Title: Towards 5G Wireless Networks
Abstract:
With the 5th generation of wireless networks in the horizon, work is underway to define what such networks should look like. Challenges in the wireless arena keep mounting as user expectations grow with competing demands for higher bit rates, vastly enlarged capacities, vanishing latencies, and uniform user experiences. This lecture considers 5G, not from the perspective of a manufacturer, operator, or user, but from the perspective of a researcher. With this perspective, the presentation is organized around various reflections touching on aspects that relate to 5G but that also have broader conceptual implications.
Biography:
Angel Lozano is a Professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) in Barcelona. Prof. Lozano received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1999. He subsequently joined Bell Labs (Lucent Technologies, now Nokia) in Holmdel, USA, where he was a member of the Wireless Research Department till 2008. Between 2005 and 2008 he was also Adj. Associate Professor at Columbia University. Prof. Lozano is a Fellow of the IEEE. He has served as Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory (2011-2014) and the IEEE Transactions on Communications (1999-2009), and is now an Area Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications. He was Chair of the IEEE Communication Theory Technical Committee (2013-2014) and an elected member of the Board of Governors of the IEEE Communications Society (2012-2014). Prof. Lozano has published extensively, holds 15 patents, and has contributed to several books. His papers have received several awards, including the 2009 Stephen O. Rice prize to the best paper published in the IEEE Transactions on Communications, the 2016 Fred W. Ellersick prize to the best paper published in the IEEE Communications Magazine, and the 2016 Communications Society & Information Theory Society joint paper award.

Title: Paving the Way for Context-Aware Holistic IoT Network
Abstract:
In this talk, I will take you through a quick journey in the IoT domain. I will identify the unique quality of service (QoS) needs of emerging IoT applications and propose SADIQ, which is a software-defined network (SDN) system that addresses these needs. SADIQ provides location-aware, context driven QoS for IoT applications by allowing applications to express their requirements using a location-based abstraction and a high-level SQL-like policy language, and the network to support these requirements through recent advances in SDNs. SADIQ is implemented using commodity OpenFlow-enabled switches and an open-source SDN controller and evaluate its effectiveness using traces from two real IoT applications. SADIQ system source code is made publicly available for the research community.
Biography:
Basem is an associate and founding professor of computer science and electrical engineering in the Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences & Engineering (CEMSE) Division at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Before joining KAUST in 2009, he was a visiting faculty at the Computer Science Department in Stanford University. His current research covers a range of topics in energy and resource allocation in wired and wireless communication networks, including wireless mesh, wireless sensor, multimedia, and optical networks. He is also interested in SDNs, IoT, and cloud computing. In 2012, he was elevated to the rank of Senior Member of IEEE

Title: Research and Standard Trends in Broadcast for Future 5G Cellular Systems
Abstract:
5G systems have attracted a lot of focus recently. After the pre-standard period where the concepts of 5G and the impact on different verticals were clarified, 3GPP has started the specification of 5G. In December 2017, a first version of 3GPP Release 15 was published containing the first 5G standard. Release 15 focused on applications such enhanced broadband, ultra-reliable communication and massive Machine Type Communication (mMTC). 3GPP is now considering other applications such as Broadcast for next releases. Broadcast (Point to Multipoint ) is needed because of the huge traffic that media services generate. It is estimated that 60% of the traffic comes from video. This is particularly challenging for very popular live content (e.g. sports) or unpredictable events (e.g. breaking news) that tend to cause large traffic spikes. The increasing bit-rate demands of 4k UHDTV and, in the future 8k UHDTV, and the emerging new interactive services (e.g. augmented reality, virtual reality and 360º visual media) will further increase the demand on network capacity and performance. Furthermore, Point to Multipoint applications extends from media to other verticals such autonomous driving and IOT. None of the existing networks, whether fixed, mobile or broadcast, has the capability to support this type of future demand on their own due to limitations associated with capacity, delay and cost of deployment. In Order to prepare the point to multipoint standardization, a 5G-PPP project was launched recently, the 5G-Xcast, that will develop a solution targeting the aforementioned limitations and therefore addressing future demand, based on the key capabilities of 5G that by far exceed those of the legacy systems
Biography:
Dr. Belkacem Mouhouche is a Principal Standards Engineer at Samsung Research UK. He holds a Ph.D. degree in Signal Processing from Ecole Nationale Superieure des Telecoms (Telecom Paristech) in France. During his Ph.D. he worked on 3GPP third generation systems (UMTS). He later worked as a 3GPP standard Engineer following the development of HSDPA and LTE systems. He was also involved in FP7 European Project "End to End Efficiency" (E3) where he worked on cognitive radio in heterogeneous systems. His research interest are in the area of advanced techniques for the physical layer of future communication systems including MIMO, beamforming and coding applied to wireless systems. Dr. Mouhouche was also heavily involved in the development of the latest broadcast terrestrial standard ATSC3.0 and led the broadcast activity within the 5G-PPP project "Fantastic-5G". Recently, he was appointed as innovation, dissemination and standardization manager of the 5G-PPP project "5G-Xcast" focused on new point to multipoint techniques for 5G networks.

