Panels

Monday, 7 December 2015

14:15-16:00

16:30-18:15

Tuesday, 8 December 2015

14:00-15:45

16:15-18:00

Wednesday, 9 December 2015

10:30-12:00

13:30-15:00

15:30-17:00


IF1: 5G mmWave Communications: Myth or Reality

Monday, 7 December 2015 • 14:15-16:00 • Sapphire KL

Organizers
  • Takao Inoue, National Instruments, United States of America
  • Ahsan Aziz, National Instruments, United States of America
  • Wes McCoy, National Instruments, United States of America
  • Yi Wang, Huawei, China
Panelists
  • Mark Cudak, Principal Research Specialist, Radio Systems Research, Technology and Innovation Office, Nokia
  • Takehiro Nakamura, Senior Executive Research Engineer, Managing Director of 5G Laboratory, Research Laboratories, NTT Docomo, Japan
  • Dr. Sibel Tombaz, Experienced Researcher, Ericsson Research, Sweden
  • Rao Yallapragada, Director, Advanced Technologies, Intel Communications and Devices Group, Intel Corporation
  • Dr. Yi Wang, Principal Engineer, Huawei Technologies, China
  • Charlie Zhang, VP, Samsung Dallas Lab
The use of mm-wave spectrum for 5G holds many promises such as much needed ultra-wide bandwidth where a survey shows that the total available bandwidth as much as 45GH in 6-100GHz range. There remains many uncertainties, however, such as spectrum regulations, propagation characteristics, appropriate physical layer techniques, physical devices for implementation, among others. Fortunately, pioneering researches show that there are list of key technologies which make mmWave communications feasible for various scenarios. Antenna array-based beamforming and tracking could compensate part of pathloss. Experiments and channel measurements show that 6-100GHz range carriers can be used to cover a range of small cell. Ultra-dense network and self-backhauling could improve the network capacity while keeping a suitable cost.
This panel brings together the leading experts working on various areas of mm-wave technology in 5G to discuss current and future trends touching on key technologies in channel measurements and modeling, radio access technologies, prototypes and testbeds, and progress on standardization.

IF2: Massive MIMO vs FD-MIMO: Defining the next generation of MIMO in 5G

Monday, 7 December 2015 • 16:30-18:15 • Sapphire KL

Organizers
  • Dr Nikhil Kundargi, National Instruments
  • Dr Karl Nieman, National Instruments
Panelists
  • Dr Thomas Marzetta, Group Leader of Large Scale Antenna Systems at Bell Labs, Alcatel-Lucent: “Introduction to Massive MIMO”
  • Dr Erik G. Larsson, Professor, Electrical Engineering Dept., Linköping University, Sweden: "The origins and theoretical benefits of Massive MIMO"
  • Dr Ove Edfors, Professor, Lund University, Sweden: "How Massive MIMO translates into practice"
  • Dr Eko Onggosanusi, Director, Standards at Samsung Research America: "FD-MIMO: from Concept to Spec"
  • Dr Jilei Hou, Head of Qualcomm Research China: “Large scale MIMO for 5G"
  • Dr Ian Wong, Senior Group Manager, Advanced Wireless Research Team, National Instruments: "Practical challenges in prototyping large antenna systems"
Exponential growth in the number of mobile devices and the amount of wireless data they consume is driving researchers to investigate new technologies and approaches to address the mounting demand. The next generation of wireless data networks, called the fifth generation or 5G, must address not only capacity constraints but also common problems—such as network reliability, coverage, energy efficiency, and latency—with current communication systems. Massive MIMO, a candidate for 5G technology, promises significant gains in wireless data rates and link reliability by using large numbers of antennas (more than 64) at the base transceiver station (BTS). This approach radically departs from the traditional BTS architecture, which uses six or eight antennas in a sectorized topology. With hundreds of antenna elements, massive MIMO reduces the power in the channel by focusing the energy to targeted mobile users using precoding techniques. By directing the wireless energy to specific users, the power in channel is reduced and, at the same time, interference to other users is decreased. If the promise of massive MIMO holds true, 5G networks of the future will be faster and accommodate more users with better reliability while consuming less power.
On the other hand 3GPP has recently introduced the highly promising Full Dimension MIMO Study Item in Release 13. The Study Item description summarizes FD-MIMO as follows. “Leveraging the work on 3D channel modeling completed in Release 12, 3GPP RAN will now study the necessary changes to enable elevation beamforming and high- order MIMO systems. Beamforming and MIMO have been identified as key technologies to address the future capacity demand. But so far 3GPP specified support for these features mostly considers one-dimensional antenna arrays that exploit the azimuth dimension. So, to further improve LTE spectral efficiency it is quite natural to now study two-dimensional antenna arrays that can also exploit the vertical dimension.
Also, while the standard currently supports MIMO systems with up to 8 antenna ports, the new study will look into high-order MIMO systems with up to 64 antenna ports at the eNB, to become more relevant with the use of higher frequencies in the future.”
With these two closely related but distinct technologies, this panel will cover related topics.

