IEEE International Conference on Communications
7-11 June 2020 // Virtual Conference
Communications Enabling Shared Understanding

TUTORIALS

View the Virtual Program

 

All times are in Dublin, Ireland Time Zone (GMT+1)

Sunday, 07 June, 01:00 – 04:00

TUT-09: Terahertz Communications: A Physical-Layer Perspective

Sunday, 07 June, 09:00 – 12:00

TUT-08: Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communications (URLLC) in 5G: From Theory to Reality

Sunday, 07 June, 13:00 – 16:00

TUT-03: Communications and Networking in Droplet-based Microfluidic Systems
TUT-05: Aerial Access Networks for 6G: From UAV, HAP, to Satellite Communication Networks
TUT-07: Quantum Communications - A Glimpse Beyond Moore's Law

Sunday, 07 June, 17:00 – 20:00


TUT-02: Tactile Internet with Human-in-the-Loop
TUT-10: Blockchain Technology and Smart Contracts in 5G and Beyond Networks

Sunday, 07 June

TUT-04: Reconfigurable Metasurfaces for Intelligent 6G Wireless Networking CANCELLED
TUT-06: Beyond Massive MIMO: Cell-free Networks and Intelligent Reflecting Surfaces CANCELLED

 

Thursday, 11 June, 13:00 – 16:00

TUT-13: Online Learning for Data Caching and Network Service Delivery
TUT-17: Localization-of-Things: from Foundation to Operation

Thursday, 11 June, 17:00 – 20:00

TUT-01: Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) Communication in 5G and Beyond
TUT-12: Network Coding for 5G Systems: From Theory to Practice
TUT-14: Spectrum Sharing for Inter-Technology Coexistence CANCELLED
TUT-18: Mixed Numerologies and Flexible Waveforms: Enablers for Multi-Service Communications

Thursday, 11 June, 21:00 – 00:00

TUT-11: QoS Driven Based Information-Centric Virtualization for Software-Defined Multimedia Big Data Services Over 5G & Beyond Mobile Wireless Networks
TUT-16: Role of Flying Platforms for Coverage Hole Discovery and Global Connectivity

Thursday, 11 June

TUT-15: Fronthaul/Backhaul Evolution and Next Generation Core Advances for Beyond 5G Networks CANCELLED


TUT-01: Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) Communication in 5G and Beyond
Nuria González-Prelcic, Robert Heath

Date/Time: Thursday, 11 June, 17:00 – 20:00

Abstract:
Vehicles are becoming more intelligent and automated. To achieve higher automation levels, vehicles are being equipped with more and more sensors. High data rate connectivity seems critical to allow vehicles and road infrastructure exchanging all these sensor data to enlarge their sensing range and make better safety related decisions. Connectivity also enables other applications such as infotainment or high levels of traffic coordination. This presentation explains how 5G can support gigabit-per-second data rates for next generation V2X. First, the motivation and challenges associated with vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure applications are highlighted. Second, the key uses cases for V2X in 5G are summarized including raw sensor data sharing, platooning, collision avoidance, see-through, and mapping are reviewed. Finally, specific technical challenges in realizing V2X are identified, with an emphasis on solutions that make use of millimeter wave spectrum. Special attention is paid to the current limitations of 5G, what is planned for future 5G releases, and where the opportunities lie in going beyond 5G to 6G.

Speakers:

Nuria González Prelcic is a Senior Research Scientist at The University of Texas at Austin and (on leave) an Associate Professor in the Signal Theory and Communications Department, University of Vigo, Spain. She received her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering in 1998. She has held visiting positions with the University of New Mexico (2012), and The University of Texas at Austin (2014 -2017). Her main research interests include signal processing theory and signal processing for wireless communications: filter banks, compressive sampling and estimation, multicarrier modulation, channel estimation and MIMO processing for millimeter wave communications, including V2X at millimetre wave. She has published around 80 papers in the topic of signal processing for communications, including a tutorial on millimeter wave communication published in the IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing. She has also served as guest editor for the special issue of this journal on signal processing for mmWave wireless communications. She is and Editor for IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications. She has co-organized several special sessions on mmWave communications at SPAWC 2015, Asilomar 2016 and CAMSAP 2017. She is the founding director of the Atlantic Research Center for Information and Communication Technologies (AtlantTIC) at the University of Vigo.

Robert W. Heath Jr. received the Ph.D. in EE from Stanford University. He is a Cockrell Family Regents Chair in Engineering in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin and a Member of the Wireless Networking and Communications Group. He is also the President and CEO of MIMO Wireless Inc and Chief Innovation Officer at Kuma Signals LLC. Prof. Heath is a recipient of several awards including recently the 2017 IEEE Marconi Prize Paper Award and the 2019 IEEE Communications Society Stephen O. Rice Prize. He received the 2017 EURASIP Technical Achievement award and is co-recipient of the 2019 IEEE Kiyo Tomiyasu Award. He authored “Introduction to Wireless Digital Communication” (Prentice Hall in 2017) and “Digital Wireless Communication: Physical Layer Exploration Lab Using the NI USRP” (National Technology and Science Press in 2012). He co-authored “Millimeter Wave Wireless Communications” (Prentice Hall in 2014) and ``Foundations of MIMO Communication'' (Cambridge University Press, 2019). He is a licensed Amateur Radio Operator, a registered Professional Engineer in Texas, a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, and a Fellow of the IEEE.

 

TUT-02: Tactile Internet with Human-in-the-Loop
Frank H.P. Fitzek, Gerhard P. Fettweis

Date/Time: Sunday, 07 June, 17:00 – 20:00

Abstract:
The aim of the Tactile Internet with Human-in-the-Loop (TaHiL) is to democratise access to skills and expertise to promote equity for people of different genders, ages cultural backgrounds, or physical limitations. Both presenters are principal investigators of a German flagship research project on Tactile Internet called CeTI (www.ceti.one). The technical issues that will be addressed are:

  • To describe human goal-directed behavior, which entails flexible and dynamic interactions between sensation, multisensory perception, cognition, and action in contexts.
  • To introduce wearable peripherals for fast sensing and actuating with multimodal haptic feedback for human perception, cognition, and action based on ultra-small, bendable, stretchable, and ultra-low-power electronic circuits that precisely localize humans and objects in real-time.
  • To describe completely softwarised network solutions for wireless and wired communication that provide low latency, resilience, and security to enable human–machine co-operation.
  • To describe an integrated framework that leverages the effects of continuous, mutual adaptive learning between humans and machines. Tune explanation facilities towards the demands and objectives of the human user.
  • To introduce a secure and scalable computing infrastructure that enables intuitive haptic interaction and automatically adapts to changes in task contexts and world models.
  • To provide novel coding and compression methods, such as haptic codecs that take into consideration human factors, compressed sensing, and network coding to enable a combined control and communication system.

Speakers:

Frank H. P. Fitzek is a Professor and chair of the communication networks group at Technische Universität Dresden coordinating the 5G Lab Germany. He received his diploma (Dipl.-Ing.) degree in electrical engineering from the University of Technology - Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule (RWTH) - Aachen, Germany, in 1997 and his Ph.D. (Dr.-Ing.) in Electrical Engineering from the Technical University Berlin, Germany in 2002 and became Adjunct Professor at the University of Ferrara, Italy in the same year. In 2003 he joined Aalborg University as Associate Professor and later became Professor. He co-founded several start-up companies starting with acticom GmbH in Berlin in 1999. He has visited various research institutes including Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), VTT, and Arizona State University. In 2005 he won the YRP award for the work on MIMO MDC and received the Young Elite Researcher Award of Denmark. He was selected to receive the NOKIA Champion Award several times in a row from 2007 to 2011. In 2008 he was awarded the Nokia Achievement Award for his work on cooperative networks. In 2011 he received the SAPERE AUDE research grant from the Danish government and in 2012 he received the Vodafone Innovation price. His current research interests are in the areas of wireless and mobile 5G communication networks, mobile phone programming, network coding, cross layer as well as energy efficient protocol design and cooperative networking.

