Packed as the room may be, the crowd will represent only a fraction of the approximately 1,800 designers that are expected to converge on this year's show, which will take place in the McEnery Convention Center in downtown San Jose from Sept. 30 to Oct. 2 (www.commdesignconference.com). Some will simply be taking advantage of the fact that this year's conference is free to those qualified. But all will be using the more than 150 workshops, tutorials, technical papers, plenary panels and after hours sessions to immerse themselves in current and future communication systems design trends and issues.

Understandably ebullient after what looks to be a year end rally for Intel, Mentzer will share some of what he has learned about the convergence of communications and computing and what that means for designers all the way down the food chain from applications software to silicon. Perspective in hand, attendees can set about gleaning deeper insight from the experts in specific communications technologies, ranging from cellular/Wi Fi integration and ultrawideband (UWB) signaling, to fine grain dynamic bandwidth allocation in the metro, to quality of service and multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) in the core.

Co sponsored by EE Times, Comms

Design.com and Communication Systems Design, CDC has survived three extraordinarily tough years in communications, while simultaneously increasing the conference's health in terms of both attendees and program quality.

Industry panels

The special industry panels at CDC will be a particular draw this year.

• Oct. 1. A discussion on wireless industry trends will be led by Craig Mathias, principal at Farpoint Group (Ashland, Mass.). Mathias will query a panel that includes Analog Devices' Christian Kermarrec, vice president of RF and wireless systems; Atheros chief executive Craig Barratt; Motorola vice president and general manager Behrooj Abdi; Philips Semiconductors' Paul Marino, vice president and general manager of the business line connectivity division; renowned industry pundit Andy Seybold; and Texas Instruments technical staff specialist Carl Panasik.
• Oct. 2. Michael Howard, Infonetics Research senior analyst, will discuss Ethernet's role in metropolitan transport and oversubscription, bringing in experts like Ample Communications vice president of marketing Marek Tlalka; Hatteras Networks vice president Kevin Sheehan; and Jonathan Thatcher, Gigabit Ethernet pioneer.

Tutorials

In depth tutorial sessions will be interspersed throughout the three primary days of the conference.

Sept. 30. Half day tutorials will be given on the following subjects:

• DSP for communications;
• IP mobility;
• Next generation architectures employing the Advanced Telecommunications for Computing Architecture;
• Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing.
• Oct. 1, 2. A full day tutorial on RF techniques will be held on Wednesday. A similar full day tutorial the following day will cover TCP/IP.

Workshops and papers

Workshops and paper sessions will be grouped into five regular tracks this year: Wireless 2.5/3G, Wireless PAN/LAN, Core Networking, Metro/Access and Enterprise/SAN. Two half sized tracks, on Home Networking and Embedded Communications, also will feature a mix of workshops and paper sessions. In addition, John Metz of Metz International Ltd. will host a special Network Processing track sponsored in conjunction with the Network Processing Forum.

Wireless focus

Reflecting the breadth and activity in wireless markets, the two wireless tracks will feature an especially rich mix in 2003.

Workshops in 2.5 and 3G systems include evaluations of:

• 802.16 fixed broadband wireless standards
• Application processors;
• Channel impairment;
• Multimedia processing;
• Software defined radio.

Paper sessions in the 2.5/3G track will include these topics:

• Advanced RF design techniques;
• Basestation architectures;
• Multimedia design;
• Power amp linearization;
• Smart antennas;
• WLAN/WWAN integration.

The Wednesday evening Birds of a Feather sessions will feature discussions on the following topics:

• NPU benchmarking, led by John Metz;
• MPLS, led by Loring Wirbel;

Ultrawideband signaling. This session, led by Dr. Jeff Reed of Virginia Tech's Mobile & Portable Radio Research Group, is of particular note. Gathering together the most distinguished proponents and detractors of UWB, the panel promises to illuminate many outstanding issues with respect to a technology that has captured the imagination of technologists worldwide.