IF3.1: 5G Radio Access Network Technologies: from Concept to Reality

Wednesday, 9 December 2015 • 10:30-12:00 • Aqua Salon D

Organizers
  • Peiying Zhu, Huawei
  • Wonil Roh, Samsung
Panelists
  • Dr. Yoshihisa Kishiyama, Senior Research Engineer, 5G Laboratory, NTT DOCOMO
  • Dr. Stefan Parkvall, Principal researcher, Radio Access Technologies, Ericsson Research
  • Dr. Mark Cudak, Principal Research Specialist, North America Radio Systems Research, Technology and Innovation Office, Nokia
  • Dr. Jianglei Ma, Distinguished Engineer, Wireless Technology Lab, Huawei Canada
  • Dr. John Smee, Sr. Director, Engineering, Qualcomm Incorporated
  • Dr. Ji-Yun Seol, Director, Communications Research Team, Mobile Communications Business, Samsung Electronics Corp.
Over the past few years, 5G has been a hot topic both in industry and academia. Several 5G vision and white papers have been published by various companies, 5G forums and research committees. Recently, NGMN published the 5G white paper to express the operators’ views. ITU has published 5G candidate proposal evaluation timeline, which effectively provide a deadline for 5G standard body. Hence, 3GPP RAN announced that it will organize a workshop in Sept 2015 to discuss 5G standardization aspects, which signaling a step forward bringing 5G from concept to reality. We expect that all member companies will present their initial views of 5G standardization roadmap and potential technologies.
Even though various potential technologies will and have been discussed; however, it is far from consensus what the 5G key enabling potential technologies are and whether the proposed technologies can meet the 5G requirements. On the other hand, the censuses are forming regarding the key requirements and usage scenarios. It is generally agreed that 5G needs to support enhanced mobile broadband, massive machine type of communications and ultra-reliable and low latency communications. Globecom 2015 offers a good platform to exchange ideas between academics and industries with a great timing.

IF3.2: 5G Theory to Practice: Experimental Testbeds and Prototyping of Next-generation Wireless Networks

Wednesday, 9 December 2015 • 13:30-15:00 • Aqua Salon D

Organizers
  • Ian Wong, National Instruments
  • Vincent Kotzsch, National Instruments
Panelists
  • Mark Cudak, Principal Research Specialist, Nokia Networks
  • Gary Xu, Director, Samsung Research America
  • Fredrik Tufvesson, Professor, Lund University
  • John Wong, Director of Advanced Performance and Technology, Intel
  • Emilio Calvanese Strinati, CEA-LETI, France
5G is gaining a lot of media attention, with a lot of ideas and technologies that are touted as the next big revolution in wireless. Numerous network configuration and deployment options are available such as small cells, eICIC, LTE/WiFi interworking, carrier aggregation, dual connectivity, MIMO as well as CoMP. Furthermore, in the context of 5G other new concepts are being discussed such as C-RAN, D-RAN, mmWave, Massive MIMO as well as ultra-low latency. While many of the concepts mainly affect the complexity of the physical layer and RF, probably the higher protocol layers including MAC will have to cope with a tremendous set of different requirements e.g. in terms of throughput, latency and traffic scheduling to get closer to the optimum capacity for certain traffic scenarios.
As learned from the past LTE and WiFi standardization, before bringing a new idea into standards prototyping and test of promising new technologies is required to ensure that theoretical gains translate into practice. In the panel we want to discuss what are the specific requirements for experimental testbeds in future 5G systems and what use cases and scenarios future prototyping platforms need to cover to be able to assess the practical relevance of new technology components. A specific focus of the discussions should be on hardware / software abstraction of the different network architectures and the need for over the air tests and prototyping as well as the general scalability of the available platforms.
The goal of this panel is to separate the hype from reality by looking at early experimental results on 5G through real-time prototypes and testbeds. A panel of experts from both academia and industry will share their experimental setups, early results, and ideas for future experiments to take us a step closer to a truly revolutionary next-generation wireless network.