Gerhard P. Fettweis earned his Ph.D. under H. Meyr's supervision from RWTH Aachen in 1990. After one year at IBM Research in San Jose, CA, he moved to TCSI Inc., Berkeley, CA. Since 1994 he is Vodafone Chair Professor at TU Dresden, Germany, with 20 companies from Asia/Europe/US sponsoring his research on wireless transmission and chip design. He coordinates 2 DFG centers at TU Dresden, namely cfaed and HAEC. Gerhard is IEEE Fellow, member of the German academy acatech, and his most recent award is the Stuart Meyer Memorial Award from IEEE VTS. In Dresden he has spun-out eleven start-ups, and setup funded projects in volume of close to EUR 1/2 billion. He has helped organizing IEEE conferences, most notably as TPC Chair of ICC 2009 and of TTM 2012, and as General Chair of VTC Spring 2013 and DATE 2014.

 

TUT-03: Communications and Networking in Droplet-based Microfluidic Systems
Werner Haselmayr, Andrea Zanella, Giacomo Morabito

Date/Time: Sunday, 07 June, 13:00 – 16:00

Abstract:
This tutorial introduces the emerging field of communications and networking in droplet-based microfluidic systems, where tiny volumes of fluids, so-called droplets, are used for communication and/or addressing purposes in microfluidic chips. With this research, an important step towards the next generation of Lab-on-Chip devices is made. In order to lower the entry barrier for this exciting area, the tutorial starts with an accessible introduction of the fundamentals of droplet-based microfluidics. Then, we describe various communication aspects, including information encoding and noise models. We present microfluidic switches as the key building block for microfluidic networks and discuss different network topologies. Moreover, we present two promising healthcare applications for microfluidic networks and show the latest experimental results. For example, the world’s first text transmission on a microfluidic chip using droplets. The tutorial concludes with a discussion of the most important open problems in this new field and we show the opportunities for communications researchers to contribute to this area.

This tutorial is intended for young and experienced researchers, which are interested in an emerging multidisciplinary research area and want to take the opportunity to look beyond classical communication systems. The topics covered in this tutorial are presented in an accessible way, such that the attendee could immediately start a new project on this topic. No prior knowledge of biology, chemistry or biophysics is required, but the audience should be familiar with basic concepts in communication theory, electrical engineering, and networking.

Speakers:

Werner Haselmayr is currently an Assistant Professor at the Institute for Communications Engineering and RFSystems, Johannes Kepler University (JKU) Linz, Austria. He received the Ph.D. degree in mechatronics from JKU Linz, Austria, in 2013. His research interests include the design and analysis of synthetic molecular communication systems and communications and networking in droplet-based microfluidic systems. He is a member of a multidisciplinary group at the JKU Linz, with the aim of modeling, designing, and analysing droplet-based microfluidic systems, developing practical simulation tools for microfluidic networks, conducting physical experiments for validation and testing and to apply design automation methods for optimization purpose. He has authored 2 book chapters and 40+ paper, appeared in top-level international peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings. He is an IEEE member and serves as Associate Editor for IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MOLECULAR, BIOLOGICAL, AND MULTI-SCALE COMMMUNICATIONS (Methods and Data). Moreover, he co-organized the 4th Workshop on Molecular Communications 2019.

Andrea Zanella is a Full Professor at the Department of Information Engineering of the University of Padova, Italy. He received the Master degree (summa cum laude) in Computer Engineering in 1998, and the Ph.D. in Electronic and Telecommunications Engineering in 2002, from the same University. From December 1st, 2000 to September 1st, 2001, he was engaged as post-doc researcher at the Department of Computer Science of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he worked on Wireless Networks and Wireless Access to Internet. His major research interest is in the field of protocol design and performance evaluation of wireless systems. In particular, he has long experience in the modeling and performance analysis of wireless networks, design of cross-layer and cognitive protocols for multimedia transmissions over resource constrained networks, localization algorithms, and Internet of Things protocols for Smart City services. More recently, he started working on molecular networks, starting a new research trail on the design of pure hydrodynamic microfluidic systems. In this context, he has led an academic interdepartmental research project that has developed and tested some basic microfluidic devices capable of realizing fundamental network functionalities. He is one of the inventors of 4 international patents, and he authored 170+ papers, appeared in top-level international peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings, five of which received the best (student) paper award. He is IEEE senior member, and serves as Technical Area Editor for the IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, and as Associate Editor for the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COGNITIVE COMMUNICATIONS AND NETWORKING, the IEEE COMMUNICATIONS SURVEYS AND TUTORIALS and the Digital Communications and Networks (DCN), by Elsevier. He was Guest Editor for the S.I. on ”Smart Cities: vision and reality” of the Sensor Journal (MDPI) in 2016 and for the S.I. on ”Imaging in Internet of Things” for the Journal of Imaging (MDPI) in 2017. Finally, Andrea Zanella is one of the coordinators of the SIGnals and NETworking (SIGNET) research lab, is board member of the PhD School on Information Engineering and a member of the Board of Directors of the Human Inspired Technologies (HIT) research center.

Giacomo Morabito received the laurea degree in Electronic Engineering and the PhD in Electronic, Computer and Telecommunications Engineering from the Istituto di Informatica e Telecomunicazioni, University of Catania, Catania (Italy), in 1996 and 2000, respectively. From November 1999 to April 2001, he was with the BWN Lab of the Georgia Institute of Technology as a Research Engineer. Since April 2001 he is with the University of Catania where he is currently full professor. Dr. Morabito has been editorial board member for several international journals such as IEEE WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, IEEE NETWORKING LETTERS, IEEE COMPUTER NETWORKS, and IEEE WIRELESS NETWORKS. Furthermore, he has been the co-founder of the ACM ICN conference and, previously, of the ACM SIGCOMM ICN workshop; he has served as General Co-Chair of ACM NanoCom 2016 and Med-Hoc-Net 2006, and as the Technical Program Chair of Med-Hoc-Net 2004, TIWDC 2009, and ICOIN 2018. Furthermore he has been in the organizing committee and the TPC of several major conferences. He has been involved in several international research project and is currently the Project Coordinator of the H2020 RIA project ”COG-LO”. Giacomo Morabito has been tutorial presenter and keynote speaker and invited speaker in the context of several international conferences. His research interests focus on mobile networks and microfluidic communications.

 

TUT-05: Aerial Access Networks for 6G: From UAV, HAP, to Satellite Communication Networks
Lingyang Song, Zhu Han, Boya Di

Date/Time: Sunday, 07 June, 13:00 – 16:00

Abstract:
The current development of 5G networks represents a breakthrough in the design of communication networks, for its ability to provide a single platform enabling a variety of different services, such as enhanced mobile broadband communications, automated driving, Internet-of-Things, with its huge number of connected devices. Nevertheless, looking at the significant enhancements enabled by 5G, it is already possible to envision the need to move sixth generation (6G) with a new architecture incorporating new services and technologies. Providing “connectivity from the sky” is one new innovative trend in wireless communications for beyond 5G or coming 6G communication systems. Satellites, high and low altitude platforms, drones, aircrafts, and airships are being considered as candidates for deploying wireless communications complementing the terrestrial communication infrastructure. Utilizing modern information network technologies and interconnecting space, air, and ground network segments, the aerial access network (AAN) has attracted many attentions from both academia and industry, which has been recognized as a potential solution for the 6G systems. AANs are subject to heterogeneous networks that are engineered to utilize satellites, high-altitude platforms (HAPs), and low-altitude platforms (LAPs) to build network access platforms. Compared to terrestrial wireless networks, AANs are characterized by frequently changed network topologies and more vulnerable communication connections. Furthermore, AANs have the demand for the seamless integration of heterogeneous networks such that the network quality-of-service (QoS) can be improved. Thus, designing mechanisms and protocols for AANs poses many challenges. To solve these challenges, extensive research has been conducted. Notice that AANs are not intended to replace the above existing technologies, but instead to work with them in a complementary and integrated fashion. However, design, analysis, and optimization of AANs require multidisciplinary knowledge, namely, knowledge of wireless communications and networking, signal processing, artificial intelligence (e.g., for learning), decision theory, optimization, and economic theory. Therefore, a tutorial containing the basic concepts/theories for addressing the research advances that enable aerial communications in cellular networks as well as the state-of-the-art of research and development and the related information will be very useful for researchers and engineers. This is the primary motivation of this tutorial.