Title: Meeting 5G Traffic Demands in the Era of the Internet of Things
Abstract:
Communication networks no longer connect just people, but are evolving into billions of interconnected smart machine-type devices that enable automatic collection of data with little or no human intervention, leading to the so-called Internet of Things (IoT). Mobile communication networks are expected to become a key IoT connectivity technology, supporting 7 out of 30 billion IoT devices deployed by 2025. Mobile networks are designed and optimised for the traffic typically generated by a moderated number of human-driven, high data-rate services. IoT will introduce a much larger number of new machine devices with lower individual data rates but potentially much larger aggregated traffic demands, which will represent a radical change in network data traffic patterns. Current communication protocols and resource management algorithms are not optimised for IoT services and may lead to inefficient performance of mobile networks under IoT traffic. This talk will discuss the main features of IoT traffic and its statistical modelling along with the impact on current network design, and will explore how mobile networks might gain additional capacity in other spectrum bands to support the forecasted IoT traffic demands.
Biography:
Miguel López-Benítez has been with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Electronics of the University of Liverpool, UK since 2013. Prior to this, he was a Research Fellow in the Centre for Communication Systems Research of the University of Surrey, UK from 2011 to 2013. He received a PhD degree in Telecommunications Engineering from the Technical University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain in 2011 (Outstanding PhD Thesis Award 2011). He is/has been the Principal Investigator of research projects funded by the EPSRC, British Council and Royal Society in UK, and has been involved in several European-funded projects as well. He is an Associate Editor of IEEE Access and IET Communications and has been a member of the Organising Committee for the IEEE WCNC International Workshop on Smart Spectrum (IWSS 2015-2018). He is a Senior Member of the IEEE and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Title: Adaptive Waveform Communications for the Efficient Provision of the Various Categories of QoS in 5G Systems
Abstract:
The current standardization activities of the upcoming 5G radio communication system classify the plethora of services to be offered into three categories, namely Enhanced Mobile Broadband, Massive IoT and Low Latency. Some of these services require clean communication channels, which can only be guaranteed by orthogonal or quasi orthogonal waveforms and perfect synchronization in time and in frequency. Some other services exchange sporadically small amounts of data and, as such, call for non-orthogonal and/or short duration waveforms capable of offering a satisfactory quality of service in the presence of time and frequency asynchronism. To respond to the various types of quality of service that must be offered by 5G systems, a battery of waveforms should be devised and used adaptively to match, in real time, the varying communication channel characteristics. In this talk, we start by showing that current 4G and DVT-T systems already deploy, quasi-statically, adaptive waveform communications, through the use of different Cyclic Prefix durations and/or different sub-carrier spacing and sub-carrier number. Afterwards, we provide a short presentation of the Ping-pong Optimized Pulse Shaping (POPS) paradigm, a powerful tool for the introduction of the new paradigm of advanced adaptive waveform communications (AWC) in 5G. We then examine some transmission configurations that illustrate the flexibility and simplicity of the POPS paradigm and its ability to optimize waveforms in different frameworks, ranging from FBMC/QAM and FBMC/OQAM systems and hexagonal/rectangular time-frequency lattice multicarrier systems to Flexible Zero Padding (FZP) multicarrier systems and robust interference-resilient single-carrier and OFDMA systems.
Biography:
Mohamed Siala received his general engineering degree from Ecole Polytechnique, Palaiseau, France, in 1988, his specialization engineering degree in telecommunications from Telecom ParisTech, Paris, France, in 1990, and his Ph.D. in digital communications from Telecom ParisTech, Paris, France, in 1995. From 1990 to 1992, he was with Alcatel Radio-Telephones, Colombes, France, working on the implementation of the GSM physical layer. In 1995, he joined Wavecom, Issy-les-Moulineaux, France, where he worked on advanced multicarrier communications and channel estimation for low-orbit mobile satellite communications. From 1997 to 2001, he worked at Orange Labs, Issy-les-Moulineaux, France, on the assessment of the performance of the physical layer of 3G systems and participated actively in their standardization. In 2001, he joined Sup’Com, Tunis, Tunisia, where he is now a full Professor. His research interests are in the areas of digital and wireless communications with special emphasis on advanced multicarrier systems and ARQ, channel estimation, synchronization, adaptive modulation and coding, MIMO systems, space-time coding, relaying, cooperative networks and cognitive radio.

