UMIC NEWS 1/08. Table of Contents.

Transcription

1 NEWS 1/08 Ultr High-Speed Mobile Informtion nd Communiction Tble of Contents Intro Messge from the coordintor Messge from the DFG Energy Efficiency DSA OSIP Prof. R. Mthr: Guest professorship t Cnterbury University, New Zelnd Guest Column Dr. P. Meissner, Advisory Bord MPSoC 08 MDM 08 Upcoming Events Networking 2009 ICWL

2 Intro Ultr High-Speed Mobile Informtion nd Communiction () is the only cluster of excellence in the res of Electricl Engineering nd Computer Science pproved under the excellence inititive of the Germn Federl nd Stte government. The focus of reserch is on mobile informtion nd communiction systems of the next decde. The service qulity s perceived by the users must be t lest n order of mgnitude over tht of tody's systems with lower cost. This gol cn only be chieved by joint interdisciplinry reserch, tking ll spects into ccount from mobile pplictions to ultr-highly integrted implementtion. Key pillrs of the cluster reserch re Mobile Appliction nd Services, Wireless Trnsport Pltform nd RF Subsystems nd SoC Design. The close interdisciplinry coopertion of the prticipting tems is essentil for the success of the cluster. 2 Messge from the coordintor Reserch trgets of Wireless Trnsport Pltform re smrt, mobile, brodbnd nd low-cost systems, which provide dptive configurtion nd semless connectivity, blncing between conflicting trgets like dt-rte, rdio rnge nd power consump-tion by continuous joint optimiztion. Mtching requirements nd fetures of pplictions nd services on the one hnd nd of the wireless trnsport pltform on the other hnd is key pproch of the reserch re Mobile Applictions nd Services. Design methodology nd implementtion re ddressed by RF Subsystems nd SoC Design. Gret chllenges to be tckled re the nnometer- CMOS integrtion of flexible rdio frequency subsystems required for cognitive terminls nd Multi- Processor-System-on-Chip (MPSoC) pltforms, designed for mximum performnce nd energy efficiency, tking into ccount the This is the first issue of the Newsletter which will pper on regulrly bsis from now on. The strt of the Newsletter is indicting tht is gining lot of momentum now tht it is in its second yer. In the elpsed time lot of effort went into building up the tems, lloction of the new professorships nd cretion of the infrstructure, both concerning investments nd logistics. In prllel mny interdisciplinry reserch projects strted with reserchers from different prticipting chirs working in close collbortion. In April the newly ppointed dvisory bord held its inugurtion meeting where Peter Meissner ws elected s chirmn. The dvisory bord greed tht it is willing to tke n ctive role in mking success nd lredy provided very vluble input for the strtegic plnning of reserch. We re looking forwrd to the next meeting in October which is scheduled the dy before the Dy. After the well received first Dy lst yer we will now hold Dys nnully in October. The 2008 Dy on October 21, 2008 fetures keynote by Professor Jim Mssey who is known to deliver speeches tht re fetures nd issues of future silicon technology genertions. Reserch topics like performnce nd relibility of complex systems, privcy nd security, energy efficiency, nd softwre rchitecture ffecting ll pillrs of the reserch re grouped within the reserch Interdisciplinry Methods nd Tools. Nucleus of the cluster reserch is the centre, hosting the interdisciplinry reserch tems heded by Junior Professors nd Distinguished Reserchers, the prototyping lbs nd demonstrtor spce. More thn 20 chirs nd institutes from the Electricl Engineering nd Informtion Technology Fculty nd the Computer Science Deprtment of RWTH Achen re ctive members of the reserch cluster. scientific highlights nd yet entertining. His speech will be complemented by presenttions of selected reserch work nd by demonstrtions. The detiled progrmme is vilble online ( home pge, Clendr of Events). Gerd Ascheid, ISS