There are three main objectives of this tutorial. The first objective is to provide a general introduction to AANs integrated networks based on physical, MAC, and networking layer requirements. The second objective is to introduce the key components and the corresponding techniques to enable AANs communications systems, and the related design, analysis, and optimization problems will be presented in a comprehensive way. The third objective is to elaborate on the state-of-the-art of AANs along with possible applications. This will include classifications of the different schemes and the technical details in each scheme. Many examples will be illustrated in details so as to provide a wide scope for general audience.

Speakers:

Lingyang Song received his PhD from the University of York, UK, in 2007, where he received the K. M. Stott Prize for excellent research. He worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Oslo, Norway, and Harvard University, until rejoining Philips Research UK in March 2008. In May 2009, he joined the School of Electronics Engineering and Computer Science, Peking University, China, as a full professor. His main research interests include cooperative and cognitive communications, physical layer security, and wireless ad hoc/sensor networks. He published extensively, wrote 6 text books, and is co-inventor of a number of patents (standard contributions). He received 9 paper awards in IEEE journal and conferences including IEEE JSAC 2016, IEEE WCNC 2012, ICC 2014, Globecom 2014, ICC 2015, etc. He is currently on the Editorial Board of IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications and Journal of Network and Computer Applications. He served as the TPC co-chairs for the International Conference on Ubiquitous and Future Networks (ICUFN2011/2012), symposium co-chairs in the International Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Conference (IWCMC 2009/2010), IEEE International Conference on Communication Technology (ICCT2011), and IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC 2014, 2015). He is the recipient of 2012 IEEE Asia Pacific (AP) Young Researcher Award. Dr. Song is a senior member of IEEE, and IEEE ComSoc distinguished lecturer since 2015-2018.

Zhu Han (S’01–M’04-SM’09-F’14) received the B.S. degree in electronic engineering from Tsinghua University, in 1997, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park, in 1999 and 2003, respectively. From 2000 to 2002, he was an R&D Engineer of JDSU, Germantown, Maryland. From 2003 to 2006, he was a Research Associate at the University of Maryland. From 2006 to 2008, he was an assistant professor in Boise State University, Idaho. Currently, he is a Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering Department as well as Computer Science Department at the University of Houston, Texas. His research interests include wireless resource allocation and management, wireless communications and networking, game theory, wireless multimedia, security, and smart grid communication. Dr. Han received an NSF Career Award in 2010, the Fred W. Ellersick Prize of the IEEE Communication Society in 2011, the EURASIP Best Paper Award for the Journal on Advances in Signal Processing in 2015, several best paper awards in IEEE conferences, and is currently an IEEE Communications Society Distinguished Lecturer. Dr. Han is top 1% highly cited researcher according to Web of Science since 2017.

Boya Di received the B.S. degree from Peking University in 2014, and the Ph.D. degree from Peking University in 2019. Currently she is post-doctoral research associate in Imperial College London, London, UK. Her main research interests include aerial access networks, vehicular networks, wireless resource allocation and management, edge computing, non-orthogonal multiple access, and optimization theory. She has submitted/published 20 top IEEE journal articles and 16 IEEE flagship conference papers within less than 5 years, with over 590 Google Scholar citations. Among those publications, she has contributed as the first author for 9 journal articles. Moreover, one of her journal papers is currently listed as highly cited papers in Web of Science. Her PhD thesis won the prize for top-100 excellent thesis (acceptance rate < 5%) of Peking University in 2019. She has also served as a reviewer for multiple IEEE journals including IEEE JSAC, TWC, TVT, TCOM, etc., and a TPC member for IEEE GLOBECOM and ICC several times.

 

TUT-07: Quantum Communications - A Glimpse Beyond Moore's Law
Angela Sara Cacciapuoti, Marcello Caleffi, Lajos Hanzo

Date/Time: Sunday, 07 June, 13:00 – 16:00

Abstract:
Moore's law has indeed prevailed since he outlined his empirical rule-of-thumb in 1965, but based on this trend the scale of integration is set to depart from classical physics, entering nano-scale integration, where the postulates of quantum physics have to be obeyed. The quest for quantum-domain communication solutions was inspired by Feynman's revolutionary idea in 1985: particles such as photons or electrons might be relied upon for encoding, processing and delivering information. Hence in the light of these trends it is extremely timely to build an interdisciplinary momentum in the area of quantum communications, where there is an abundance of open problems for a broad community to solve collaboratively. In this workshop-style interactive presentation we will address the following issues:

  • We commence by highlighting the nature of the quantum channel, followed by techniques of mitigating the effects of quantum decoherence using quantum codes.
  • Then we bridge the subject areas of large-scale search problems in wireless communications and exploit the benefits of quantum search algorithms in multiuser detection, in joint-channel estimation and data detection, localization and in routing problems of networking, for example.

Speakers:

Lajos Hanzo (http://www-mobile.ecs.soton.ac.uk) FREng, FIEEE, FIET, Fellow of EURASIP, DSc received his degree in electronics in 1976 and his doctorate in 1983. In 2009 he was awarded the honorary doctorate ``Doctor Honaris Causa'' by the Technical University of Budapest. During his 40-year career in telecommunications he has held various research and academic posts in Hungary, Germany and the UK. Since 1986 he has been with the School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, UK, where he holds the chair in telecommunications. He has successfully supervised 119 PhD students, co-authored 18 John Wiley/IEEE Press books on mobile radio communications totalling in excess of 10 000 pages, published 1880 research contributions at IEEE Xplore, acted both as TPC and General Chair of IEEE conferences, presented keynote lectures and has been awarded a number of distinctions. Currently he is directing an academic research team, working on a range of research projects in the field of wireless multimedia communications sponsored by industry, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) UK, the European IST Programme and the Mobile Virtual Centre of Excellence (VCE), UK. He is an enthusiastic supporter of industrial and academic liaison and he offers a range of industrial courses. He is also a Governor of the IEEE VTS. During 2008 - 2012 he was the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Press and since 2009 he has been a Chaired Professor also at Tsinghua University, Beijing.

Angela Sara Cacciapuoti (M’10–SM’16) is a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor at the University of Naples Federico II, Italy. She was a visiting researcher at Georgia Institute of Technology (USA) and at the NaNoNetworking Center in Catalunya (N3Cat), Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (Spain). Since July 2018, she held the national habilitation as "Full Professor" in Telecommunications Engineering. Her work has appeared in first tier IEEE journals and she has received different awards, including the elevation to the grade of IEEE Senior Member in 2016, most downloaded article, and most cited article awards, and outstanding young faculty/researcher fellowships for conducting research abroad. Currently, Angela Sara serves as Area Editor for IEEE Communications Letters, and as Editor/Associate Editor for the journals: IEEE Trans. on Communications, IEEE Trans. on Wireless Communications, and IEEE Open Journal of Communications Society. She was a recipient of the 2017 Exemplary Editor Award of the IEEE Communications Letters. In 2016 she has been an appointed member of the IEEE ComSoc Young Professionals Standing Committee. Since 2017, she has been an elected Treasurer of the IEEE Women in Engineering (WIE) Affinity Group of the IEEE Italy Section. Since 2018, she has been appointed as Publicity Chair of the IEEE ComSoc Women in Communications Engineering (WICE) Standing Committee. Her current research interests are in Quantum Communications, Quantum Networks and Quantum Information Processing.

