1. Opening Formalities
 
The meeting was opened by Dr. Jean-Frederic Wagen, the Local Organiser, after which a welcome address was given by Mr. Walter Steinlin, Director of Swisscom Corporate Technology.
 

Due to the absence of the Chairman, Mr. Eraldo Damosso (his health condition did not allowed him to travel), the meeting was chaired by the Vice-Chairman, Prof. Luis Correia.

2. Adoption of the Agenda

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

3. Approval of the Minutes of the 3rd Meeting

A correction was asked by Prof. Peter Leuthold (ETH Zurich, CH) and approved: under 10. Miscellaneous, "Since the offer to host the meeting in January had been withdrawn by ETH Zurich, Switzerland, alternative places were looked for." should read "Since ETH Zurich, Switzerland, can host the meeting only by end-of-February/March, due to local restrictions on the availability of rooms, alternative places were looked for to host the meeting in January/beginning-of-February, as it was initially scheduled".

4. Status of the Action

The Vice-Chairman informed that, up to now, 18 countries have signed the MoU. The complete list of signatories and members, and date of signature, is shown in Annex B.
 

Two Sub-Working Groups, SWGs, were set up, in order to address specific topics within the respective Working Groups, WGs:

• SWG 2.1 - "Directional Channel Models", co-chaired by Dr. Martin Steinbauer (Tech. Univ. Vienna, A) and Dr. Preben Mogensen (Aalborg Univ., DK)
• SWG 3.1 - "Standard Scenarios for Frequency Planning", chaired by Mr. Andreas Eisenblätter (ZIB, Berlin, D)

5. COST 231 Book

The Chairman has distributed some chapters via the Action email reflector, and Dr. Mario Frullone (FUB, Bologna, I) informed that Mr. Damosso will produce and distribute 150 copies of a CD-ROM with the whole book. The Vice-Chairman informed that, due to the long delay in editing the final version of the book, Springer-Verlag is no longer willing to publish it, and that the budget allocated by the Commission for that purpose is no longer available; the only solution now seems to be publishing the book via the Commission publishing services. Some delegates called the attention of the meeting that there are still some errors in the version distributed by the Chairman that need to be corrected, and that the names of the persons contributing to each section do not appear in that version, which they should, thus requiring further editing of the document.
 

Some discussion on this situation was held among the MCM members. The role of Mr. Damosso in producing the complete version of COST 231 book (besides other important tasks he has taken towards the success of COST 231 and COST 259) was recognised and acknowledge by the meeting but it was felt that, due to his health condition, he should be relieved from the task of producing the corrected final version of the book. Therefore, chapter editors (or someone willing to the replace the initial ones) were identified (1. Eraldo Damosso; 2. J. Bach Andersen; 3. Patrick Eggers; 4. Thomas Kürner; 5. Andreas Molisch; 6. Hermann Rohling; 7. Robert Godwin; 8. Stephen Barton), and the following procedure was approved: a formal letter will be sent to the Chairman, explaining him the situation; COST Secretariat will be informed by the Vice-Chairman that the version they have received from Mr. Damosso still needs to be corrected, and that a final version will be sent as soon as possible; the initial style will be adopted for editing the final version of the book by all chapter editors; all contributions will be sent to the Vice-Chairman, that will co-ordinate the whole process and make sure that there are no discrepancies in the book; after chapter editors having done the final changes, the Vice-Chairman will send a camera-ready version of the book to the COST Secretariat, to be printed by the Commission. There were no objections to this procedure.

6. Budget and reimbursements

The Vice-Chairman informed that reimbursements concerning travel costs from the 1st meeting in Brussels are under the responsibility of the COST Secretariat. According to an information from them, they have already been processed.

 
The Vice-Chairman also informed that the budget for 1997 does not cover all the expenses, which are exclusively concerning reimbursement of travel for participating in the 2nd (Turin) and 3rd (Lisbon) meetings: an amount of 50 kECU was foreseen, and a total of 57 kECU was expended. Hence, only approximately 87 % of the travel costs will be reimbursed to those who have claimed them. According to an information from the COST Secretariat, only 80 % of the 1997 budget (40 kECU) has been transferred to Mr. Damosso, the remaining being transferred upon receipt of all the copies of the documents concerning the expenses; as soon as the Chairman transfers the money to IST, this initial reimbursement will be done.
 

Although a budget of 191 kECU has been asked for to the COST TCT, a provisional allocation of only 115 kECU has been done, following an information from the COST Secretariat. This amount does not allow to undertake all the activities foreseen, which caused some concern in the meeting. It was referred that other Actions, with half the signatory countries and far less people attending the meetings, have received around 75 kECU, which was felt as unbalanced, as far as funding the various Actions is concerned. The Vice-Chairman will contact the COST TCT in order to know what are the possibilities to extend the budget from these initial figures as much as possible. Starting from this meeting, reimbursements will be done by IST, since the 1998 Grant will be already transferred to IST.
 