3 Messge Messge from the DFG The beginnings of Germny's Excellence Inititive my be dted bck to Jnury At n innovtion congress hosted by the Federl Ministry of Eduction nd Reserch, the then cting Federl Minister, Edelgrd Bulmhn nnounced to instll five Elite Universities in Germny. As motto for this ide she hd chosen the slogn brin up!, remrkble expression tht quickly gined some fmousness. Since then, it does not pper to be mishp tht the concept of the whole inititive hs substntilly been developed nd tht it is now well run under the dministrtion of the Wissenschftsrt nd the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschft. Wikipedi offers second version for the origin of the whole excellence-ide: ccording to the online encyclopedi, the Excellence Inititive ws initilly triggered by the uction of the UMTSlicenses in summer 2000, filling the public coffers with some 50 billion Euros. True or not, in the context of the -Cluster t lest, let us stick to this version. For it nicely illustrtes tht industry more specific: communiction industry hs n importnt impct on modern societies nd is ble to stimulte excellent reserch nd new technologicl developments. And now tht the Excellence Inititive is well on its wy, the -Cluster my be bout to prove tht this other wy round is just s stimulting nd tht there will be n importnt impct from its reserch ctivities on new industril developments nd innovtive communiction tools. The Excellence Inititive firstly ims t promoting scientific excellence. Another mjor gol is to strengthen the links between fundmentl reserch nd industril development. And thirdly, it is ment to boost the Germn scientific lndscpe nd to help higher eduction institutions to distinguish themselves mongst mny nd rise their profiles in public wreness. Admittedly, the overll budget of 1.9 billion Euros for the Excellence Inititive is rther slender compred to the gins of the UMTS-uction. Nonetheless, lredy fter one nd hlf yers of funding, one my sy tht the Excellence Inititive is on good wy to chieve its high mbitions, nd it seems befitting to sy tht new spirit hs found its wy into Germn universities. The -Cluster must be congrtulted to be one of the plces where this spirit becomes plpble. Hopefully its work will continue s successfully s it hs begun. And if one dy the UMTSstndrd will be replced by -stndrd, nd n uction of new -licenses will tke plce, count on the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschft climing the biggest shre of the proceeds to be reinvested into excellent reserch ctivities! Georg Düchs, DFG Progrm Officer PhD News Optimiztion Algorithms for Resource Alloction in OFDMA Systems Dipl.-Mth. Michel Reyer t the Institute for Theoreticl Informtion Technology. The incresing demnd for high dt rtes requires creful, preferbly optiml exploittion of the existing resources. In this thesis the potentils of resource lloction in OFDMA systems re identified nd optiml solutions re developed. There re essentilly two pproches to dynmic resource lloction. First, the so clled mrgin dptive objective is to minimize the overll power subject to individul rte con-strints. Second, the rte dptive problem ims t mximizing the overll trnsmission rte subject to power constrint. There is close reltionship between both pproches for the single user nd multi user problem. The optiml solution of the single user problem is efficiently determined by pplying generlized wter filling principle. For multi user scenrios optiml solutions cn be chieved only for moderte problem sizes. However, ner optiml solutions revilble by dul methods. The dulity gp converges to zero s the number of subcrriers increses. For prcticl chnnels, however, dul methods re too slow for the mrgin dptive problem. Existing nd new heuristics for this type of problem re evluted reveling the high potentil of dynmic resource lloction. 3