Marcello Caleffi (M’12, SM’16) he is with the DIETI Department, University of Naples Federico II, and with the National Laboratory of Multimedia Communications, National Inter-University Consortium for Telecommunications (CNIT). From 2010 to 2011, he was with the Broadband Wireless  Networking Laboratory at Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, as visiting researcher. In 2011, he was also with the NaNoNetworking Center in Catalunya (N3Cat) at the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (UPC), Barcelona, as visiting researcher. Since July 2018, he held the Italian national habilitation as Full Professor in Telecommunications Engineering. His work appeared in several premier IEEE Transactions and Journals, and he received multiple awards, including best strategy, most downloaded article, and most cited article awards. Currently, he serves as editor/ass. tech. editor for IEEE Communications Magazine and IEEE Communications Letters. He has served as Chair, TPC Chair, Session Chair, and TPC Member for several premier IEEE conferences. In 2016, he was elevated to IEEE Senior Member. In 2017, he has been appointed as elected treasurer of the IEEE ComSoc/VT Italy Chapter and Distinguished Lecturer from the IEEE Computer Society. In 2019, he has been also appointed as member of the IEEE New Initiatives Committee from the IEEE Board of Directors.

 

TUT-08: Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communications (URLLC) in 5G: From Theory to Reality
Eduard Jorswieck, Muhammad Ali Imran, M. Majid Butt

Date/Time: Sunday, 07 June, 09:00 – 12:00

Abstract:
5G is expected to support Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communications (URLLC) based services, such as industrial control, remote surgery, tactile internet, etc. These are also the most challenging services to implement because they require a new network design and control methodology, in order to satisfy their requirements and enable their co-existence with other types of services that 5G and beyond systems need to deliver. Indeed, today as we enter the Phase 3 of 5G design leading to 6G, it is imperative not only to understand how to deliver URLLC services but also to ensure that they will be offered in a sustainable fashion (i.e., not draining all network resources) that is compatible with the already provided enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) services. The proposed tutorial addresses the signal processing and optimization aspects of URLLC for 5G and beyond networks. The tutorial will cover a novel system design framework, state of the art signal processing and optimization techniques; and introduce cross disciplinary methodology to discuss complex trade-offs in 5G and beyond networks in view of URLLC.

Speakers:

Eduard Axel Jorswieck was born in 1975 in Berlin, Germany. Since August 2019, he has been the head of the Chair for Communications Systems and Full Professor at Technische Universitaet Braunschweig, Germany. From 2008 until 2019, he was the head of the Chair of Communications Theory and Full Professor at Dresden University of Technology (TUD), Germany. Eduard’s main research interests are in the broad area of communications. He has published more than 110 journal papers, 13 book chapters, 3 monographs, and some 275 conference papers on these topics. Dr. Jorswieck is senior member of IEEE. He is member of the IEEE SAM Technical Committee since 2015. Since 2017, he serves as Editor-in-Chief of the EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking. He serves currently on the editorial board for IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security. In 2006, he received the IEEE Signal Processing Society Best Paper Award.

Muhammad Ali Imran (University of Glasgow, UK) received his M.Sc. (Distinction) and Ph.D. degrees from Imperial College London, UK, in 2002 and 2007, respectively. He is a Professor of Communication Systems in University of Glasgow, Vice Dean of Glasgow College UESTC and Program Director of Electrical and Electronics with Communications. He is an Affiliate Professor at the University of Oklahoma, USA and a visiting Professor at the 5G Innovation Centre of Institute for Communication Systems at the University of Surrey, UK, where he has previously served from June 2007 to Aug 2016. He has supervised 30+ successful PhD graduates and published over 300 peer-reviewed research papers including more than 50 IEEE Journal papers. He has been awarded IEEE ComSoc’s Fred Ellersick award 2014 and FEPS Learning and Teaching award 2014. He is a senior member of IEEE and a Senior Fellow of Higher Education Academy, UK. He has delivered more than 20 invited seminars in international educational institutions and research centres of leading communication industry. He has chaired several tracks/workshops of international conferences: IWCMC, Global SIP, Crowncom, European Wireless, ICC and VTC. He is an associate Editor for IEEE Communications Letters, IEEE Open Access and IET Communications Journal.

M. Majid Butt is senior research scientist at Nokia Bell Labs, as well as, an adjunct Assistant Professor at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. Before that, he has held senior researcher positions at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland and Qatar University. He is recipient of Marie Curie Alain Bensoussan postdoctoral fellowship from European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM). He held ERCIM postdoc fellow positions at Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute, Germany, and University of Luxembourg. Dr. Majid’s major areas of research interest include communication techniques for wireless networks with focus on radio resource allocation, scheduling algorithms, energy efficiency and cross layer design. He has authored more than 60 peer reviewed conference and journal publications in these areas. He has served as TPC chair for various communication workshops in conjunction with IEEE WCNC, ICC, CROWNCOM and IEEE Globecom. He frequently gives tutorial talks at major IEEE conferences. He is a senior member of IEEE and serves as an associate editor for IEEE Access journal and IEEE Communication Magazine since 2016.

 

TUT-09: Terahertz Communications: A Physical-Layer Perspective
Chong Han, Josep M Jornet

Date/Time: Sunday, 07 June, 01:00 – 04:00

Abstract:
Terahertz (THz)-band (0.1-10 THz) communication is envisioned as a key wireless technology of the next decade. The THz band will help overcome the spectrum scarcity problems and capacity limitations of current wireless networks, by providing an unprecedentedly large bandwidth which can enable applications including Terabit-per-second backhaul systems, ultra-high-definition content streaming among mobile devices and wireless high-bandwidth secure communications. In addition, the very small wavelength at THz frequencies enables the development of miniature radios, which can be utilized for new networking paradigms such as wireless massive-core computing architectures, wireless nanosensor networks for biomedical applications and the Internet of Nano-Things.

The objective of this course is to provide the audience with the necessary knowledge and tools to contribute to the development of wireless communication networks in the THz band, focusing on physical-layer solutions. THz technology has been identified by DARPA as “one of the four major research areas that could eventually have an impact on our society larger than that of the Internet itself”. Beyond traditional applications of wireless networks, the development of a new communication and networking technology to support systems with “billions of connected nanosystems” has been identified as “one of the four essential components of the next IT revolution” by the Semiconductor Research Consortium (SRC) and the US National Science Foundation. More recently, THz communications has been identified by IEEE COMSOC as one of the nine communication technology trends to follow. As 5G technology becomes commercial, Terahertz communication is where fundamental scientific and engineering breakthroughs will occur.

Nonetheless, the THz band, which lies in between mm-waves and the far infrared, remains still one of the least explored regions in the EM spectrum. For many decades, the lack of compact high-power signal sources and high-sensitivity detectors able to work at room temperature has hampered the use of the THz band for any application beyond sensing. However, many recent advancements with different technologies is finally closing the so-called THz gap.

THz-band communication brings many new opportunities to the wireless communication community. The THz band supports huge transmission bandwidths, which range from almost 10 THz for distances below one meter, to multiple transmission windows, each tens to hundreds of GHz wide, for distances in the order of a few tens of meters. Nevertheless, this very large bandwidth comes at the cost of a very high propagation loss, mainly because of molecular absorption, which also creates a unique distance dependence on the available bandwidth. All these introduce many challenges to practical THz communication systems and require the development of innovative solutions. Moreover, many of these might be helpful for broadband wireless communication systems below and above the THz band, i.e., mm-waves and optical wireless communications, respectively.
Through this tutorial, the audience will learn the necessary knowledge to work in the cutting-edge research field of THz band communications. First, as a review, THz-band devices and THz-band channel models will be surveyed, which provide fundamentals and guidelines for THz communications. As the main focus of this tutorial, novel communication mechanisms tailored to the capabilities of THz devices and the peculiarities, challenges and opportunities introduced by the THz channel will be developed, including hybrid beamforming, ultra-broadband modulations, low-weight THz coding and error control, physical-layer synchronization, and physical-layer security. To conclude, existing experimental testbeds and platforms for THz communications and open problems will be presented.

