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Keynotes

During the conference morning sessions, the following keynote talks are planned:

Keynote Address 1
Speaker Mohamed El-Sharkawi
Professor of Electrical Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195-2500, Phone: (206) 685-2286, e-mail: elsharkawi@ee.washington.edu, web site: http://cialab.ee.washington.edu

Title
Research for Sustainable Economic Development

Abstract
The successful models for sustainable development in emerging economies remain intrinsically attached to adequate management of resources, knowledge, and innovation. These factors have undoubtedly provided the most resilient and solid foundations for economic growth, industrial diversification and modernization, and the improvement in the standard of living.

In the Middle-East, the advancement of education, from literacy campaigns to higher education, has received noticeable priority throughout the region. Consequently, the region has now an extensive pool of highly educated individuals, which in many instances at par with developed countries. Nevertheless, unfortunately, the region is far from achieving its research potentials because of several reasons, among them are the inadequate allocation and placement of research funds; the decoupling between research and industrial need of societies; the dependence on foreign resources to provide industrial research; the dependency on foreign turn-key systems; and the lack of confidence in domestic human skills.

Although wide spread, importing western research model for the Middle-East has failed in many instances. This is because western models are designed to fit into western society’s needs, aspirations and visions. When these factors are not the same for the developing country, the research efforts are often wasted or muted.

A better model for the developing countries would be the “mission research.” This is a focused research niche that positions the country globally. Mission research is by far the most successful model for many developing countries. Examples are consumer electronics in South Korea, software industry in India, computer industry in Taiwan, solid-state manufacturing in Mexico, service industry in India, food industry in Brazil and Argentina, and instrumentation industry in Indonesia. In all these examples, a national strategy with clear vision has propelled the education system as well as national resources and business community toward that central vision.

Keynote Address
2
Speaker
Otto Spanioll
Prof. Dr. rer. nat. and Chairholder of the Department of Computer Science (Lehrstuhl für Informatik 4), RWTH Aachen, D-52056 Aachen, Germany. Phone: +49 241 80 21400, Fax: +49 241 80 22220, e-mail: spaniol@informatik.rwth-aachen.de, web site: www-i4.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/content/staff/homes/spaniol.html

Title
Research Questions on the Way Towards the Internet of Things

Abstract
The so-called "Internet of Things“ is the most recent (and possibly final?) step within a sequence of four "historical and logical“ development phases in communication, namely the following ones:

Step 1: "Person to person“, i.e. direct communication, for example telephony,...

Step 2: "Person to machine“, .i.e. fax, email,...

Step 3: "Machine to machine“: Computer to Computer, e.g. Grid Computing

Here we consider networks of computers which

-       exchange information in an autonomous way

-       make use of such information by reacting on changes of the environment

               [the obtained results are not necessarily limited to traditional information such as numbers, text,...; the notion of "information“ will be widened very much].

Step 4: "Things to things“ (i.e. The Internet of Things)

Computers become much more numerous, smaller, and almost "invisible“ (i.e. they are ubiquitous; they act not any more as „computing units“ but rather as „things“ or as "objects“).

            Possible or existing applications of „the Internet of things“ are plentiful:

     -      in the health sector (body area networks in order to supervise the health status,...)

     -      in entertainment (the new ICE age, ICE = Information, Communication, Entertainment)

-            in enterprises and businesses (fleet management, self maintenance,

interconnection of industrial processes,...)

     -      at home (assisted mobility, securing of property, control of energy consumption,...)

     -      in traffic (traffic control, maintenance, multimodal traffic, car to car communication,...)

     -      in emergency situation (crisis management,...)

However, the way towards a successful and an unbiquitous installation of the Internet of Things needs the solution of important research questions. The two probably most important classes of research aspects may be characterised as follows:

A.    Software and services for the Internet of Things that are:

-    Distributed

-    Dynamically composed

-    Adaptable at runtime.

B.     Flexible security concepts with the following properties:

-    Involvement of all communication layers.

-    Auto-negotiation of security parameters in case of different demands.

-    Adapted reaction against misbehaving nodes, from service degradation to exclusion, depending on security demands.