4 Energy Efficiency on the Appliction Lyer presented t Top Interntionl Conferences In the reserch re D the chir of computer science i9 heded by Prof. Dr. T. Seidl is working on solutions tht improve the energy efficiency of pplictions on mobile devices. Both dt dissemintion, s in brodcsting scenrios, nd dt provisioning, s in multi-user scenrios or sensor networks, re investigted by the members nd promising results hve been chieved nd published s full ppers on top interntionl conferences such s ACM SIGMOD or ACM CIKM. Besides those publictions the group ws ble to strengthen the visibility of through dditionl work tht ws ccepted nd presented s demonstrtors on three other top conferences: work on dt provisioning hs successfully been presented t ACM SIGKDD 2008 in Ls Vegs, other spects will be presented on ECML/PKDD 2008 in Antwerp nd third demonstrtor presenting results in energy efficient dt brodcsting ws ccepted for the 14th ACM SIGMOBILE Interntionl Conference on Mobile Computing nd Networking 2008 in Sn Frncisco. members of the i9 present their work t the 14thACM SIGKDD Interntionl Conference on Knowledge Discovery nd Dt Mining in Ls Vegs in August P. Krnen, i9 Lod Blncing for Dynmic Spectrum Assignment with Locl Informtion for Secondry Users In this work we study n idelized model of lod blncing for dynmic spectrum lloction (DSA) for secondry users using only locl informtion. In our model, ech gent is ssigned to chnnel nd my ressign its lod in round bsed fshion. We present rndomized protocol in which the ctions of the gents depend purely on some cost mesure (e.g., ltency, inverse of the throughput, etc.) of the currently chosen chnnel. Since gents ct concurrently, the system is prone to oscilltions. We show how this cn be voided gurnteeing convergence towrds stte in which every gent sustins t most certin threshold cost (if such stte exists). We show tht the system converges quickly by giving bounds on the convergence time towrds pproximtely blnced sttes. Our nlysis in the fluid limit (where the number of gents pproches infinity) holds for lrge clss of cost functions. We support our theoreticl nlysis by simultions to determine the dependence on the number of gents. It turns out tht the number of gents ffects the convergence time only in logrithmic fshion. The work shows under quite generl ssumptions tht even n extremely lrge number of users using severl hundreds of (virtul) chnnels cn work in DSA fshion. Simon Fischer, Petri Mähönen, Mrcel Schöngens, Berthold Vöcking Book Announcement Principles of Model Checking This textbook, by Joost-Pieter Ktoen (MOVES Group) nd Christel Bier (TU Dresden), just ppered t MIT Press nd provides one of the most comprehensive introductions to logic model checking vilble tody (993 pges). Model checking is n extremely useful technique to find errors in softwre nd hrdwre. This yer the ACM wrded the Turing Awrd, the most prestigious prize in computer science, to the pioneers of model checking Clrke, Emerson, nd Sifkis. More info: moves.rwthchen.de/~ktoen. 4

5 OSIP: Energy Operting Efficiency System Appliction the Appliction Specific Lyer Instruction presentset on Top Processor Interntionl Conferences With the dvent of heterogeneous Multiprocessor Systems on Chip (MPSoCs), the complexity of softwre development hs become one of the biggest problems embedded designers hve been fced with. Severl solutions re currently being proposed, but most of them, coming from the high performnce community, rely on highly hierrchicl softwre stcks nd distributed operting systems tht dd time nd energy overhed tht cnnot be tolerted in embedded systems trgeting next genertion mobile communiction devices. Within the context of, n Appliction Specific Instruction Set Processor (ASIP) providing bsic Operting System (OS) functionlity (.k.. OSIP) is being jointly designed t ISS/SSS. The purpose of this system block is to off lod dministrtive tsks from the MPSoC cores nd, t the sme time, ese progrmmbility to leverge the prllel computing power vilble in the MPSoC. The OSIP is integrted both in the Hrdwre (HW) nd in the Softwre (SW) rchitecture of n MPSoC (s shown below). From the HW perspective, OSIP provides the mechnism to trigger different processors nd ssign tsks to them ccording to user-defined policies. From the SW perspective, OSIP provides unified view of the pltform through set of Appliction Progrmming Interfces (APIs) which ese the prllel progrmming ctivity by bstrcting HW detils. The project, strted erly this yer, is reching its finl phse: integrtion nd benchmrking. The OSIP ws modeled using the LISA lnguge lnguge for describing instruction set rchitectures nd is being integrted into CoWre Virtul Pltform (VP) contining severl RISC cores (ARM 9 IP Cores). By using the VP technology, it is possible to debug nd nlyze different spects of the OSIP-bsed pltform, e.g., processor utiliztion, scheduling overhed. Next figure presents screenshot of the nlysis tools while running n H.264 decoder implementtion on the virtul pltform. Once in plce, the OSIP will be used within different projects both in ISS nd in SSS. We believe it represents n importnt vehicle to tme new genertion embedded SoCs. Jeronimo Cstrillon, SSS Book Announcement Retrgetble Processor System Integrtion into Multi- Processor System-on-Chip Pltform by A. Wieferink, H. Meyr, nd R. Leupers, Springer Verlg, July 2008 (ISBN ). The ever incresing complexity of modern electronic devices together with the continully shrinking time-to-mrket nd product lifetimes pose enormous chip design chllenges to meet flexibility, performnce nd energy efficiency constrints. As consequence, the current trend is towrds progrmmble pltforms (Multi-Processor System-on-Chip Pltforms, MP-SoC), which re tilored to the respective trget ppliction. In the usul cse, new pltform is designed by selecting nd ssembling stndrd pltform elements. The first chpters of this book summrize the stte of the rt in ll three involved fields seprtely: generl system level design, communiction modeling, nd processor modeling. The min chpters then present methodology nd the ssocited tooling for enbling design spce explortion s well s successive refinement flow for the design of optimized MP-SoCs with high degree of utomtion. 5

