It is our great pleasure to host the first Annual Summit and Conference (ASC) of Asia Pacific Signal and Information Processing Association (APSIPA). APSIPA is a new association with the noble goal to offer interaction and networking for all Asian and Pacific nations and the world. We are of exceptional honor to organize this inaugural event for the establishment of APSIPA in Sapporo, Japan, and to set the beginning of a new tradition for APSIPA ASC.

On behalf of APSIPA ASC 2009 international organizing committee, we would like to sincerely welcome you to the conference. The venue of APSIPA ASC 2009 is the Sapporo Convention Center, Sapporo, Japan. The city of Sapporo is quite famous for snow festival in the winter season and majestic woods and beautiful flowers in autumn season, in particular October, as well as for its fine food and dinning. We hope you can find yourself very enjoyable in Sapporo during APSIPA ASC.

The APSIPA ASC 2009 consists of four major technical tracks: Signal Processing, Communications, Computer/Information, and Circuits and Systems/VLSI”. Each track has their own distinct technical flavor but is also closely related with each other through interdisciplinary topics. Most of the papers are on frontier research issues with potential great contribution to our future life. We hope all participants will take such an excellent opportunity to meet with colleagues from around the world to discuss and exchange ideas and results. Hopefully some collaboration can be born from the networking opportunities you find during APSIPA ASC.

Besides the contributed papers, we have two distinguished keynote speakers: Prof. Professor Sanjit K. Mitra and Dr. Shun-ichi Amari. Prof. Mitra will give a talk of “Structural Subband Decomposition: A New Concept in Digital Signal Processing” and Dr. Amari will give a talk of “Divergence, Signal Separation and Information Geometry”. There are also tutorials, special sessions, forum, and panel discussions. Through these various forms of technical activities, we hope you can find attending APSIPA ASC fruitful and exciting.

We would like to express our sincerely thanks to all the organizing committee members for their excellent jobs. We also appreciate all of the Technical Program Committee members’ contributions in the reviews and selections of papers. We are especially in debt to APSIPA Steering Committee for their support and trust, without which organizing this ASC would have been a daunting difficult task. Finally, we would like to also express our special thanks to all the friends and participants who come to join us to make this a wonderful and memorable event.