ICUE 2004 Report

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Left to right, A. Leon Garcia (Tutorial Presenter), M. Jaseemuddin (Tutorials Chair), Xavier Fernando (General Co-Chair) and Alagan Anpalagan (General Co-Chair).

International Conference for Upcoming Engineers (ICUE) is a unique student conference that provides a platform for senior undergraduate and graduate students and faculty researchers to network and exchange ideas. It provides excellent benefits to students to learn and update their skills. ICUE 2004 was hosted by the IEEE Student Branch at Ryerson University on May 13-14, 2004. This third conference was very successful in bringing together academics from different universities and professionals from industry and research communities.

The first day of the conference comprised of five state-of-the-art knowledge sharing sessions in the fields of power systems, electronic circuits, VLSI design, space-time coding, and commercialization of hi-tech ideas. These tutorials were delivered by Prof. A. Leon Garcia (University of Toronto), Prof. M. Khalid (University of Windsor) Prof. X. Xia (University of Delaware), Prof. B. Wu (Ryerson University) and Prof. P. Hiscocks (Ryerson University). Also on the same day, ICUE'04 showcased 20 outstanding design projects nominated by design project coordinators from the University of Toronto and Ryerson University.

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ICUE 2004 Organizing Committee.

Technical sessions were held on the second day. There were 45 technical papers scheduled to be presented with participants coming from universities such as Ryerson, Toronto, Western Ontario, Carleton, Ottawa, Waterloo and Regina. These papers were selected from 85 submissions (53 Canadian and 32 international). The technical sessions were organized into five groups as:

  1. Shannon (Computers, Networks and Information Theory)
  2. Fourier (Signal Processing and Multimedia)
  3. Marconi (Wired, Wireless and Optical Communications)
  4. Edison (Power, Machines and Controls) and,
  5. Newton (Cross disciplinary and Emerging Areas).

Each session was chaired by a faculty member and co-chaired by a student. Proceedings of conference were released on compact discs and made available to participants. The current and previous proceedings of the ICUE are freely available from the web site as ICUE Xplore.

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Sri Krishnan addresses the ICUE'04 Awards Banquet. Among the audience are Robert Alden and Bruno Di-Stefano of IEEE Toronto Section.

ICUE'04 was financially supported by IEEE Canadian Foundation, IEEE Toronto Section and, Ryerson students. Wiley organization donated text books and supported coffee breaks.

All the demonstrated design projects were judged by a panel of experts and two best projects were recognized. From the technical papers presented, one best paper in each of undergraduate and graduate categories was also recognized.

BEST DESIGN PROJECTS

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Demonstration of an award winning design project by Ryerson student Gary Ali.

  • Self-Navigating Robot with Stereo Video Recognition by Jonathan Waisman, Ekaterina Laskin, Valeri Kirischian and Colin Lee (University of Toronto)
  • A High Fidelity Audio Amplifier by Gary Ali (Ryerson University)

BEST UNDERGRADUATE TECHNICAL PAPER

Source and Channel Coding Techniques for Faithful Transmission of Digital Mammograms by Danoush Hosseinzadeh and April Khademi (Ryerson University)

Abstract: This paper examines source and channel coding techniques that are necessary for reliable transfer of digital mammograms over a wireless AWGN channel. First, in order to maximize bandwidth efficiency while maintaining the input signal's entirety, lossless source compression techniques are investigated. Particular attention is paid to compressors that produce the highest degree of compression. Second, to ensure reliable data transfer over a noisy, wireless channel, error correction and detection mechanisms are discussed focusing on schemes that achieve the lowest bit error rates. Specifically, for experimental purposes, digitized mammograms saved as Portable Grey Maps (PGM) were used. Prior to choosing the optimal arrangement, the implications of the source and channel coding algorithms on PDA's and computers will be examined. Major concerns are computational complexity and encoding and decoding delays.

BEST GRADUATE TECHNICAL PAPER

Design and Development of a Liquid Level Transducer Using Sonar by M. Mehrandezh, and V. Soman (University of Regina)

Abstract: This paper presents implementation of sonar for liquid level measurement in water/oil tanks with no readings from the liquid surface. Three prototypes have been built in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Regina for this purpose. These prototypes are designed in a way that they can be simply dropped into an oil/water tank; therefore there would be no need for mounting additional mechanical course of action for holding the transducer. The optimal design for the best prototype has been studied in detail through both computer simulations and experimental results.

ICUE 2005 CALL FOR PROPOSALS

ICUE Steering Committee is now accepting proposals for hosting ICUE in 2005. Any IEEE Student Branch interested in hosting it, please contact Prof. Sri Krishnan (sri_krishnan@ieee.org) before September 15, 2004.