Speakers:

Chong Han is currently an Assistant Professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China, since June 2016. He obtained the Master of Science and the Ph.D. degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA, in 2012 and 2016, respectively. He received 2019 Distinguished TPC Member Award, IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM) and 2018 Elsevier NanoComNet (Nano Communication Network Journal) Young Investigator Award, 2018 Shanghai Chenguang Funding Award, 2017  Shanghai Yangfan Funding Award. He is an editor of Nano Communication Networks (Elsevier) Journal and IEEE Access since 2016. He is a TPC co-chair for 1s t/ 2n d/ 3r d International Workshop on Terahertz Communications, in conjunction with IEEE ICC 2019, GLOBECOM 2019, and ICC 2020. His current research interests include Terahertz Communications, Electromagnetic Nanonetworks. He is a member of the IEEE.

Josep M. Jornet is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Northeastern University, in Boston, MA. He received the B.S. in Telecommunication Engineering and the M.Sc. in Information and Communication Technologies from the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain, in 2008. He received the Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, in 2013. From August 2013 and August 2019, he was an Assistant Professor with the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York. His current research interests are in Terahertz-band communication net-works, Wireless Nano-bio-communication Networks and the Internet of Nano-Things. In these areas, he has co-authored more than 120 peer-reviewed scientific publications, 1 book, and has also been grant-ed 3 US patents. These works have been cited over 6,600 times (h-index of 37). Since July 2016, he is the Editor-in-Chief of Elsevier’s Nano Communication Networks Journal. He is a member of the IEEE and the ACM. He is serving as the lead PI on multiple grants from U.S. federal agencies including the National Science Foundation, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the Air Force Research Laboratory. He is a recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER award and of several other awards from IEEE, ACM and UB.

 

TUT-10: Blockchain Technology and Smart Contracts in 5G and Beyond Networks
Hamed Ahmadi, Irene Macaluso, Marco Ruffini, Nima Afraz

Date/Time: Sunday, 07 June, 13:00 – 16:00

Abstract:
The Business ecosystem in Telecom industry is undergoing an evolution which introduces more sophisticated and highly frequent processes such as financial transactions and sensitive intelligence sharing which conventional manual negotiation-based systems are incapable of handling. These are not limited to financial Blockchain technology facilitates the automation of business processes and provides collaboration incentives in enterprise ecosystems. This is done through eliminating the need for a third-party authority to overlook the transactions with a collaborative consensus protocol which enhances the system with security, transparency and fault/manipulation tolerance. In this tutorial we will explain how blockchain technology will enable the industry to upgrade its business process management to accommodate the requirements for the 5G and beyond networks.

Speakers:

Hamed Ahmadi is an assistant professor in the department of Electronic Engineering, University of York, UK and an adjunct assistant professor in the school of EEE, University College Dublin, Ireland. He received his Ph.D. from National University of Singapore in 2012. Dr. Ahmadi has published more than 50 peer reviewed book chapters, journal and conference papers. Dr. Ahmadi is an editor of Frontiers in Blockchain, IEEE Access and Springer wireless networks journal and he was selected as an exemplary reviewer of IEEE Communications Letters in 2014. He is a senior member of IEEE, a Fellow of UK Higher Education Academy, and the Networks working group co-chair and management committee member of COST Action 15104 (IRACON).

Irene Macaluso received the Ph.D. degree in robotics from the University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy, in 2007. She is a Senior Research Fellow with Research Centre for Future Networks and Communications (CONNECT), Trinity College, Dublin, Irelands. Her research interests include adaptive wireless resource allocation, with particular focus on the design and analysis of market-based mechanisms in the management and operation of reconfigurable wireless networks and the application of machine learning to radio resource sharing. She is the author of more than 70 papers in internationally peer-reviewed journals and conferences. Dr. Macaluso has been an Executive Editor for the Transactions on Emerging Telecommunication Technologies since 2016. She is also an editor of Frontiers in Blockchain.

Marco Ruffini received the M.Eng. degree in telecommunications from Polytechnic University of Marche, Ancona, Italy, in 2002 and the Ph.D. degree from Trinity College Dublin (TCD), Dublin, Ireland, in 2005. After working as a research scientist for Philips in Germany, he joined TCD in 2005. Since 2010, he has been an Assistant Professor (tenured 2014) at TCD. He is Principal Investigator both at the CONNECT Telecommunications Research Centre at TCD and at the IPIC research centre in Photonics, based in the Tyndall National Institute. He is currently involved in several Science Foundation Ireland and H2020 projects, and leads the Optical Network Architecture group at TCD. He is the author of more than 120 journal, conference publications and book chapters and holds more than 10 patents. His research interests include flexible and shared high-capacity fibre broadband architectures and protocols, network convergence and software defined networks control planes.

Nima Afraz is a doctoral candidate in the CONNECT Centre, Trinity College Dublin. His research focuses on multi-tenant/service optical access networks enabled by virtualisation techniques. Nima has developed an interest for interdisciplinary approaches to solving the economic incentives in optical network infrastructure sharing.

 

TUT-11: QoS Driven Based Information-Centric Virtualization for Software-Defined Multimedia Big Data Services Over 5G & Beyond Mobile Wireless Networks
Xi Zhang

Date/Time: Thursday, 11 June, 21:00 – 00:00

Abstract:
Supporting big data services, which aims to transmit the data featured by vast volume, rapid-growing velocity, and wide-range variety (3V), is beyond the computing ability of the traditional networks. The multimedia wireless network represents a typical big data network because various video/audio streaming and 3D immersive-media currently accounts for 70 percent of mobile traffic and is expected to have a 500-fold increase in the fifth-generation (5G) wireless networks. However, the real-time multimedia big data need to be timely delivered within the required time period called delay-bound, because any received multimedia big data exceeding its delay bound is considered useless and discarded. But, because of randomly time-varying wireless channels and interferences, the deterministic delay-bound requirements for high-volume multimedia big data wireless transmissions are practically infeasible. Thus, we have proposed and developed the statistical delay-bounded quality of service (QoS) guarantee theory as an alternative solution to achieve wireless multimedia transmissions where we guarantee the delay-bound with a small violation probability. To support the highly bandwidth-intensive and time-sensitive multimedia big data services for the emerging 5G and beyond mobile wireless networks, for the last several years the telecommunication industry and academia have made a great deal of efforts in investigating various advanced wireless communication techniques. Among them, the machine learning based information-centric network (ICN), network functions virtualization (NFV), software defined networks (SDN), and edge computing technologies have received significant research attentions as the promising 5G-candidate techniques to implement the 5G wireless mobile networks architecture in the intelligent, flexible, efficient, and dynamically-programmable manners for significantly improving the various performances of statistical QoS provisioning in terms of effective capacity, delay-bounded guarantees, interferences mitigations, spectrum and energy efficiencies, multicast and mobility capabilities, network scalability, complexity and cost, etc. In this tutorial, we will focus on the key designing, implementations/hands-on experiences, issues, and emerging challenges on how to integrate the statistical QoS provision mechanisms with 5G candidate techniques, including ICN, NFV, SDN, edge computing, device-to-device (D2D) communications, massive MIMO, full-duplex, non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA), and energy harvesting, etc., under the machine learning based cross-layer design and optimization architecture, as well as the state-of-the-art theories, techniques, and their applications for the statistical QoS provisioning for multimedia big data services over the 5G and beyond mobile wireless networks.

Speakers:

Xi Zhang (S’89-SM’98-F’16) received the B.S. and M.S. degrees from Xidian University, Xi’an, China, the M.S. degree from Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, all in electrical engineering and computer science, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering and computer science (Electrical Engineering-Systems) from The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA. He is currently a Full Professor and the Founding Director of the Networking and Information Systems Laboratory, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station. He is a Fellow of the IEEE for contributions to quality of service (QoS) theory in mobile wireless networks. He was with the Networks and Distributed Systems Research Department, AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey, and AT&T Laboratories Research, Florham Park, New Jersey, in 1997. He was a research fellow with the School of Electrical Engineering, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia, and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, James Cook University, Australia. He has published more than 330 research papers on wireless networks and communications systems, network protocol design and modeling, statistical communications, random signal processing, information theory, and control theory and systems. He received the U.S. National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2004 for his research in the areas of mobile wireless and multicast networking and systems. He received five Best Paper Awards at IEEE ICC 2018, IEEE GLOBECOM 2014, IEEE GLOBECOM 2009, IEEE GLOBECOM 2007, and IEEE WCNC 2010, respectively. One of his IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications papers has been listed as the IEEE Best Readings Paper (receiving the highest citation rate among all IEEE Transactions/Journal papers in the area) on Wireless Cognitive Radio Networks and Statistical QoS Provisioning over Mobile Wireless Networking. He is an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer of both IEEE Communications Society and IEEE Vehicular Technology Society. He also received the TEES Select Young Faculty Award for Excellence in Research Performance from the Dwight Look College of Engineering at Texas A&M University, College Station, in 2006.