UWB signaling panelists include Dr. Roberto Aiello of Staccato Communications; Dennis Akos, GPS researcher at Stanford University; Craig Barratt of Atheros; Jason Ellis of General Atomics; Steve Griggs from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency; John McCorkle of Xtremespectrum; and Andy Rappaport of August Capital.

The Wireless PAN and WAN track includes these workshops:

• 802.11 standards;
• Low cost, low power systems;
• RF fundamentals;
• Selection of antennas;
• System architectures for ultra wideband.

Among the paper sessions in Wireless PAN and LAN, keep an eye out for:

• "Battle for the PAN: Bluetooth vs. Zigbee";
• Latency management;
• Mesh and ad hoc wireless networks;
• Next generation wireless;
• RF modeling.

Individual focus

The knowledge and status of the speakers are as critical as the subjects for wireless tracks. The following individuals are among those slated to be workshop presenters or paper moderators:

Paulraj Arogyaswami, Stanford University professor;

Jeff Bier of Berkeley Design Technology;

Bob Brodersen, UC Berkeley professor of EE;

John Chapin, CTO of Vanu;

Geoff Dawe, president of Global Communication Devices;

Laurent Desclos, chief technology officer of Ethertronics;

Alan Gatherer, Texas Instruments distinguished fellow;

Doug Grant, head of business development at Analog Devices;

Evan Green, senior staff engineer at Intel Labs;

Pat Kinney, wireless consultant;

John Liebetreu, chief technologist for broadband wireless at Intel;

Craig Mathias of Farpoint Group;

Alan Menezes, vice president of marketing for Aperto Networks;

Larry Mittag of Mittag Enterprises;

Pascal Nelson, staff applications engineer at Analog Devices;

Stephan Ohr, EE Times network technology editor;

Basavaraj Patil, research specialist at Nokia;

Al Petrick of IceFyre Semiconductor, vice chairman of the 802.11 working group;

Mohammad Shakouri, assistant vice president of business development at Alvarion Ltd.;

Bernard Sklar, head of advanced systems at Communications Engineering Services; and

Will Strauss of Forward Concepts.

Core networks

Workshops topics in this track will include:

• Advanced optical circuits, conducted by Mark Bordogna, member of the technical staff at Agere;
• The future of IPv6 trends, explored by NextHop's popular founder and chief technology officer, Sue Hares;
• Layer 2 transport concepts, given by Andy Malis, chairman of the MPLS/Frame Relay Alliance;
• Modular communication architectures, given by Gamil Cain, a software architect at Intel; and
• UNI/NNI standards as seen by the Optical Internetworking Forum. The forum will be given by Amy Wang of Avici Systems.

Paper sessions within the core track will be led by a double session on quality of service, featuring papers from Altera Corp., Motorola, S3, TeraChip, Teradiant and Vitesse.

John Metz, organizer of the Network Processing special track, will chair a core networking paper session on switch fabrics, with papers from Flextronics, Lattice Semiconductor and TriCN. Other paper sessions in the core track include "Flattening of the Core," chaired by Ron Longo of Mahi Networks; and one on 10G connectivity, led by Bill Woodruff of BitBlitz.

Metro/access design

Complementing the wireless tracks will be a strong emphasis on metro and broadband access and home networking. According to recent figures from the New Millennium Research Council, more than 1 million new telecommunications jobs in the United States alone would be created through wider adoption of broadband technology.

The study projects that by 2008 the new surge in broadband related jobs will more than reverse the recent job losses in the telecom sector. The broadband technologies and design techniques that will enable that adoption around the world are the subject matter of CDC 2003.

Workshops within the Metro/Access section will be focused on the battle between digital subscriber line and cable modem systems. Planned topics include:

• Cable modems, led by Greg White, project director for Docsis at CableLabs;
• Ethernet in the first mile, presented by Craig Easley, director of the CTO office at Extreme Networks;
• The evolution of DSL standards, headed by Marco Tzannes, vice president of strategic technology at Aware;
• The evolution of hybrid fiber/coax (HFC) architectures, led by Rob Howald, director of TNS systems engineering at Motorola Broadband Communications Sector;

TDM services at the edge, led by Doug Morrisey, vice president of products and technology at Octasic; and

Virtual concatenation and link capacity adjustment in Sonet/SDH, given by Bill Todd, director of strategic applications at TranSwitch Corp.

