On behalf of the organising committee of the International Symposium on Spread Spectrum Techniques and Applications (ISSSTA) 2004, I would like to welcome you to Sydney. ISSSTA 2004 is the eighth in a series of biennial events looking at Spread Spectrum, CDMA, UWB, OFDM and other broadband radio technologies. ISSSTA 2004 will highlight the rapidly developing research area of next generation mobile systems as well as examining major issues in current broadband mobile systems. The diverse range of topics presented at ISSSTA covers existing and future system concepts, information theoretic analysis and field trials. The range of topics shows the continuing importance of this area of research.

ISSSTA has drawn submissions from countries across Europe, the USA, Japan, China, the Middle East and Australia, making it a truly international event. The plenary speakers for ISSSTA include experts from industry, academia and EU and will describe future visions of ad-hoc networks and the practical market realities driving these visions.

Our plenary speakers this year are

Prof. David Falconer, Carleton University, Canada
Dr. Jack Wolf, University of California San Diego, USA
Dr. Steven Gray, Nokia Research Centre, Finland
Prof. Helmut Boelcskei, Swiss Federal Institute (ETH), Zurich
Prof. Moe Win, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA

I wish you an enjoyable and stimulating conference.

Dr. Ian Oppermann
ISSSTA 2004 General Chairman
Director, CWC
University of Oulu, Finland