Tutorials

University of Cassino (Italy), buzzi@unicas.it

Tutorial Title: Cell-Free and User-Centric Massive MIMO Cellular Networking Architectures.

Abstract: Cell-free massive MIMO is a recently proposed cellular architecture wherein base stations with large antenna arrays are substituted by a myriad of lower complexity access points (APs), equipped with one or few antennas, and connected to a central processing unit (CPU). The system operates using the time division duplex (TDD) protocol, and, differently from classical network MIMO architectures, only data-symbols to be sent to the mobile stations (MSs) travel on the downlink backhaul network, while channel estimates and beamforming vectors are computed locally. While in the cell-free architecture all the APs serve all the MSs in the system, in the user-centric variant each APs serves only a subset of MSs in the system, and in particular the ones that it receives best. Both the cell-free and the user-centric approaches have been shown to be able to provide much better performance that co-located antenna array architectures, especially when uniformity of the QoS received by the MSs is taken into account. In this tutorial the fundamentals of the cell-free and user-centric networking architectures will be illustrated.
Special emphasis will be given to the problem of designing channel independent beamformers to avoid the need for channel estimation at the MSs, as well as to the challenge represented by optimal power allocation, given the large number of variables involved. A discussion about the relevance of cell-free architectures to 5G systems will be also given, along with an overview of open problems and research challenges to be addressed in the near future.

Biography: Stefano Buzzi (M’98-SM’07) is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Cassino and Lazio Meridionale, Italy. He received the M.Sc. degree (summa cum laude) in Electronic Engineering in 1994, and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering in 1999, both from the University of Naples “Federico II”. He has had short-term research appointments at Princeton University, Princeton (NJ), USA in 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2006. He is a former Associate Editor of the IEEE Signal Processing Letters and of the IEEE Communications Letters, has been the lead guest editor of two IEEE JSAC special issues (June 2014 and April 2016), while is currently serving as an Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications. He is also a Member of the IEEE 5G Tech Focus Editorial Board. Dr. Buzzi’s research interests are in the broad field of communications and signal processing, with emphasis on wireless communications and 5G systems. He has co-authored about 150 technical peer-reviewed journal and conference papers, and among these, the highly-cited survey paper “What will 5G be?” (IEEE JSAC, June 2014) on 5G wireless networks.

University of Cantabria (Spain), ramon@tlmat.unican.es

Tutorial Title: Intra-flow sparse network coding: Modeling and open issues.

Abstract: The tutorial will focus on Intra-Flow Network Coding techniques. It will discuss how they differ from rateless source coding (LT and Raptor Codes), introducing some real applications of Network Coding (NC). Then, the tutorial will depict the behavior of the most widespread intra-flow NC solution: Random Linear Network Coding (RLNC), describing its coding and decoding operations, and discussing the impact of its configuration parameters. Afterwards, it will discuss the evolution of RLNC towards techniques that exploit sparse codes to reduce the complexity, particularly of decoding operations. In this sense, a novel approach to model the performance of Sparse Network Coding solutions, based on an Absorbing Markov Chain, will be introduced. The tutorial will present approaches to tune the sparsity of such solutions, some of them exploiting the aforementioned model. Afterwards, two open issues for intra-flow NC solutions will be as well discussed: (1) the potential benefits of recoding at intermediate nodes, as well as the difficulties that this might pose. The talk will also talk about (2) multicast communications and how they might benefit from NC. Both analytical modeling and extensive simulation-based analysis will be considered throughout the tutorial. Furthermore, a real testbed, comprising more than 30 Raspberry-Pi devices, will be also used to assess the performance of Intra-flow NC techniques over real platforms.

Biography: Ramon Aguero received his MSc in Telecommunications Engineering (1st class honors) from the University of Cantabria in 2001 and the PhD in 2008 (honors). He is currently an Associate Professor at the Communications Engineering Department in that university. His research focuses on future network architectures, especially regarding the (wireless) access part of the network and its management. He is also interested on multi-hop (mesh) networks, and Network Coding. He has published more than 170 scientific papers in such areas and he is a regular TPC member and reviewer on various related conferences and journals. Ramon Agüero serves in the Editorial Board of IEEE Communication Letters and Wireless Networks (Springer). He is a senior member of IEEE since 2015.

CEA-Leti, Grenoble (France), emilio.calvanese-strinati@cea.fr

Tutorial Title: Cloudification of 5G and beyond

Abstract: In the last years, information communication, computation and storage technologies are jointly reshaping the way we use technology, meeting the future needs of a wide range of big data and artificial intelligence applications and, paving the way for a full-customized autonomous user experience. In 2020 the 5G -Next Generation Communication Networks is expected to be operational and a global game changer from a technological, economic, societal and environmental perspective. 5G industry is intensively working today on designing, prototyping and testing fundamental technological advances to deliver the promised performance in terms of latency, energy efficiency, wireless broadband capacity, elasticity, etc. Nevertheless, many experts says that the next big step for cellular networks is not 5G but its cloudification.
This tutorial will present the interdependencies between 5G KPIs, 5G key enabling technologies and the three levels of cloud: Fog, Mobile Edge Cloud and the Central Cloud. The tutorial will also present a vision on the technical enables of the beyond 5G networks and its further step to its cloudification. Special emphasis will be given to 5G and beyond open research challenges that researchers and industry are and will investigate in the near future.

Biography: Dr. Emilio Calvanese Strinati obtained his Engineering Master degree in 2001 from the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’ and his Ph.D in Engineering Science in 2005 on Radio link control for improving the QoS of wireless packet transmission. He then started working at Motorola Labs in Paris in 2002. Then in 2006 he joint CEA/LETI as a research engineer. From 2007, he becomes a PhD supervisor. From 2010 to 2012, Dr. Calvanese Strinati has been the co-chair of the wireless working group in GreenTouch Initiative which deals with design of future energy efficient communication networks. From 2011 to 2016 he was the Smart Devices & Telecommunications European collaborative strategic programs Director. Since December 2016 he is the Smart Devices & Telecommunications Scientific and Innovation Director. In December 2013 he has been elected as one of the five representative of academia and research center in the Net!Works 5G PPP ETP. He is currently one of the three moderators of the 5G future network expert group. Since 2016 he is the coordinator of the H2020 joint Europe and South Korea 5GCHAMPION project. Since 2018 he holds the French Research Director Habilitation (HDR).
E. Calvanese Strinati has published around 100 papers in international conferences, journals and books chapters, given more than 50 international invited talks and keynotes and is the main inventor or co-inventor of more than 60 patents. He has organized more than 50 international conferences, workshops, panels and special sessions on green communications, heterogeneous networks and cloud computing hosted in international conferences as IEEE GLOBCOM, IEEE PIMRC, IEEE WCNC, IEEE VTC, EuCnC, IFIP, and European Wireless.

University of Glasgow (UK), j.battistella-nadas.1@research.gla.ac.uk

Tutorial Title: Connectivity of nano sensors in health care and agritech.

Biography: João Pedro Battistella Nadas finished his undergraduate degree in electronics and telecommunications engineering at the Federal Technological University of Paraná in Brazil in 2014. In 2016 he then graduated from his masters at the same institution in telecommunications engineering ranking third of all time for that program. During both his degree’s he has simultaneously worked in the industry in various positions, ranging from placements to project management. Currently he is pursing his PhD at the University of Glasgow and working on a research project with Fujitsu Europe. His research interests include ultra reliable and low latency communications, machine learning applied to communications, self-organizing networks, smart grid applications and wireless sensor networks.