6 Bringing the Spirit of to the Southern Hemisphere 6 In Februry nd Mrch 2008, Professor Rudolf Mthr, principl resercher of nd member of the steering committee, ws invited s Erskine Fellow to the Deprtment of Electricl Engineering t Cnterbury University, Christchurch, New Zelnd. Here is his report. The Erskine fellowship is regrded prestigious wrd nd honour. Cnterbury University tkes extreme cre of the fellows concerning working fcilities, ccommodtion, socil nd culturl events nd integrtion into ll fcets of university life down under. Specil evening receptions re given with the opportunity to meet the vice chncellor nd chncellor, deprtment heds nd, furthermore, members of the university council, the executive bord of Cnterbury University. The sme structure ws recently introduced t RWTH Achen University s n innovtion. Hence, it ws extrordinrily interesting to discuss spects of synergy, coopertion nd effectiveness with members of the council on one nd cdemi on the other hnd. The min purpose of my visit ws to present lecture of 18 hours in totl. It ws the second time for me being invited s Erskine Fellow to Cnterbury, nd bout the sixth time stying in Christchurch. Although quite cquinted to the university system nd teching customs, giving lecture in New Zelnd ws gin vluble experience. Entitled Elements of Mobile Communictions topics of chnnel modelling nd propgtion effects, modultion techniques, multicrrier modultion nd OFDM were treted during the course. Recent reserch results of n ongoing project on optiml subcrrier nd power lloction were eventully included. The midterm ssignment of student's performnce cme s prticulr experience. A specific problem ws given to ech student, nd hd to be solved by extending methods from the lecture. Most students gve excellent presenttions supported by illustrtions nd numericl progrms, which I ws llowed to use for future courses. This is vluble element of ctive prticiption tht I m considering to introduce in my grdute lectures in Achen s well. Cnterbury University ttrcts mny interntionl collegues. Fruitful discussions with reserchers from the USA nd Cnd sometimes filled the dy. Moreover, the University of Cnterbury is centrlly involved in the founding process of n ssocited ntionl innovtion institute NZI3 with trgets closely relted to the reserch progrm. I discussed possible forms of coopertion nd mutul exchnge with Dr. Jeremy Reece, the mnger of the Wireless Reserch Centre. In order to present ongoing reserch I lso gve series of tlks. Two seminr tlks were presented t the Deprtment of Electricl Engineering nd the Deprtment of Computer Science, respectively. Moreover, I ws invited to give n evening speech to the IEEE New Zelnd chpter, which I did with gret plesure nd lot of feedbck from the udience. After hving mrked written exms on Fridy, 4th April I returned to Germny on tight schedule. Arriving in Achen on Sundy I flew to Munich on Tuesdy to present tlk on colloquium in honour of Professor Josef A. Nossek's sixtieth birthdy, nd strted lecturing in Achen the sme week. nd its reserch projects mde me welcome bck home, with number of new ides in mind, nd mteril for new interntionl lecture redy to be tught to our locl students. By the wy, New Zelnd is wonderful country which is worth doring lso from bird's eye view. Over the yers I hve mde number of friends there, some of them re glider pilots, coincidentlly. Rudolf Mthr, TI

