Welcome message from the general chairs

EUSIPCO is the flagship conference of the European Association for Signal Processing (EURASIP). The 23rd edition will be held in Nice, on the French Riviera, from 31st August - 4th September 2015. EUSIPCO 2015 will feature world-class speakers, oral and poster sessions, keynotes, tutorials, two industry workshops and four publisher exhibits and is expected to attract in the order of 750 leading researchers and industry figures from all over the world.

Nice is the fifth most populous city in France, after Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Toulouse, and it is the capital of the Alpes Maritimes département. Nice is the second-largest French city on the Mediterranean coast and the second-largest city in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region after Marseille. It is located very near the principality of Monaco, and its airport is a gateway to the principality as well. The city is called Nice la Belle (Nissa La Bella in Niçard), which means Nice the Beautiful, which is also the title of the unofficial anthem of Nice.

The area of today's Nice contains Terra Amata, an archaeological site which displays evidence of a very early use of fire. Around 350 BC, Greeks of Marseille founded a permanent settlement and called it Nikaia, after Nike, the goddess of victory. Through the ages, the town has changed hands many times. Its strategic location and port significantly contributed to its maritime strength. For centuries it was a dominion of Savoy, then became part of France between 1792 and 1815, when it was returned to Piedmont-Sardinia until its reannexation by France in 1860. The natural beauty of the Nice area and its mild Mediterranean climate came to the attention of the English upper classes in the second half of the 18th century, when an increasing number of aristocratic families took to spending their winter there. The city's main seaside promenade, the Promenade des Anglais (“the Walkway of the English”) owes its name to the earliest visitors to the resort. For decades now, the picturesque Nicean surroundings have attracted not only those in search of relaxation, but also those seeking inspiration. The clear air and soft light has been of particular appeal to some of Western culture's most outstanding painters, such as Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse, Niki de Saint Phalle and Arman. Their work is commemorated in many of the city's museums, including Musée Marc Chagall, Musée Matisse and Musée des Beaux-Arts. Nice has the second largest hotel capacity in the country and it is one of its most visited cities, receiving 4 million tourists every year. It also has the third busiest airport in France after the two main Parisian ones.

EUSIPCO 2015 is organized by EURECOM with the help of colleagues from the University of Nice, CNRS and INRIA, all located in Sophia Antipolis, which is a technology park northwest of Antibes and southwest of Nice, France. Sophia Antipolis is named after Sophie, the wife of French Senator Pierre Laffitte, founder of the park, and incidentally, Sophia, the Greek word for wisdom, and Antipolis, the ancient Greek name of Antibes (the city opposite Nice in the bay of Nice). Created in 1970-1984, it houses primarily companies in the fields of computing, telecommunications, electronics, pharmacology and biotechnology. Several institutions of higher learning are also located here, along with the European headquarters of W3C and the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI).

France has a long tradition in signal processing, perhaps starting with Fourier. In a very subsampled account of the last three decades, we can mention major contributions to adaptive filtering, wavelets and time-frequency analysis. Also the Sophia Antipolis labs have contributed to signal processing over this period: Direction of Arrival estimation (an independent introduction of the MUSIC algorithm and subspace techniques) at the Thales-Thomson labs, wavelets for image processing and independent component analysis, blind source separation and tensor decompositions at the CNRS-I3S lab. More recently many contributions to multimedia and telecommunications were introduced that made it e.g. to the 2G, 3G and 4G cellular wireless standards. Of course, signal processing has been a thriving activity all over Europe and we are happy to host this year a particular event to recognize the lifetime contributions of G. Sicuranza.

The EUSIPCO 2015 program is the result of the hard work of many people, including authors and program committee members. We would like to express our sincere appreciation to all of them for their diligent work. In particular intense efforts were made to solicit and propose many special sessions, which contributed largely to the success of this year’s edition. Beyond the technical program, much work was put in by the whole organizational team and we would like to thank them sincerely, as well as our sponsors who greatly facilitated the organization of this event, including publishers and industrial exhibitors who contribute to animate the conference.

We hope that at this EUSIPCO in Nice you will enjoy all elements of the technical program, catch up with friends and colleagues, and sample what the Côte d’Azur has to offer, including the local cuisine and atmosphere at e.g. the famous “Cours Saleya” (flower market) in the old town, within walking distance from the Acropolis convention center. At the Acropolis you will also find a representative of Mathez Travel, our event organizer and travel agent, and a representative of the Tourism Office, to arrange tours or provide other guidance. The social program includes a welcome reception on Monday at the Acropolis terrace and a banquet on Thursday at the Palais de la Méditerranée (Hyatt Regency), a recently constructed luxury hotel that maintained the facade of a historical building.

Jean-Luc DUGELAY, Dirk SLOCK General Chairs