A veritable who's who of signal-processing research will meet inNapa Valley, Aug. 16-18, for a workshop that may lay the foundation for future generations of communications systems and a wide variety of electronic signal-processing equipment. The workshop will focus on a theory called "cyclostationarity," developed by workshop chair William A. Gardner, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC Davis and the leading authority on cyclostationarity. This unusual term refers to a statistical property of random signals that reflects underlying cyclic behavior. Electronics designed to take advantage of this new-found signal characteristic could expand the capacity of individual communication systems -- be they cable, wire, radio or optical. The special properties of cyclostationarity, such as signal selectivity, are especially useful for mobile cellular and indoor personal communications, signals intelligence and covert communications. "It's almost like having another dimension besides time, frequency and space," Gardner says. The previously unappreciated phenomenon occurs in most artificially created signals arising in communications, telemetry, radar and sonar systems. Cyclostationarity can also be found in many signals of natural origins, for which it can be exploited to improve physical modeling, forecasting and signal separation for data in fields such as climatology, meteorology, astronomy, hydrology, oceanography, biomedicine and economics. Gardner anticipates that the workshop, sponsored in part by the National Science Foundation, will catalyze activities in research and development dedicated to exploiting the cyclostationarity theory.