Professor Zhang is serving or has served as an Editor for IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMMUNICATIONS, IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON GREEN COMMUNICATIONS AND NETWORKING, and IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON NETWORK SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING, twice as a Guest Editor for IEEE JOURNAL ON SELECTED AREAS IN COMMUNICATIONS for two special issues on “Broadband Wireless Communications for High Speed Vehicles” and “Wireless Video Transmissions,” an Associate Editor for IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS, twice as the Lead Guest Editor for IEEE Communications Magazine for two special issues on “Advances in Cooperative Wireless Networking” and “Underwater Wireless Communications and Networks: Theory and Applications,” and a Guest Editor for IEEE Wireless Communications Magazine for special issue on “Next Generation CDMA vs. OFDMA for 4G Wireless Applications,” an Editor for Wiley’s JOURNAL ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS AND MOBILE COMPUTING, JOURNAL OF COMPUTER SYSTEMS, NETWORKING, AND COMMUNICATIONS, and Wiley’s JOURNAL ON SECURITY AND COMMUNICATIONS NETWORKS, and an Area Editor for Elsevier’s JOURNAL ON COMPUTER COMMUNICATIONS, among many others. He is serving or has served as the TPC Chair for IEEE GLOBECOM 2011, TPC Vice-Chair IEEE INFOCOM 2010, TPC Area Chair for IEEE INFOCOM 2012, Panel/Demo/Poster Chair for ACM MobiCom 2011, General Chair for IEEE WCNC 2013, and TPC Chair for IEEE INFOCOM 2017-2019 Workshops on “Integrating Edge Computing, Caching, and Offloading in Next Generation Networks,” etc.

 

TUT-12: Network Coding for 5G Systems: From Theory to Practice
Frank H.P. Fitzek, Muriel Médard

Date/Time: Thursday, 11 June, 17:00 – 20:00

Abstract:
The tutorial provides an introduction to the rapidly growing research area of network coding focusing on use cases for communication networks, cloud storage and cloud computing. The tutorial will discuss the importance of network coding for the upcoming 5G communication system and how it can be integrated in Software Defined Networks (SDN), Network Function Virtualization (NFV), Content Centric Networks (CCN) in order to fulfill the massive technical requirements on low latency, high throughput, and resilience. We will also explain how the new technology can be implemented using the software library KODO, which is already used by industry and research. The audience will have the possibility to program and evaluate the performance of network coding by means of web tools. No advanced programming experience is needed. The overall goal is to hold a lively tutorial with a lot of examples and demonstrations.

The first part of the tutorial provides the participants with the theoretical tools necessary to understand the field of network coding and focuses on the underlying algebraic principles. It will also introduce distributed randomized network codes and discuss their properties. We will not assume any prior knowledge of advanced algebra or optimization. Among other things, network coding can be used to increase throughput and robustness as well as reduce storage requirements, delay, and energy consumption. The second part of the tutorial gives an overview of the different application areas and discusses, which types of networking problems are amenable to network coding (and which aren't). In particular, it covers practical algorithms for data gathering in sensor networks, routing in wireless mesh networks, peer-to-peer networking and content distribution, streaming applications, etc. Finally, we will discuss implementation aspects in real-world systems using openstack and openflow. Such systems may range from core network routers all the way down to mobile phones and tiny sensor nodes. The constraints imposed by these devices in terms of available memory and computing power may differ by several orders of magnitude. As a consequence, the encoding and decoding algorithms need to be carefully adapted to the specific problem at hand. As an example, the size of the finite field for the coding operations has an impact on network coding efficiency, but also on the encoding and decoding complexity. Coding operations may be speed up substantially through the use of specialized hardware, as evidenced by the successful implementation of network coding on Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). The energy consumed by the coding operations is of particular importance on mobile devices and needs to be considered to avoid offsetting the energy gains offered by network coding.

Speakers:

Muriel Médard is a Professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. Professor Médard received B.S. degrees in EECS and in Mathematics in 1989, a B.S. degree in Humanities in 1990, a M.S. degree in EE 1991, and a Sc D. degree in EE in 1995, all from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge. She serves as an associate editor for the IEEE/OSA Journal of Lightwave Technology and is a member of the Board of Governors of the IEEE Information Theory Society. Professor Médard's research interests are in the areas of network coding and reliable communications, particularly for optical and wireless networks. She was awarded the IEEE Leon K. Kirchmayer Prize Paper Award 2002 for her paper, "The Effect Upon Channel Capacity in Wireless Communications of Perfect and Imperfect Knowledge of the Channel. She was co- awarded the Best Paper Award for G. Weichenberg, V. Chan, M. Médard, "Reliable Architectures for Networks Under Stress”. She received a NSF Career Award in 2001 and was co-winner 2004 Harold E. Edgerton Faculty Achievement Award, established in 1982 to honor junior faculty members "for distinction in research, teaching and service to the MIT community." She was named a 2007 Gilbreth Lecturer by the National Academy of Engineering. Professor Médard is a House Master at Next House and a Fellow of IEEE.

Frank H. P. Fitzek is a Professor and chair of the communication networks group at Technische Universität Dresden coordinating the 5G Lab Germany. He received his diploma (Dipl.-Ing.) degree in electrical engineering from the University of Technology - Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule (RWTH) - Aachen, Germany, in 1997 and his Ph.D. (Dr.-Ing.) in Electrical Engineering from the Technical University Berlin, Germany in 2002 and became Adjunct Professor at the University of Ferrara, Italy in the same year. In 2003 he joined Aalborg University as Associate Professor and later became Professor. He co-founded several start-up companies starting with acticom GmbH in Berlin in 1999. He has visited various research institutes including Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), VTT, and Arizona State University. In 2005 he won the YRP award for the work on MIMO MDC and received the Young Elite Researcher Award of Denmark. He was selected to receive the NOKIA Champion Award several times in a row from 2007 to 2011. In 2008 he was awarded the Nokia Achievement Award for his work on cooperative networks. In 2011 he received the SAPERE AUDE research grant from the Danish government and in 2012 he received the Vodafone Innovation price. In 2015 he was awarded the honorary degree "Doctor Honoris Causa" from Budapest University of Technology and Economy (BUTE).

 

TUT-13: Online Learning for Data Caching and Network Service Delivery
George Iosifidis, Apostolos Destounis, Georgios Paschos

Date/Time: Thursday, 11 June, 17:00 – 20:00

Abstract:
Storage resources and caching techniques permeate almost every facet of wired and wireless networks. From storage-assisted future Internet architectures and cache-enabled 5G systems, to modern analytic services that rely on memory-demanding ML/AI models, caching promises to benefit both the network operators by reducing their expenditures, and the end-users by improving the offered services. In light of the pressing data traffic growth, the increasing number of rich-media services, and the fast emergence of mobile analytic applications, the following question is inevitably raised:

Can we leverage online learning for maximizing the benefits of storage resources and optimizing the performance of services in modern communication systems?

