1. Opening Formalities 

The meeting was opened by Prof. João Sentieiro, President of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science of IST- Instituto Superior Técnico, with a welcome address.
 

As the Chairman - Mr. Eraldo Damosso - could not attend the meeting due to illness, and also because the Action had no Vice-Chairman at the moment, the Local Organiser - Prof. Luis Correia - and the Chairmen of the Working Groups - Prof. Stephen Barton, Prof. Ernst Bonek and Dr. Thomas Kürner - initiated the meeting, co-chairing it. Prof. Stephen Barton, proposed that the first task of the meeting should be to elect a Vice-Chairman, and proposed Prof. Luis Correia as a candidate, which was seconded by Prof. Ernst Bonek and Dr. Thomas Kürner; Prof. Luis Correia accepted to be a candidate. A 15 minutes break was done, so that other candidates could come forward. After the break no other candidate appeared, the election was held, Prof. Luis Correia was elected unanimously, and he started chairing the meeting.

2. Adoption of the Agenda 

The Agenda, included in Annex A, was formally approved by unanimity.

3. Approval of the Minutes of the 2nd Meeting 

Since no Minutes had been produced by the Chairman concerning the 2nd Meeting held in Turin, this point of the Agenda was postponed to the next meeting.

4. Status of the Action 

The fact that Mr. Eraldo Damosso has been acting as both the Chairman and the Secretary, and since no one else had information concerning the present status of the Action and its Budget, the situation of the Final Report of the previous COST 231, the existence of an Action Secretariat, and other aspects, the Vice-Chairman was asked to contact the COST Secretariat in Brussels, in order to try to get some information.

5. Action Budget Situation 

This point was postponed to the next Meeting due to the lack of information.

6. TCT/MC Chairpersons Meeting Results 

This point was postponed to the next Meeting due to the lack of information.

7. COST 259 WEB Pages 

This point was postponed to the next Meeting due to the lack of information.

8. Presentation and Discussion of Documents 

A total of 53 Temporary Documents, which are listed in Annex B, were distributed to be discussed at the Plenary and at the three Working Groups, Annex C.

9. Liaisons with other International Bodies 

This point was postponed to the next Meeting due to the lack of information.

10. Miscellaneous 

Following a contact with the Chairman, the Vice-Chairman gave the following informations:

• The Final Report of COST 231 was presented to the TCT in the Lund meeting at the beginning of June 1997, but the Action was not evaluated since the evaluator was not present; the Chairman will send, within one week, the draft version of the book to at least one person per institution.
• The 1997 Budget approval procedure is not yet completed, and reimbursements are still pending.
• The minutes of the last meeting, held in Turin, are not ready yet and they will be available as soon as possible.
• The updating of the Web page will be done as soon as possible.

Following a contact with Brussels COST Secretariat, the Vice-Chairman gave the following informations:

• The Budget for 1997 is still under approval, and an amount of 50 kECU has been provisionally recommended. No date for the formal approval is foreseen.
• It is necessary to present a Budget and a Workplan for 1998 to the Brussels COST Secretariat by the end of the last day of the meeting, Sep. 26th.
• There is still no date concerning the reimbursements from the Brussels meeting in April 1997.
• There are still funds allocated to the COST 231 Final Report, but they need to be spent until the end of 1997. Until the moment, no copy of the report has been received by Brussels COST Secretariat.
• At the present, there is no contract for an external Secretariat of the Action.
• The budget for workshops must be included in the general budget of the Action.

• A draft version of both the Budget and the Workplan for 1998 was presented by the Vice-Chairman, and discussed at the meeting. The Vice-Chairman committed to prepare the final version including the results of this discussion, which is included in Annex D.
• It was approved, with no objections, that the Action Secretariat, provisionally located at CSELT, Turin, should be moved to IST, Lisbon, in order to relieve the Chairman from this task. Besides the usual bureaucratic things, the Action Secretariat should be in charge of maintaining a Web page and of setting up an email reflector.
• The situation concerning the book corresponding the Final Report of COST 231 must be clarified. The editor, Springer-Verlag, and the Chairman, will be contacted in order to know the present situation.
• The minutes of this meeting will be done by the Vice-Chairman, and will be distributed via email.
• Since there are some incongruities between the lists of Members from each signatory country from the Brussels COST Secretariat and the initial one distributed at the kick-off meeting, all the delegates were asked to clarify the situation at a national level and inform the Vice-Chairman.
• The Workshop of next April, to be held together with COST 252, is under preparation. A date has been proposed and approved: 21-22 April 1998.
• Since the offer to host the meeting in January had been withdrawn by ETH Zurich, Switzerland, alternative places were looked for. Dr. Jean-Frederic Wagen (SwissCom, Switzerland), offered to host the meeting in Bern, but a final decision was still pending of its management; Dr. Peter Karlsson (Telia Research, Sweden) also offered to host the meeting in Malmo, in case the first one was not possible. The final decision of the meeting place will be announced to all the delegates, as soon as it is known.
• The following meetings will be held according to the following:
• 4th MCM, hosted by SwissCom in Bern, Switzerland, or by Telia Research in Malmo, Sweden, from Monday - 2/Feb./98 - 9:00 to Wednesday - 4/Feb./98 - 12:00;
• 5th MCM together with the Workshop, hosted by University of Bradford in Bradford, UK, from Tuesday - 21/Apr./98 - 9:00 to Friday - 24/Apr./98 - 12:00;
• 6th MCM, hosted by IMST in Duisburg, Germany, from Wednesday - 23/Sep./98 - 9:00 to Friday - 25/Sep./98 - 12:00.