7 Guest Column Advisory Bord Ldies nd Gentlemen, Collegues nd Friends, It's my plesure to send this short welcome note to you on behlf of the Advisory Bord. The first newsletter constitutes perfect opportunity to introduce briefly the members of the Advisory Bord, report on the outcome of its first meeting erlier this yer, nd put the reserch objectives nd ctivities in context with ongoing industril developments in future mobile brodbnd services. Immeditely fter the Cluster ws wrded funding, the Steering Committee implemented wht ws proposed in the Proposl for the Estblishment of Cluster of Excellence : An Advisory Bord will be estblished to perform regulr evlution of the reserch progress nd provide recommendtions. To the Advisory Bord renowned experts from leding interntionl universities nd from industry will be invited. Members of the Advisory Bord re: Prof. Ed Brinksm Embedded Systems Institute Eindhoven University of Techn. Prof. Robert Clderbnk Elect. Engineering & Mthemtics Princeton University Prof. Christin S. Jensen Computer Science Alborg University & Google Inc. Prof. Jmes Mssey Digitl Technology ETH Zürich Prof. John McCnny Microelectronics Engineering Queen's University of Belfst Dr. Peter Meissner Operting Officer NGMN Dr. Peter Mihtsch Bord Member Arcor AG, Giesecke & Devrient GmbH, Vodfone D2 GmbH On April 23rd the Advisory Bord ws constituted, nd the first meeting took plce. The very productive meeting embodied excellent presenttions by the members of the Steering Committee; intensive brinstorming; feedbck to the reserchers; nd detiled discussions on 's vision nd mission, the interction between the vrious reserch res nd projects within, the set-up of demonstrtors nd lbs, nd governnce relted topics. As summry it ws stted tht The Bord is very positive bout in generl nd the presented projects in prticulr nd is fully committed to contribute constructively to the success of. As concluding remrk, I would like to put into perspective wht the Next Genertion Mobile Network (NGMN) Allince hs stted in its White Pper: The vision of the NGMN Allince is to provide pltform for innovtion by moving towrds one integrted network for the semless introduction of mobile brodbnd services. The cluster, s member of the NGMN Allince, hs the opportunity to substntilly contribute to mking this vision become relity. I'm looking forwrd to seeing you t the next dy. Sincerely, Dr. Peter Meissner Chirmn of the Advisory Bord Best Note Awrd Thorsten Krrer, PhD cndidte in the cluster t Prof. Jn Borchers' Chir for Computer Science 10 (Medi Computing nd Humn-Computer Interction), received Best Note Awrd t the recent CHI 2008 Conference on Humn Fctors in Computing Systems. CHI is the most influentil interntionl conference in the re of Humn- Computer Interction, orgnized by the ACM, the Assocition for Computing Mchinery, nd highly competitive with cceptnce rtes of 15-25%. Thorsten Krrer's publiction describes the DRAGON system, new interction technique to nvigte video timelines by drgging objects in the video to their intended position. It cn serve to turn the screen of mobile devices into n input device when browsing video mteril. The pper, video, nd demo for Mc OS X re downlodble t 7