In this tutorial we will start with a brief historical background on caching and will accordingly explain why caching is instrumental for modern network services and user applications beyond content delivery. We will present, in a novel and unified fashion, fundamental concepts of popularity request models and network graphs, with examples and pointers to real datasets and deployed systems. We will then shift our attention to the basic theory of online learning that has recently taken over the machine learning literature, and explain the key notions and tools that a network/communications researcher needs to know. A series of recent results that apply online learning in wireless edge caching/routing and device-to-device caching will be presented, showing evidence that this powerful analytical tool can address shortcomings of previous optimization approaches. Accordingly, we will discuss online learning techniques for deploying other network services (single-stage or chained functions), placing emphasis on minimizing their costs and reconfiguration delays in dynamic environments with unknown and unpredictable requests. This tutorial will conclude with a series of open questions at the nexus of online learning and deployment of network services and caching.

Speakers:

Since July 2019, Georgios S. Paschos is a Senior Manager, Research Science at Amazon.com, leading the EU Operation Research team of Amazon Transportation Services. Previously, he worked 5 years (’14-’19) as a principal scientist at Huawei Technologies, Paris, France, leading the Network Control and Resource Allocation team. Before that, Dr. Paschos was at LIDS, MIT (’12-’14) while he has held positions at CERTH-ITI, Greece ’08-’12 (researcher), University of Thessaly, Dept. ECE ’09-’11 (adjunct lecturer) and VTT, Finland, ‘07-‘08 (ERCIM Postdoc Fellow). He received his diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2002 from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and his PhD degree in Wireless Networks 2006 from ECE dept. University of Patras, both in Greece. Two of his papers won the best paper award, in GLOBECOM 2007 and IFIP Wireless Days 2009, respectively. In the past, he served as an associate editor for IEEE/ACM Trans. on Networking (’15-’19), IEEE Networking Letters (’18-’19), and as a TPC member of INFOCOM, WiOPT, and Netsoft. He has organized several international workshops on the topics of caching, network slicing and machine learning techniques for communication systems, while he was the co-organizer and editor of the IEEE JSAC Special Issue on Caching for Comm. Systems and Networks.

Apostolos Destounis received the Diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the National technical University of Athens, the M.Sc. in Communications and Signal Processing from Imperial College London and the Ph.D. In Telecommunications from CentraleSupelec, Paris in 2009, 2010 and 2014, respectively. From 2011 to 2014 he also was a Research Engineer in Alcetel-Lucent (now Nokia) Bell Labs France. He was the co-organizer of the first International Workshop on Machine Learning for Communications (WMLC), hosted with WiOpt 2019. His current research interests lie in the fields of optimization and machine learning, with applications to wireless networks and content caching.

George Iosifidis received the Diploma degree in communications from the Greek Air Force Academy, Athens, 2000; and the Ph.D. degree in 2012 from the Dep. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Thessaly, Greece. He was a Post-Doctoral Researcher with CERTH, Greece, 2012-14, and a Post-Doctoral/Associate Research Scientist with Yale University, 2014-17. Since 2016, he is the Ussher Assistant Professor in Future Networks with the School of Computer Science and Statistics, Trinity College Dublin, and a Funded Investigator with the research center CONNECT. He was a co-recipient of the Best Paper Awards in WiOPT 2013 and the IEEE INFOCOM 2017 conferences, a guest editor for the IEEE JSAC Special Issue on Caching, and an Editor for IEEE Transactions on Communications (since 11/2018) and IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (since 10/2019). His work on resource sharing and cooperative networks has appeared in Nature Communications (2019), PNAS (2019), and Nature Human Behavior (2018). His interests lie in the area of network optimization and economics, with a recent focus on edge computing and mobile data analytics.

 

TUT-16: Role of Flying Platforms for Coverage Hole Discovery and Global Connectivity
Muhammad Zeeshan Shakir, Mohamed-Slim Alouini

Date/Time: Thursday, 11 June, 17:00 – 20:00

Abstract:
Driven by an emerging use of flying platforms such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), drones and unmanned balloons in future network applications and the challenges that the 6G networks exhibit, the focus of this tutorial is to demonstrate the evolution of the flying platforms as a novel architectural enabler for radio access network (RAN) and their integration with the future cellular access and backhaul/fronthaul networks. These platforms are networked, flying and a potential way to offer high data rate, high reliability and ultra-low latent access and backhaul/fronthaul to future wireless networks. Such large scale deployable platforms and frameworks will guarantee the global information and communication requirements in future smart and resilient cities and solve the ubiquitous connectivity problems in many challenging and temporary network environments, e.g., coverage or capacity enhancements for temporary healthcare and disaster infrastructure such as the ones being built in Glasgow, London and in the several cities all round the world during Covid-19 Pandemic. It is expected that these pop-up networks will enable emerging remote healthcare applications and services and offer social connectivity for patients and frontline workers. This tutorial will provide balanced coverage on recent trends, challenges and future research and development on the integration of flying platforms with the future wireless networks.

Specifically, this tutorial will provide answers for the following: 

  • How flying platforms can be used for autonomous coverage hole discovery using machine learning to offer a reliable and scalable solution to enhance the coverage and capacity of the access networks (NFP placement and user associations)?
  • How flying platforms can be used to fronthaul the ultra-dense small cell deployment to the core network and offer a flexible wireless solution (NFPs deployment architecture, potential high data rate technologies, e.g., FSO and NFP small cell association)?
  • What are the economic, regulatory and industrial perspectives of deploying flying platforms for cellular access and backhaul networks (total cost of operation, automation and some latest regulations)?

Speakers:

Muhammad Zeeshan Shakir (S’04, M’10, SM’16) is Reader at the University of the West of Scotland (UWS), UK, received close to £1m funding from bodies such as Innovate UK (as PI/Co-PI), and ERASMUS+ programme (as Co-I) and UK industries (as PI) in the areas of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). He has been actively involved in industry collaborative research project with centre of excellence for Sensor and Imaging Systems technologies (CENSIS) and has contributed to European project SELFNET and IEEE 4G/5G Standardisation. Previously, he has worked as PI/Co-PI on several commercial and non-commercial high impact research projects funded by Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF) of Qatar and Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada. With over 10 years of research expertise in design and development of wireless communication systems, he has published over 120 research articles and edited or contributed to 10 books. He is a recipient of STARS (Staff Appreciation and Recognition Scheme) Award 2018 for Outstanding Research and Enterprise performance at UWS. He has been awarded with the Best Journal paper award 2019 jointly presented by IEEE Communications Society and China Institute of Communications for research on millimetre wave communications for 5G. Some of his research articles are listed in the Best Reading list on backhaul/fronthaul: communications, networking and signal processing by IEEE Communications Society. His research article published in IEEE Communications (2018) has been recognised in the top 1% highly cited papers in the field of Computer Science worldwide (Source: Web of Science). He is serving as a Chair of several symposiums/workshops in IEEE flagship conferences, including Globecom, ICC and VTC. He is an Editor of PHYCOM, IEEE Communications, and IEEE Communications Letters. He is a founding Chair of IEEE ComSoc emerging technical committee on backhaul/fronthaul. He is a Senior Member of IEEE and an active member of IEEE ComSoc.

Mohamed-Slim Alouini (S’94, M’98, SM’03, F’09) was born in Tunis, Tunisia. He received the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, CA, USA, in 1998. He served as a faculty member in the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA, then in the Texas A&M University at Qatar, Education City, Doha, Qatar before joining King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal, Makkah Province, Saudi Arabia as a Professor of Electrical Engineering in 2009. Prof. Alouini is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a member of the Thomson ISI Web of Knowledge list of Highly Cited Researchers and of the Elsevier/Shanghai Ranking list of Most Cited Researchers, and an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Communications Society. He is a recipient of the Recognition Award of the IEEE ComSoc Wireless Technical Committee in 2016 and a co-recipient of best paper awards in ten IEEE conferences (including ICC, GLOBECOM, VTC, PIMRC, and DySPAN). His current research interests include the modeling, design, and performance analysis of wireless communication systems.