The Vice-Chairman informed as well that a data-base will be set up in the Action Secretariat with the details of bank accounts of all members, so that they do not need to give this information every time they apply for reimbursement.

7. Email reflector and WWW site

Besides the general email reflector, cost259.general@lx.it.pt, which is already working, the Vice-Chairman informed that specific reflectors for the WGs will be set up, also hosted at IST, cost259.wgn@lx.it.pt (where n corresponds to the WG number); the list of each one will be taken from the list of attendees of the previous meetings, and those wishing their names to be included should send an email to the Action Webmaster stating so in the Subject field (Subscribe WGn). An additional reflector is available for the Action chairs (Chairman, Vice-Chairman, and WG Chairmen): cost259.chairs@lx.it.pt
 

Email addresses of the Action Secretary and Webmaster are also available at the IST host: cost259.secretary@lx.it.pt, cost259.webmaster@lx.it.pt.

 
The Vice-Chairman presented as well a draft version of the WWW site, hosted at IST as well: http://www.lx.it.pt/cost259. It was decided that only an abstract of the documents presented at the meetings will be available for download, and that those wishing to have a complete version of the documents must address the authors directly, for which their email addresses will be available. The site will contain all the relevant information for the Action, besides other things, like list of conferences in the area, links to the institutions participating in the Action and international bodies, etc.

8. Presentation and Discussion of Documents

A total of 48 Temporary Documents, which are listed in Annex C, were distributed to be discussed at the Plenary and at the three WGs, Annex D.

9. Liaisons with other International Bodies

The following liaisons with other international bodies were appointed:

• COST 252 - Prof. António Rodrigues (IST, Lisbon, P)
• COST 255 - Prof. António Rodrigues (IST, Lisbon, P)
• ACTS/FRAMES - Prof. Ramjee Prasad (Tech. Univ. Delft, NL)
• SMT/METAMORP - Mr. Per Lehne (Telenor R&D, N)
• ETSI/BRAN - Dr. Peter Karlson (Telia Research, S)
• ITU/SG3 - Dr. Thomas Kürner (E-Plus, D)
• URSI/C - Prof. Ernst Bonek (Tech. Univ. Vienna, A)

10. Future Meetings and Workshop

Dr. Ray Sheriff (Univ. Bradford, UK) gave a presentation on COST 252 and on the organisation that is taking place for the Joint COST 252/259 Workshop, to be held in Bradford on Apr. 21st-22nd, 1998. A detailed scheduled of the workshop, style files for contributions and further information will be given via the Action email reflector. Working Group Chairmen identified the topics and contributors from COST 259 which will give presentations at the workshop:

___ WG 1: Prof. Hermann Rohling (Tech. Univ. Braunschweig, D), Prof. Antonio Rodrigues (IST, Lisbon, P) and Dr. Alister Burr (Univ. York, UK)

___ WG 2: Dr. Peter Karlsson (Telia Reaserch, S), Dr. Andreas Molisch (Tech. Univ. Vienna, A) and Dr. Preben Mogensen (Aalbork Univ. DK)

___ WG 3: Prof. Luis M. Correia (IST, Lisbon, P), Dr. Peter Seidenberg, (RWTH Aachen, D) and Mr. Andreas Eisenblätter (ZIB, Berlin D)
 
 

The following meetings will be held according to the following:

• 5th MCM and Joint COST 252/259 Workshop, hosted by Univ. Bradford in Bradford, United Kingdom, 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
• 7th MCM, hosted by Aristotle Univ. Thessaloniki, in Thessaloniki, Greece, in Jan./99
• 8th MCM and Workshop, hosted by Tech. Univ. Vienna, in Vienna, Austria, in Apr./99
• 9th MCM, hosted by Tech. Univ. Delft, in Delft, The Netherlands, in Sep./99

11. Any Other Business

Following a request from Dr. George Tsoulos (Univ. Bristol, Bristol, UK) on behalf of COST 260, the Action in general and WGs 2 and 3 in particular were requested to make a list of parameters and of their values which are of interest to system design and to adaptive antenna systems. The WGs will take that request into consideration, and a list will be produced for the next meetings.
 

All the delegates were asked to:

• send the abstracts of all the documents already presented in the previous meetings to the Action Secretary, so that they can be included in the WWW; the same procedure should be done for future documents
• send the WWW addresses of their institutions to the Action Secretary, so that they can be included in the WWW
• send files of the documents to be presented in future meetings to the Local Organiser, at least one week in advance of the date of the meeting, in order to make the meeting more efficient (due to the large number of documents to be handled each meeting)

12. Close of the Meeting

The meeting was attended by a total of 104 persons, Annex E. The Vice-Chairman thanked the Local Organiser for hosting the meeting, and all delegates for their participation, and formally closed it.

•  Opening formalities
• Adoption of the Agenda
• Approval of the minutes of the 3rd Meeting in Lisbon
• Status of the Action
• COST 231 book
• Budget and reimbursements
• Email reflector and WWW site
• Presentation and discussion of documents
• Liaisons with other international bodies
• Future meetings and workshop
• Any other business
• Close of Meeting