8 MPSoC 2008: beutiful week in St. Gerlch Mybe I would never hve come cross Châteu St. Gerlch in my life if it were not the venue of the MPSoC 2008 event. Fortuntely enough, in chrming June week, I not only enjoyed the irresistible beuty of this 800-yer old luxury Châteu ner Mstricht/Achen, but lso hd gret fun in lerning stte-of-the-rt MPSoC technologies from mny top experts round the globe by presenttions nd tlking-in-person. It hs been n unbelievbly rewrding experience for PhD student like me. MPSoC 2008 is the eighth event of the forum series which focuses on the fundmentl nd strtegic issues to mster multi-processor SoC design. This yer the event fetured more thn 50 world-clss spekers from both industry nd cdemi, giving n excellent coverge of the chllenges nd opportunities in the MPSoC. The 4-dy info-pcked presenttions delivered relible nd cler messge on where we re now in the MP-infnt ge nd where we re heding down on the rod to mturity. I prticulrly liked the bredth of the topics to give few exmples, the new technology fronts like 3D chips, efficient hrdwre implementtions e.g. in the streming/sdr res, the exploding MPSoC softwre progrmming chllenges, nd mny proven good prctices from the leding industril compnies which re tremendously helpful nd vluble for the university reserchers. Being confined in the glmorous Châteu lso llowed me to pproch nd tlk to mny senior executives nd fmous professors for in-depth detils bout their presenttions nd other interesting topics fce-tofce, privilege tht you probbly won't find in mny other conferences. Besides the dense technicl ctivities, MPSoC 2008 lso provided plentiful socil situtions for the ttendees. The coffee breks in the sunny grden nd the wonderful dinners in the Châteu were perfect for networking, bringing people together esily. A city tour of the town Achen ws rrnged s well in between the week the nice Europen summer wether nd superb meet-up in the guest house of Achen University simply mde this gret event even greter. It hs been fruitful nd memorble week for me in the mrvelous St. Gerlch. I hope the MPSoC 2009 edition finds its next superior spot well. It'd be wonderful I could be one in the crowd gin next yer in the MPSoC, nd hopefully meet you there. Weihu Sheng, SSS Best Pper Awrd Iris Herbst, Anne-Kthrin Brun, Rod McCll, nd Wolfgng Broll of the Frunhofer Institute of Applied Informtion Technology FIT (director: Prof. Dr. Mtthis Jrke) received the Best Pper Awrd of the ACM Conference on Mobile HCI, held in Amsterdm, Netherlnds, September 2-5, 2008, for their pper "TimeWrp: Interctive Time Trvel with Mobile Mixed Relity Gme". TimeWrp llows plyers to explore the history of city in four dimensions by solving puzzles nd other tsks from city history in mixed-relity environment where the visul nd udio impression of where the plyer currently stnds is dpted to the historicl epoch of the gme. TimeWrp is evluted in the city of Cologne focussing on he Romn nd medievl periods. TimeWrp ws developed in the Europen Integrted Project IPCity coordinted by Frunhofer FIT which investigtes the usge of mobile ugmented relity methods in city plnning, city tourism, nd other city-relted pplictions, nd is n ppliction project prtner of the cluster. 8

9 Reserch Results t MDM 2008 in Beijing The 9th Interntionl Conference on Mobile Dt Mngement (MDM'08), held in April in Beijing, Chin, provided high-qulity forum for the presenttion nd discussion of severl reserch results on dt mngement issues on mobile, wireless, nd pervsive computing. A reserch pper Follow Me, Follow You - Sptiotemporl Community Context Modeling nd Adpttion for Mobile Informtion Systems by Yiwei Co, Rlf Klmm, Min Hou nd Mtthis Jrke presented reserch results on n context model nd the middlewre Context-Awre Adpttion Service to deliver mobile context-wre informtion to rod wrriors or trippers. Nowdys vrious mobile pltforms from PDA, smrt phones to iphones cn deliver rod wrriors or trippers much mobile informtion. However, most mobile pplictions re lcking the socil intelligence of rel compnionship. One reson is tht community context nd sptiotemporl context informtion re not well tken into considertion. The pper proposed n ontologybsed context model using OWL/RDF. With the enhnced interoperbility, substntil context informtion cn be expressed nd resoned cross systems. Bsed on the context model nd the middlewre Context-Awre Adpttion Service (CAAS) developed in, mobile tourist guide s proof-of-concept provides users with context-wre informtion, employing the MPEG- 7 nd MPEG-21 metdt stndrds to relize multimedi dpttion to device preferences. The evlution result proves the fesibility of the context model nd shows the esy extensibility of CAAS. A demonstrtor of the HelthNet project, joint project of Informtik 5, Informtik 9, the Philips Chir for Medicl Informtion Technology, nd the Institute for Textile Technology, ws lso presented t MDM'08. Helth nd mobility of elderly people is gining importnce in ging societies. New communictionbsed methods to provide helth services by mens of personl helth cre devices re considered s promising elements of first-clss medicl cre services for everybody. To chieve this vision, severl technologicl issues hve to be solved: (i) body sensors to monitor vitl functions hve to be developed; (ii) these sensors should be integrted into textile structures to gurntee ese of use nd ptient cceptnce; (iii) the collected sensor dt hs to be nlyzed to detect emergency situtions nd to reduce the dt volume; (iv) relevnt dt hs to be integrted with other informtion systems in the work environment of medicl experts. These chllenges re ddressed within the HelthNet project which ims t developing frmework in which helth professionls cn remotely monitor nd dignose mobile ptients. In the presenttion t MDM'08 first prototype of the body sensor shirt ITcres (Intelligent Textile for crdio respirtory sensing), which includes sensors for ECG nd ccelertion, hs been shown. Furthermore, the employed dt mining nd mngement techniques hve been presented in detil. The demonstrtor hs lso been shown t severl other events such s the 5th Interntionl Workshop on Werble nd Implntble Body Sensor Networks (BSN 2008) in Hongkong, the 4ING Dy in Achen, nd t the Forum Gesundheitswirtschft in Achen. Yiwei Co, Christoph Quix, i5. 9