 

TUT-17: Localization-of-Things: from Foundation to Operation
Moe Z. Win, Andrea Conti

Date/Time: Thursday, 11 June, 13:00 – 16:00

Abstract:
The availability of real-time high-accuracy location awareness is essential for current and future wireless applications, particularly those involving Internet-of-Things and 5G communication networks. Reliable localization and navigation of people, objects, and vehicles – Localization-of-Things – is a critical component for a diverse set of applications including connected communities, smart environments, vehicle autonomy, asset tracking, medical services, military systems, and crowd sensing. The coming years will see the emergence of network localization and navigation in challenging environments with sub-meter accuracy and minimal infrastructure requirements.
We will discuss the limitations of traditional positioning, and move on to the key enablers for high-accuracy location awareness: wideband transmission and cooperative processing. Topics covered will include: fundamental bounds, cooperative algorithms, and network experimentation. Fundamental bounds serve as performance benchmarks, and as a tool for network design. Cooperative algorithms are a way to achieve dramatic performance improvements compared to traditional non-cooperative positioning. To harness these benefits, system designers must consider realistic operational settings; thus, we present the performance of cooperative localization based on measurement campaigns.

Speakers:

Moe Win is a Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Prior to joining MIT, he was at AT&T Research Laboratories for five years and at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for seven years. His research encompasses fundamental theories, algorithm design, and network experimentation for a broad range of real-world problems. His current research topics include network localization and navigation, network interference exploitation, and quantum information science. Professor Win has served the IEEE Communications Society as an elected Member-at-Large on the Board of Governors, as elected Chair of the Radio Communications Committee, and as an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer. Over the last two decades, he held various Editorial posts for IEEE journals and organized numerous international conferences. Currently, he is serving on the SIAM Diversity Advisory Committee. He was honored with two IEEE Technical Field Awards: the IEEE Kiyo Tomiyasu Award and the IEEE Eric E. Sumner Award. Other recognitions include the IEEE Communications Society Edwin H. Armstrong Achievement Award, the International Prize for Communications Cristoforo Colombo, the Copernicus Fellowship and the Laurea Honoris Causa from the University of Ferrara, and the U.S. Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. Professor Win is elected Fellow of the AAAS, the IEEE, and the IET. He is an ISI Highly Cited Researcher.

Andrea Conti is a Professor at the University of Ferrara and Research Affiliate at the MIT Wireless Information and Network Sciences Laboratory. His research interests involve theory and experimentation of wireless systems and networks including network localization and distributed sensing. He received the HTE Puskás Tivadar Medal, the IEEE Communications Society’s Stephen O. Rice Prize in the field of Communications Theory, and the IEEE Communications Society’s Fred W. Ellersick Prize. Dr. Conti has served as editor for IEEE journals, as well as chaired international conferences. He has been elected Chair of the IEEE Communications Society’s Radio Communications Technical Committee. He is a co-founder and elected Secretary of the IEEE Quantum Communications & Information Technology Emerging Technical Subcommittee. Professor Conti is an elected Fellow of the IET and has been selected as an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer.

 

TUT-18: Mixed Numerologies and Flexible Waveforms: Enablers for Multi-Service Communications
Behrouz Farhang-Boroujeny, Arman Farhang, Lei Zhang

Date/Time: Thursday, 11 June, 17:00 – 20:00

Abstract:
Customized physical layer design and efficient resource allocation, as enablers for the future multi-service wireless communication systems, are among the main motivations for this tutorial. This tutorial will provide an overview of the advances in waveform design of wireless networks during the last decade, while covering the new trends in the design of these networks. According to the recent standardization activities, orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) with mixed symbol/subcarrier spacing (i.e., mixed numerologies) will be deployed to serve multi-service ecosystem in 5G networks. Accordingly, a wide set of use-cases are accommodated by an infrastructure at different frequency bands or time slots, e.g., those from delay-tolerant to latency-critical systems such as massive machine type communications (mMTC) and ultra-reliable low-latency communications (URLLC), respectively. However, cohabitation of the individually optimized services in one system leads to technical challenges to both physical and multiple access control layers of the overall system, such as optimal waveform design, inter-numerology interference analysis and cancelation, resource allocation, etc. This tutorial will cover all these aspects while discussing the emerging candidate technologies that can address the requirements of future wireless networks.

Speakers:

Behrouz Farhang-Boroujeny received the Ph.D. degree from Imperial College, University of London, UK, in 1981. From 1981 to 1989 he was with the Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan, Iran. From 1989 to 2000 he was with the National University of Singapore. Since August 2000, he has been with the University of Utah where he is now a Professor. Dr. Farhang-Boroujeny is an expert in the general area of signal processing. He has over 35 years of post PhD experience in teaching and doing research in this field. In the past he has worked in the diverse fields of audio signal processing, magnetic and optical recording channels, CDMA and multicarrier communication systems, MIMO communications, and more recently he has been involved with research related to cognitive radio systems. In this area, his team has studies possible applications of various multicarrier techniques, including the conventional OFDM and filter bank based schemes. Dr. Farhang-Boroujeny has extensively published in the above fields of study, and has been the speaker at numerous conferences and workshops. He has also given numerous invited talks at various institutes/universities around the world. He has over 250 publications including over 100 papers in IEEE Transactions on Communications, Wireless Cimmunications, Signal Processing, and Magnetics. He is the author of the books “Adaptive Filters: theory and applications”, John Wiley & Sons, 1998, and “Signal Processing Techniques for Software Radios”, Self-published at Lulu publication house. Dr. Farhang-Boroujeny served as associate editor of IEEE Trans. on Signal Processing from July 2002 to July 2005 and IEEE Signal Processing Letters from 2009 to 2012. He has also been involved in various IEEE activities. He was the chairman of the Signal Processing/Communications chapter of the IEEE in Utah from January 2004 to December 2005.

Arman Farhang is a Lecturer/Assistant professor in the Electronic Engineering Department at Maynooth University, Ireland. He received the Ph.D. degree from the Trinity College Dublin (TCD),  Dublin, Ireland, in 2016. He was a Research Fellow with the Irish National Telecommunications Research Centre (CONNECT), Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland, from 2016 to 2018. He was a Lecturer in the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at University College Dublin (UCD), Ireland for a short period in 2018. He joined the Department of Electronic Engineering at Maynooth University in September 2018 as a lecturer. Dr. Farhang also holds an adjunct professor position at TCD. He is an Associate Investigator in the CONNECT centre where he leads the research around the topic of waveforms for 5G and beyond. Dr. Farhang brings together the optical and wireless communications teams in CONNECT centre around the topic of waveforms in the context of converged wireless-optical networks. He has published over 50 peer-reviewed publications in the topic of waveforms. He serves as an associate editor of “EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking”. He has also served as a TPC member of many well-reputed IEEE conferences and workshops. His research interests include wireless communications, digital signal processing for communications, multiuser communications, multiantenna, and multicarrier systems.

Lei Zhang is a Lecturer (Assistant professor) at the School of Engineering, University of Glasgow, U.K. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Sheffield, U.K. He worked as a research engineer in Huawei Communication Technology Laboratory (CT Lab), and a research fellow in the 5G Innovation Centre (5GIC), University of Surrey, U.K. His research interests broadly lie in the communications and networks, including radio access slicing and waveform design, wireless blockchain systems and  networks, new air interface design, Internet of Things (IoT), multi-antenna signal processing, massive MIMO systems, etc. He has 16 US/UK/EU/China granted patents on wireless communications and published 100+ peer-reviewed papers. Dr Lei Zhang also holds a visiting position in 5GIC at the University of Surrey. He is an associate editor of IEEE ACCESS and a senior member of IEEE. Dr. Lei Zhang was the Publication and Registration Chair of IEEE SAM 2018, publication chair of UCET 2019, Co-chair of Cyber-C Blockchain workshop. He served as TPC for 40+ conferences. He led guest editors of two international journals. He received the IEEE ICC TAOS TC Best Paper Award 2019. Dr Zhang has been working on RAN slicing and waveform design as a pioneer in the last six years and have published 35+ publications in this area (including 14 IEEE journal papers). UK EPSRC New investigator Award Scheme funded his research on this topic. Together with Dr. Arman Farhang, he edited a book published by Wiley titled as “Radio Access Network Slicing and Virtualization for 5G Vertical Industries”, which will appear in Feb. 2020.

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