Title: Machine Learning for 5G Network
Abstract:
The forecasted number of connected wireless IoT devices to the 5G network by 2022 is expected to reach more than 18 billions. Thus, a real revolution is needed to handle this terrific amount of network traffic. Consequently, intelligent and self-sustained radios and network equipment's, having cognitive functions capable to mimic and learn from their environments and act on their own without humans intervention, is a must.
Biography:
Ridha Hamila received the Master of Science, Licentiate of Technology with distinction, and Doctor of Technology degrees from Tampere University of Technology (TUT), Tampere, Finland, in 1996, 1999, and 2002, respectively. Dr. Hamila is currently a Full Professor at the epartment of Electrical Engineering, Qatar University, Qatar. From 1994 to 2002 he held various research and teaching positions at TUT within the Department of Information Technology, Finland. From 2002 to 2003 he was a System Specialist at Nokia research Center and Nokia Networks, Helsinki. From 2004 to 2009 he was with Emirates Telecommunications Corporation, UAE. Also, from 2004 to 2013 he was adjunct Professor at the Department of Communications Engineering, TUT. His current research interests include mobile and broadband wireless communication systems, Internet of Everything, and Machine Learning. In these areas, he has published over 150 journal and conference papers most of them in the peered reviewed IEEE publications, filed five US patents, and wrote numerous confidential industrial research reports. Dr. Hamila has been involved in several past and current industrial projects, Ooreedo, Qatar National Research Fund, Finnish Academy projects, EU research and education programs. He supervised a large number of under/graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. He organized many international workshops and conferences. He is a Senior Member of IEEE.

Title: 5G and IoT Wireless Technologies - Key Drivers for the Development of Smart Cities and Communities in the Fourth Industrial Revolution Era
Abstract:
In the digital economy of the 21st century, wireless has evolved beyond the traditional ICT sector to become one of the key drivers for developing new intelligent applications of this technology in all fields and areas of life such as transportation, security, health, energy, urban planning, infrastructures, manufacturing, etc. This crucial digital transformation promises countless business opportunities, more individual empowerment and responsible governance, better sustainabile development, etc. This presentation examines new technological challenges, new application-specific integration issues, and emerging research-training requirements posed by this vibrant paradigm shift in the ICT sector. This brief review will be articulated from the perspective of the research-training program PERSWADE (« Pervasive and Smart Wireless Applications for the Digital Economy »), the first of its kind in Quebec and Canada <www.create-perswade.ca>. The second part of this presentation exposes the new 5G and IoT wireless technologies as key factors in the development of smart cities and communities in the upcoming fourth industrial revolution era. It then presents the new R&D initiatives envisioned on 5G and IoT, technologies aiming to empower more engaged citizens and communities in new worlds of digital societies and sustainable economies. More specifically, for 5G, we will focus on hybrid progressive deployment of wireless access virtualization (WAV) with leveraged combining of cloud, fog, and edge or legacy networks and the design of user-centric WAV architectures on both uplink and downlink. As far as IoT is concerned, we will direct our attention on intra-node distributed cooperative communications and artificial intelligence (AI)-based localization.
Biography:
Sofiène Affes received the Diplôme d’Ingénieur degree in telecommunications and the Ph.D. degree (Hons.) in signal processing from the École Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications, Paris, France, in 1992 and 1995, respectively. He was a Research Associate with INRS, Montreal, QC, Canada, until 1997, an Assistant Professor until 2000, and an Associate Professor until 2009. He is currently a Full Professor and Director of PERSWADE, a unique U.S. $4M research training program on wireless in Canada involving 27 faculty members from 8 universities and 10 industrial partners. From 2003 to 2013, he was a Canada Research Chair in Wireless Communications. He has been a recipient of a Discovery Accelerator Supplement Award twice from NSERC, from 2008 to 2011 and from 2013 to 2016. He is an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Communications and the Journal on Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing (Wiley). He was previously an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications and the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing. He already served as a General Co-Chair of the IEEE VTC’2006-Fall and the IEEE ICUWB 2015, both held in Montreal, QC, Canada. For his contributions to the success of both events, he received a Recognition Award from the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society in 2008 and a Certificate of Recognition from the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society in 2015. He is currently serving as the General Chair of 28th IEEE PIMRC to be held in Montreal in October 2017.