10 Upcoming Events 10

11 Upcoming Events 11

12 Olympus IT Awrd Prof. Bstin Leibe, newly ppointed ssistnt professor for Mobile Multimedi Processing, received the Olympus IT Awrd for his scientific contributions in the fields of visul object ctegoriztion, segmenttion, nd trcking. The prize ws wrded t the yerly symposium of the Germn Pttern Recognition Society (DAGM e.v.) in Munich in June The Olympus IT Awrd is given out ech yer for outstnding works in pttern recognition by the Olympus Foundtion Europe together with the DAGM. It constitutes the highest distinction the DAGM wrds once per yer nd is ccompnied by prize sum of 5000 Euro. PhD News Turbo DeCodultion: Itertive Joint Source-Chnnel Decoding nd Demodultion Dr.-Ing. Thorsten Clevorn t the Institute of Communiction Systems nd Dt Processing. The fundmentl frmework for tody's digitl communiction systems is given by the informtion theoreticl considertions of Shnnon. It ws soon discovered tht due to the constrints of rel world pplictions joint design of the different components of the communiction system, e.g., source coding, chnnel coding, nd modultion, is beneficil if not essentil. A brekthrough in closely pproching the informtion theoreticl limits t moderte nd mngeble complexity hs been the discovery of Turbo decoding for conctented chnnel codes. The underlying Turbo principle of exchnging sttisticlly independent extrinsic informtion between components hs been extended to other conctentions of receiver elements. In this presenttion the conctention of demodultion of higher order modultions nd chnnel decoding, clled bit-interleved coded modultion (BICM-ID), s well s the conctention of chnnel decoding nd softdecision source decoding, known s itertive source-chnnel decoding (ISCD), re investigted. To jointly exploit the inevitble redundncy in ll three considered components in one Turbo process the novel Turbo DeCodultion (TDeC) scheme is proposed. For ll three Turbo systems mnifold optimiztions nd designs re presented, including new mppings, signl constelltion sets, index ssignments, nd quntizers; verstile highly redundnt index ssignments for flexible multi-mode extensions; innovtive chnnel code designs bsed on convolutionl or block codes; novel methodologies for nlysis, design, nd optimiztion. All systems re thoroughly nlyzed by extrinsic informtion trnsfer (EXIT) chrts nd simultion results prove tht the developed nd ppropritely designed systems exhibit performnce close to the informtion theoreticl limits postulted by Shnnon. News is regulr newsletter published by the Reserch Centre, RWTH Achen University Subscription: public.reltions@umic.rwth-chen.de 12