-    Auto-configurable multidimensional tradeoff between

                 -      security “strength”

                 -      communication overhead

                 -      computational complexity

                 -      energy consumption.

Keynote Address
3
Speaker
Ulrich Heute
Prof. Dr.-Ing. and Head of the Institute for Circuit and System Theory Faculty of Engineering Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel Kaiserstrasse 2 D-24143 Kiel Germany, Phone: +49-431-880-6125, e-mail: uh@tf.uni-kiel.de, web site: www-lns.tf.uni-kiel.de/staff/uh/u_heute.htm

Title
DSP Approaches towards Instrumental Measurement of Communication-System Quality

Abstract
Modern communication links consist of an increasingly heterogeneous configuration of system components. So nowadays, in the case of speech transmission, there are many more influences on the perceived quality of service (QoS) than the classical “PCM-quantization noise plus some possible delay”: There are circuit and “surroundings” noise or even artificially inserted “comfort noise”, room echos of varying strength an delay, with, depending on the provided system, “enhancement” techniques possibly creating artifacts, there are codecs and trans-codings of different standards, double talk, interruptions by discontinuous transmission or network overload, and there may be an “artificial counterpart” in a dialogue with a machine.

As the total QoS perception decides on the users’ satisfaction and, thereby, the providers’ income, quality measurement becomes more and more important. While “true” quality grades can only be given by human users, for less expensive estimations and, especially, network pre-planning on one side, real-time monitoring on the other side, instrumental measures are of strong interest. Work on several quality aspects will be reported on, addressing

-         signal degradation measurements: noise, interruptions, echos, double-talk, codecs;

-         speech-signal quality: signal-based instrumental measures, quality attributes;

-         speaker-voice quality: parametric description and measurements;

-         dialogue-system quality: influences, especially speaker, transmission, coding.

Keynote Address
4
Speaker
Ali Feliachi

Title
Electric Power System Resiliency: Engineering or Economics Problem
Electric Power Systems Chair Professor in the Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, and Director of the Advanced Power & Electricty Research Center (APERC), West Virginia University, alfeliachi@mail.wvu.edu

Abstract
Most of us take electricity for granted, and our standard of living depends on it. It powers the coffee maker that gets us started or the hospital emergency room that could save our lives. The system that makes it all happen and rightly so, has been ranked by the US National Academy of Engineering as the greatest engineering achievement of the 20th Century. Major blackouts make headlines all over the world and they are very costly. The last major one that occurred on August 14, 2003, and affected the northeastern US and neighboring Canadian regions, is estimated to have cost more than five billion dollars. Incidents, natural or man made, are a way of life and can this critical infrastructure that spans entire continents be resilient? Engineers think that technology is the key to achieving this using redundancy, cyber firewalls, smart control devices, sensor networks, distributed resources, portable equipment, etc. Economists however question the affordability of a state of the art modern grid as they develop business cases to evaluate these capital investments, attempt to assess the value of power system resiliency and determine consumers’ willingness to pay for a more resilient system. Current polices further complicate the problem adding uncertainty and risk. It is immanently clear that all parties desire a resilient power system. However, the question that remains is which problem solving approach is best suited to address this issue, engineering or economics?

Keynote Address
5
Speaker
John Cuneen
Executive Director, Authority for Electricity Regulation, Oman, phone: + 968 24 609711, Fax: + 968 24 609701, email: John.Cunneen@aer-oman.org     web site: www.aer-oman.org

Title
Electricity Market Restructuring in Oman

Abstract
In August 2004 the Government introduced legislation to implement a major restructuring of the electricity and related water sector in the Sultanate of Oman. The reforms were implemented through a Sector Law promulgated by Royal Decree 78/2004 and had several objectives, including:

(i) To improve the transparency of the economic and financial arrangements under which the sector operates – particularly in relation to the level and distribution of subsidy;

(ii) To facilitate further electricity sector privatization and attract the investment funding required to meet forecast growth in electricity demand;

(iii) To improve the efficiency of sector operations; and

(iv) To ensure the electricity sector complies with general statutory obligations including in relation to Omanisation and the Environment.