The meeting was attended by a total of 98 persons, Annex E. The Local Organiser thanked the participation of all delegates in the meeting, and formally closed it.

• Opening formalities
  
  
• Adoption of the Agenda
  
  
• Approval of the minutes of the 2nd Meeting
  
  
• Status of the Action
  
  
• Action budget situation
  
  
• TCT/MC Chairpersons meeting results
  
  
• COST 259 WEB pages
  
  
• Presentation and discussion of documents
  
  
• Liaisons with other international bodies
  
  
• Miscellaneous
  
  
• Close of Meeting
  
  

* - not discussed in this meeting, due to the absence of the author(s).

Introduction

COST 259 had its kick-off meeting in Brussels in the beginning of April 1997 and, since then, two more meetings of the Management Committee were held, in Turin by mid May and Lisbon by mid September. The number of people attending the meetings has been raising, achieving already (85 participants) the number of attendees of COST 231 (from which COST 259 is a successor), which shows that the interest in the area of the Action continues to be very high, as it happened in COST 231. The work has progressed as initially planned, giving confidence that the global plan (see Technical Annex) will be carried out.

Work breakdown

Since the Action started in April 1997, the work concerning 1998 corresponds to, roughly, 1/3 of the 1st and 2/3 of the 2nd project years. Accordingly, some tasks and subtasks will continue to be addressed and some new ones will start.

The subtasks where work will continue to be developed are:

Task 1 Radio System Aspects

___ access schemes

___ equalisation and interference control

Task 2 Propagation

___ comparison of propagation models

___ development of new models for the UHF, micro- and millimetre wave bands

Task 3 Antennas

___ study of environmental effects

___ smart antennas

Task 4 Network Aspects

___ spectrum efficiency

___ efficient protocols

Task 5 Measurement Uncertainties

___ measurement techniques

Task 6 Planning Methods

___ definition of input parameters

___ territorial databases

The new subtasks which will start working are:

Task 1 Radio System Aspects

___ flexible data rates

___ flexible Quality of Service

___ multicarrier/OFDM

___ wideband CDMA

___ synchronisation/channel estimation

Task 2 Propagation

___ propagation measurements

Task 3 Antennas

___ diversity schemes

___ beamforming networks

Task 4 Network Aspects

___ channel allocation strategies

___ distribute networks

Task 5 Measurement Uncertainties

___ impact on channel sounding, simulation and modelling

Task 6 Planning Methods

___ development of a systematic planning method

New Subgroups

Due to the success of previous similar experiences in COST 207 and COST 231, two Subgroups will be formed (the outputs of specific subgroups within those former Actions were a great success, since their main results were adopted by GSM, ETSI and ITU). A first one is a Subgroup of Working Group 2, on "Directional Channel Models", and it is expected that it will deliver channel models that include the directional information of the radio channel, e.g., for intelligent antennas. A second one, of Working Group 3 on "Standard Scenarios for Frequency Planning", has the goal to compare different frequency assignment algorithms.

Awareness of the Action

Besides the specific work to be done in the several tasks and subtasks, other actions are foreseen for 1998, in order to increase the awareness of the Action in the scientific world, to augment the collaboration with other research projects, and to spread the results that have been achieved in the meanwhile:

COST 259 Vice-chairman

(acting Chairman due to illness of the Chairman)

Prof. Luis M. Correia

IST , Lisboa, Portugal

The budget for 1998 is the following:

___ Travel 108 k ECU

___ Workshop 14 k ECU

___ Secretariat 15 k ECU

___ Publications 8 k ECU

___ Action representation 6 k ECU

___ Exchanges and visits 40 k ECU

___ TOTAL 191 k ECU

The rationale behind this budget is the following:

___ Travel

(acting Chairman due to illness of the Chairman)

Prof. Luis M. Correia

IST , Lisboa, Portugal