A couple of posts ago, I wrote about how DSP is a technology behind most of today’s technologies and advances. I also mentioned briefly the importance of volunteers for the IEEE. This post is closely linked with these two concepts.

As I mention then, the article “Signal Processing Inside”, inspired me to create this blog as a way of promoting the idea of “Signal Processing Inside”. It turned out that, after a couple twists of destiny, the blog led me into becoming an Associate Editor for the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine. Here, my role is to manage a permanent column called “In the Spotlight”. The column’s idea is to take news appearing in the mainstream media and present a technical discussion of the signal processing related to the news. For example, we have covered the recent (or maybe still current) worldwide financial crisis (by discussing signal processing methods to predict the evolution of stocks), or the H1N1 influenza outbreak (the topic was the study of the virus genome). We have also covered more technical topics such as the signal processing done at the Large Hadron Collider, part of the hardware installed in the last servicing mission to the Hubble space telescope and brain-computer interfaces. My role is that of deciding on the topics to be covered (in most of the cases), invite the authors and manage the writing of the article. For me, this has been a great source of personal satisfaction because I never imagined back when I was an undergraduate student, enjoying reading this magazine, that one day I would be managing an article in every issue. More importantly, I have learned a lot of things I didn’t know. So, although the time I dedicated to the column was one of the reasons I couldn’t post more often in this blog, this time will now pay off because I will discuss more signal processing inside topics in future posts here.

Finally, if you are interested in learning more about these articles and other columns in the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, follow this link.

I have recently come across a number of exciting news and links that provide more sources to learn and do DSP-related research.

First I learned that many journals from EURASIP (The European Association for Signal and Image Processing) have started to offer their material under the “open access” model. One of these is the EURASIP Journal on Applied Signal Processing, which publishes papers aimed at both practicing engineers and academic researchers in topics such as communications, networking, sensors, radar and sonar, medical imaging, biomedical applications, astronomy, etc. These are great news because now everybody could access the papers here, which many are of really good quality (and I’m not saying this simply because I’ve been a reviewer and author for this publication, but because I do believe this is the case).

Since I’m talking about open access publications, one site that is worth checking from time to time is the Text Revolution web site, which provides links to textbooks that can be read online for free. DSP-related books can be found under the category of engineering or math.

Finally, Springer has recently announced a new journal due to come out in March 2007 with 4 issues per year. The journal title is “Signal, Image and Video Processing” and the Editor-in-Chief is Prof. Murat Kunt from EPFL / STI / ITS in Lausanne, Switzerland. Topics that will be cover include adaptive processing, biomedical signal processing, multimedia signal processing, communication signal processing, non-linear signal processing, array processing, statistical signal processing, modeling, filtering, multi-resolution, segmentation, coding, restoration, enhancement, storage and retrieval, colour and multi-spectral processing, scanning, displaying, motion detection and estimation, stereoscopic processing, etc. Papers may be published with open access at the choice of the authors.

The IEEE Signal Processing Society has recently announced the creation of a new research journal named “IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing“. By its name, I can imagine that this journal has been and will follow roughly the same path as the IEEE Journal of Selected Areas in Communications (JSAC) but specialized to signal processing topics. I guess that there may be some overlap between the two journals in topics related to applications of signal processing to communications, but this should work out just fine since there is always a lot of research and lots of new developments going on in this area. The Editor-in-Chief for the new journal is Prof. A. Lee Swindlehurst, who will be complemented by a great Editorial Board. The goal for the Editorial Board is to publish four issues in 2007, following by six per year after that, with an ultimate goal of monthly publication. There are already two active Call-for-Papers on the website.

I have recently learned about “Connexions”, which is essentially an online repository of notes and learning material of different subjects, but with a lot of content focused on DSP. What makes this site so valuable is that it follows the “open access” philosophy, which means that all the information is free (but belonging to an author that has to receive credit for his/her work), and intended to spur collaboration and further contribution. Besides the learning material, this site is also interesting in how the Internet is used intelligently to promote collaboration as well as the use of new tools and technologies (such as MathML).