special issue of the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems Part II on ``Advances in Nonlinear Electronic Circuits.'' The deadline for receipt of submissions is 31 July 1997. Other suggested activities during the TC meeting at ISCAS'96: A. Cooperation with the IEICE Technical Group on Nonlinear Problems: Ideas are sought for possible collaboration with the IEICE society. B. Issues already proposed but still remaining undeveloped: 1. Establishment of undergraduate competition in nonlinear circuit design. 2. Establishment of a list of unsolved important problems in Nonlinear Circuits and Systems Theory. A tentative list was suggested by Prof. Mike Green for future discussion: a. Find an upper bound, using physically realizable transistor models, on the maximum number of operating points of a circuit that contains positive-valued resistors, diodes, independent sources and n transistors, for any positive integer n. A method to construct a circuit that possesses this maximum number of operating points, for any n, must be given. b. Find criteria that identify the stability of any dc operating point of a nonlinear circuit. c. Construct a homotopy that will thread through every dc operating point of any physically realizable nonlinear circuit. Prof. Michael Peter Kennedy, as the current Secretary of the TNCAS, has recently provided a report of the TCNCAS activities for the IEEE CAS Newsletter. Dr. Ljiljana Trajkovic and the TC members created the TCNCAS mailing list (alias: tcncas@eecs.berkeley.edu) with 45 subscribing members, and the website (http://diva.eecs.berkeley.edu/~ljilja/tcncas/) that contains TC news, TC meeting minutes, conference reports, useful information regarding past and future conferences, and links to other sites of interest. Sites of interests that can be directly reached: ISCAS'97: http://www.eee.hku.hk/~iscas97/ NDES'97: http://www.aha.ru/~asd/Ndes_h~1.htm ECCTD'97: http://www.mmt.bme.hu/ecctd97/ NOLTA'97: http://www.tlab.ee.sophia.ac.jp/nolta97/ The next annual meeting of the TCNCAS is scheduled for Thursday, June 12th, during lunch break (12:00-14:00) at ISCAS'97 in Hong Kong. *************************************************************