IF4: Joint SDOs/Fora Industry Harmonization for Unified Standards on AMC (Autonomic Management & Control), SDN, NFV, Software-oriented Enablers for 5G

Monday, 7 December 2015 • 16:30-18:15 • Sapphire OP

Organizer
  • Ranganai Chaparadza, IPv6 Forum Research Fellow & representative in ETSI NTECH AFI WG on Autonomic Future Internet, Germany
Panelists
  • Tayeb Ben Meriem, Orange, ETSI/NTECH/ AFI, TMF, NGMN, France
  • John Strassner, Huawei, TMF ZOOM, United States of America
  • George Dobrowski, Broadband Forum (BBF), United States of America
  • Michael McBride, Open Networking Foundation (ONF), United States of America  
  • Raheleh Dilmaghani, SSC-PAC, United States of America
  • Robin Mersh, Broadband Forum (BBF), United States of America
There is now an initiative on Industry Harmonization on Standards for SDN(Software-Defined-Networking); NFV(Network-Functions-Virtualization); AMC(Autonomic Management & Control of Networks and Services using closed control-loops for real-time and predictive analytics and self-adaptation/dynamic-policing of network resources and services); and E2E Orchestration of services and resources. The aim is to break from “silos” to a “Cross-SDO/Fora coordinated approach” for Unified Standards/Architectural Frameworks. Harmonization and coordination by SDOs/Fora reduce standards overlaps and collisions particularly with SDN, NFV, AMC, and E2E Orchestration in environments that combine physical and virtual networks, and lower the costs of standardization and R&D. Complementary paradigms/technologies of AMC , SDN, NFV, together with E2E Orchestration, form “Software-oriented Enablers for 5G”. Standardized “architectural-frameworks” that holistically combine the paradigms are yet to be established. The complementary aspects of these paradigms must be holistically expressed through Unified Architectural Reference Models/Standards. “Industry Harmonization for Unified Standards on AMC, SDN, NFV, E2E Orchestration: Software-oriented Enablers for 5G: Cross-SDO/Fora Combined Approach” is a new initiative. A Joint SDOs/Fora White Paper is being jointly prepared by groups: TMF, ETSI-NFV, NGMN, IPv6 Forum, BBF, MEF, ETSI-NTECH-AFI, ITU-T SG13&SG2, IEEE-NGSON, OMG-SDN-WG, OGF, NIST, ONF, 3GPP, ITU-T-JCA, OMA. The white paper compiles items requiring harmonization across various SDOs/Fora-groups so as to unify key standards. This session shall discuss a Unifying Architecture for the paradigms and need for its adoption by 5G Research/R&D programs; Joint SDOs/Fora harmonization efforts on unified standards/architecture for AMC, SDN, NFV and E2E Orchestration; joint SDOs/Fora PoCs Frameworks for Use Cases combining AMC, SDN, NFV, and E2E Orchestration.

IF5: SDN and Virtualization for Cable Industry Access Technologies and Wi-Fi Challenges

Tuesday, 8 December 2015 • 16:15-18:00 • Sapphire GH

Organizer
  • Mehmet Toy, Distinguished Engineer, Comcast, USA
Panelists
  • Mehmet Toy: "Virtualized and Cloud-based Networks"
  • Karthik Sundaresan, Principal Architect, CableLabs, Denver, CO, USA: "SDN for Access Networks"
  • Hesham ElBakoury, Principal Architect, Futurwei: "Virtual Home Networks"
  • Vikas Sarawat, Director, CableLabs, USA: "Carrier Wi-Fi deployments"
Cloud, SDN and Virtualization techniques bring substantial benefits to both core and access networks by transforming and simplifying MSO operations. They will enable quicker deployment of new services, increase utilization, increase flexibility for MSOs and reduce operational expenses.
Cloud Services Architectures, benefits of SDN in access networks, an SDN architecture for Cable Access Networks and its application to a CCAP/CMTS, DOCSIS access network elements, EPoN, and Wireless networks are described. In addition, virtualization of Metro Ethernet Services are described.
Virtual home network allows virtualization of functions that run in home network devices by running them in virtual machines or containers in the cloud, access network or the home gateway. A scalable and secure architecture for virtual home network which may have more than one VLAN is presented. Different protocols to tunnel user traffic to where it needs to be handled by the chain of virtual functions, and different protocols to control home devices using SDN controller are examined.
Unique opportunities and challenges associated with carrier Wi-Fi deployments are described.