The Executive Director of the Authority for Electricity Regulation, Oman will review progress made against the principal reform objectives and identify the benefits secured in areas where progress has been in line with expectations. The assessment will also identify areas where progress has fallen short of expectations and identify how the Authority proposes to address such problems

Keynote Address 2	Speaker	Otto Spanioll Prof. Dr. rer. nat. and Chairholder of the Department of Computer Science (Lehrstuhl für Informatik 4), RWTH Aachen, D-52056 Aachen, Germany. Phone: +49 241 80 21400, Fax: +49 241 80 22220, e-mail: spaniol@informatik.rwth-aachen.de, web site: www-i4.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/content/staff/homes/spaniol.html
	Title	Research Questions on the Way Towards the Internet of Things
	Abstract	The so-called "Internet of Things“ is the most recent (and possibly final?) step within a sequence of four "historical and logical“ development phases in communication, namely the following ones: Step 1: "Person to person“, i.e. direct communication, for example telephony,... Step 2: "Person to machine“, .i.e. fax, email,... Step 3: "Machine to machine“: Computer to Computer, e.g. Grid Computing Here we consider networks of computers which - exchange information in an autonomous way - make use of such information by reacting on changes of the environment [the obtained results are not necessarily limited to traditional information such as numbers, text,...; the notion of "information“ will be widened very much]. Step 4: "Things to things“ (i.e. The Internet of Things) Computers become much more numerous, smaller, and almost "invisible“ (i.e. they are ubiquitous; they act not any more as „computing units“ but rather as „things“ or as "objects“). Possible or existing applications of „the Internet of things“ are plentiful: - in the health sector (body area networks in order to supervise the health status,...) - in entertainment (the new ICE age, ICE = Information, Communication, Entertainment) - in enterprises and businesses (fleet management, self maintenance, interconnection of industrial processes,...) - at home (assisted mobility, securing of property, control of energy consumption,...) - in traffic (traffic control, maintenance, multimodal traffic, car to car communication,...) - in emergency situation (crisis management,...) However, the way towards a successful and an unbiquitous installation of the Internet of Things needs the solution of important research questions. The two probably most important classes of research aspects may be characterised as follows: A. Software and services for the Internet of Things that are: - Distributed - Dynamically composed - Adaptable at runtime. B. Flexible security concepts with the following properties: - Involvement of all communication layers. - Auto-negotiation of security parameters in case of different demands. - Adapted reaction against misbehaving nodes, from service degradation to exclusion, depending on security demands. - Auto-configurable multidimensional tradeoff between - security “strength” - communication overhead - computational complexity - energy consumption.

Keynote Address 3	Speaker	Ulrich Heute Prof. Dr.-Ing. and Head of the Institute for Circuit and System Theory Faculty of Engineering Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel Kaiserstrasse 2 D-24143 Kiel Germany, Phone: +49-431-880-6125, e-mail: uh@tf.uni-kiel.de, web site: www-lns.tf.uni-kiel.de/staff/uh/u_heute.htm
	Title	DSP Approaches towards Instrumental Measurement of Communication-System Quality
	Abstract	Modern communication links consist of an increasingly heterogeneous configuration of system components. So nowadays, in the case of speech transmission, there are many more influences on the perceived quality of service (QoS) than the classical “PCM-quantization noise plus some possible delay”: There are circuit and “surroundings” noise or even artificially inserted “comfort noise”, room echos of varying strength an delay, with, depending on the provided system, “enhancement” techniques possibly creating artifacts, there are codecs and trans-codings of different standards, double talk, interruptions by discontinuous transmission or network overload, and there may be an “artificial counterpart” in a dialogue with a machine. As the total QoS perception decides on the users’ satisfaction and, thereby, the providers’ income, quality measurement becomes more and more important. While “true” quality grades can only be given by human users, for less expensive estimations and, especially, network pre-planning on one side, real-time monitoring on the other side, instrumental measures are of strong interest. Work on several quality aspects will be reported on, addressing - signal degradation measurements: noise, interruptions, echos, double-talk, codecs; - speech-signal quality: signal-based instrumental measures, quality attributes; - speaker-voice quality: parametric description and measurements; - dialogue-system quality: influences, especially speaker, transmission, coding.