Looking back to the activities that the Singapore area has done so far, I am proud to announce that we have had several activities in Singapore last year, and these include three technical talks and one evening events which attracted more than 150 members from IEICE, IEEE, and IES. The three talks were all given by the outstanding experts from overseas.

Ultra Wideband (UWB) is a technology that could potentially revolutionize the info-communications landscape. Operating with a bandwidth of more than 500MHz (current wireless systems are running at 20MHz), this next-generation communications technology has numerous potential applications. These include cableless multimedia consumer devices; object tracking and asset tagging; ground and wall radar imaging; and vehicle collision detection. Operating in a low power regime, UBW offers unparalleled advantages in wireless technology. It enables greater and more efficient use of scarce spectrum resources; co-existence with other services sharing the same spectrum; immunity to multipath cancellation; low probability of detection with low energy density transmissions; enhanced penetration capability with the presence of low frequency spectral content; and minimized hardware complexity. UWB radios are also expected to offer a rich set of system parameter trade-offs that can be exploited to create highly resilient, reliable and scalable networks. Coupled with its sub-nano second pulse wide, UWB is capable of very high resolution and precision (sub-centimeter) radio location systems.

For the evening event, eleven internationally well-known professionals were invited and shared their expert-level experiences and professional views on the ultra-wideband (UWB) technology with the audients. The panelists for the evening event include

	Dr. Bob Heile,	Chairman of IEEE 802.15
	Dr. Jonathon Cheah,	President & CEO, Femto Devices
	Mr. Stephen Wood,	UWB strategic planning, Intel
	Dr. Jason Ellis,	IEEE 802.15.4SGa Vice-Chair, General Atomics
	Dr. David G. Leeper,	CTO, Wireless Tech., Intel, MultiBand OFDM Alliance
	Mr. Roberto Aiello,	CEO, Staccato Communications
	Mr. Glyn Roberts,	President of the WiMedia Alliance
	Dr. John Barr,	Director, Standards Realization, Motorola
	Mr. John McCorkle,	CTO, Xtreme Spectrum
	Prof Ryuji Kohno,	Chair, CRL-UWB Consortium, Japan
	Mr. Vern Brethour,	Alereon / Time Domain
	Mr. Richard Yao,	Microsoft Research Asia (Beijing)
	Dr Geok-Leng Tan,	Director,Network & Enabler Tech., IDA, Singapore

The evening event was co-hosted by IEICE and IEEE Singapore Chapter when I was the Chairman of Singapore Microwave Theory & Techniques (MTT) and Antennas and Propagation (AP) Joint Chapter. The event is well-organized in Institute of Microelectronics (Dr Lin Fujiang hosted) and the turn-up number was out of our expectation. The other fact which I would emphasize is that for the last year's events, the Singapore area did not spend any one cent of the IEICE Headquarter, but we did a great job as well.

This year, the IEICE Singapore area will continue to well-serve to our members in Singapore. To highlight the activities in our planning, I would indicate that in the year 2004, we will continue to provide the technical talks focused on the latest technology or the fast growing fields. The speakers will still be preferably those experts invited from overseas. In addition, the IEICE Singapore area will co-work together with the IEEE for the 2005 International Workshop on Antenna Technology, on March 7-9, 2005 in Singapore. The IEICE members will be able to enjoy certain percent discount for the registration fees.

In addition to the above, the Singapore Area will again provide fundamental services within the IEICE allocated budgets, namely,

I look forward to your active participation and intensive involvement in our area.

Again, I would point out that some of you did not provide the IEICE Headquarter (HQ) with your email address, or some of you have changed your email addresses but did not update them with HQ yet. In both cases, please update your contacting addresses with HQ or send me your contacting (including email) addresses at the following address:
Professor Le-Wei (Joshua) Li
Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering
The National University of Singapore