The Metro/Access paper sessions also include a double session on provisioning metro payloads, led by Rob Keenan of CommDesign.com and featuring papers from Corrigent, Cypress, Lantern, RBN and Vitesse.

Another paper session includes a backplane discussion, managed by CMP's Stephan Ohr, and one on Ethernet in the access space, led by independent consultant Jonathan Thatcher. Additionally, a Layer 2 session will be held, managed by Andy Malis, chief technologist at Tellabs. And there will be a session on quality of service in voice over Internet Protocol networks, led by Debbie Greenstreet of Texas Instruments' Telogy.

Enterprise and embedded

Featured workshops in the Enterprise track will include:

• ATCA concepts, analyzed by NMS Communications CTO Brough Turner;
• RDMA over TCP, a study from Hewlett Packard senior interconnect architect Michael Krause;
• TCP offload engines, presented by FutureSoft CTO T. Sridar; and
• Using PCI Express in servers, a separate Krause study.

It's no surprise that paper sessions for the enterprise track are dominated by serial interconnect topics, with Larry Chisvin of PLX Technology overseeing presentations from such companies as IBM, Intel, Motorola, Pigeon Point and Rambus.

Interest also is expected to be high in a study of 10 Gbit over copper papers, led by Intel CTO office architect Brad Booth; and in a SAN control silicon overview chaired by Jag Bolaria of Linley Group.

Phil Bourekas, vice president of internetworking products at IDT, will chair a security session, while Loring Wirbel will moderate a paper session looking at advanced services beyond Layer 4.

Junior tracks

Home Networking and Embedded Communications may be junior sessions, but there is no junior content here. Topics in the Embedded workshops include:

• A comparison of FPGAs and DSPs in communication signal processing, led by Jeff Bier of Berkeley Design;
• Embedded Linux a discussion from K Computing founder Kevin Dankwardt;
• Software costs a study from Rob Munoz of Agere; and
• Symmetric distributed multiprocessing a study given by QNX lead architect Sebastien Marineau.

The minitrack's single paper session on high availability systems will be headed up by CMP's own Rob Keenan, with papers from NextHop, Procket and Texas Instruments.

Watch for these workshops on the home networking front:

• 802.11 over coax, from Lior Ophir of Texas Instruments;
• A comparison of cable and DSL gateway architectures, from Stephen Palm, principal engineer at Broadcom; and
• Software for residential gateways, from Zeev Collin, vice president of software engineering at Conexant.

There will be two paper sessions within the Home Networking track. Conexant vice president Peter Kempf will chair a session on streaming, with papers from Intersil, Magis and Sony, while 2Wire vice president of engineering Pat Romano will chair a wireline networking paper session, with papers from CopperGate and Intellon.

Special note: Keep an eye out on Wednesday for John Metz's special track on Network Processors. The special session will include these workshops:

• NPF standards, headed by Misha Nossik, director of network processing at IDT;
• OEM make vs. buy issues, led by CloudShield Technologies founder Peder Jungck;
• A security study, from Intel Corp. network processor security architect Wajdi Feghali; and
• A switching fabric shootout, overseen by Sheriff John Metz.

Two paper sessions will round out the Network Processing track. Douglas Comer, professor at Purdue University, will chair a processor programming session with papers from Intel, Teradiant and Xelerated. Metz of Metz International will head up a memory and network processing session, with papers from EZChip, Mosaid and Tundra.

The paper summaries in this In Focus report represent a small fraction of what's in store. Here again, the emphasis is on wireless, specifically smart antennas, UWB, frequency synthesis, cellular/Wi Fi roaming and handover, voice over Internet Protocol and RF modeling.

Security is also highlighted, however, with Altera outlining an efficient FPGA design for RSA algorithm processing.

But this is only the tip of the iceberg. For more information, go to www.commdesignconference.com.