IF6: Optical Access Network Status and Directions

Monday, 7 December 2015 • 14:15-16:00 • Sapphire OP

Organizers
  • Dr. Yuanqiu Luo, Huawei R&D, USA
  • Dr. Frank Chang, Inphi Corp, USA
Panelists
  • Rajesh Yadav, Verizon: “Evolution of the PON based Access Network”
  • Kota Asaka, NTT: “Access Networks in Japan, Current Status and Future”
  • Curtis Knittle, Cable Labs: “Multi-Gigabit Services in Cable Access Networks”
  • Xiang Liu, Huawei R&D USA: “Emerging Access Network Technologies for Future 5G Wireless”
  • Mark Shostak, Ericsson
This industry panel invites technical leaders from operators and vendors to give a comprehensive overview of the access network status and research directions. The panelists discuss the deployment progress and plan of optical, wireless, copper, and cable access technologies worldwide. The enabling technologies of broadband access are introduced. The challenges in the current access networks are reviewed, and candidate solutions are discussed to fully meet the customer requirements.
Panelists from telecommunication operators focus on optical access network technologies for residential and business customers. Key technologies are passive optical networks (PONs), high-speed Ethernet over point-to-point fiber connections, and G.fast. Panelists from wireless industry brief trends of the next generation wireless technologies and the impact on wireless access. Critical issues such as time synchronization and delay budget are explored. Panelists from cable areas review the latest progress of DOCSIS standards and next generation system design.
This panel also explores research directions of each key technology to achieve higher efficiency. Impact of SDN on access networks is discussed to enhance the future access networks with more flexibility. Impact of 5G on backhaul and fronthaul access is reviewed and possible solutions are explored.

IF7.1: Joint IF&E/TPC Panel - Part 1 - Terahertz-band Communication Networks: Opportunities and Challenges in the Next Frontier for Wireless Communications

Monday, 7 December 2015 • 14:15-16:00 • Cobalt 520

Organizers
  • Josep Miquel Jornet (University at Buffalo, USA)
  • Eduard Alarcon (UPC, Spain)
Panelists
  • William Deal (Northrop Grumman, USA)
  • Ali Niknejad (UC Berkeley, USA)
  • Ian F. Akyildiz (Georgia Tech, USA)
  • Iwao Hosako (NICT, Japan)
  • Ngwe Thawdar (AFRL/RI, USA)
  • H. J. Song (NTT, Japan)
Wireless data traffic has grown exponentially in recent years due to a change in the way today's society creates, shares and consumes information. This change has been accompanied by an increasing demand for higher speed wireless communications, anywhere, anytime. Wireless Terabit-per-second (Tbps) links are expected to become a reality within the next ten years. In this context, Terahertz (THz)-band (0.1-10 THz) communication is envisioned as one of the key wireless technologies 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. In addition, THz-band communication will enable a plethora of long-awaited applications, ranging from wireless massive-core computing architectures and instantaneous data transfer among non-invasive nano-devices, to ultra-high-definition content streaming among mobile devices and wireless high-bandwidth secure communications.
Despite major recent advancements in the field, the implementation of practical THz-band communication systems still presents many challenges, spanning multiple layers, which require a major joint effort from all the agents involved in the development of this field.
The two-fold mission of this panel is, first, to present the state of the art and ongoing research activities in THz-band communication networks, including device technology development, network architecture and protocol design, regulation, standardization and application implementation; and, second, to reach a consensus in the next steps towards the development of this novel networking paradigm. The ultimate goal will be the development of a position paper by the participants in the panel.

IF7.2: Joint IF&E/TPC Panel - Part 2 - Business, technology and spectrum challenges beyond 20GHz towards THz communications

Monday, 7 December 2015 • 16:30-18:15 • Cobalt 520

Organizer
  • Michael Marcus, Marcus Spectrum Solutions LLC, United States of America
  • Upkar Dhaliwal, Future Wireless Technologies, San Diego CA
Panelists
  • Prakash Moorut, NOKIA, United States of America
  • Michael Ha, FCC, United States of America
  • Jerry Pi, Straight Path Communication, United States of America
  • Ali Sadri, Intel, United States of America
  • Mohammad Shakouri, WIMAX Forum, United States of America
  • John W. Kuzin, Qualcomm Incorporated, United States of America
This Industrial focused panel deals with the real world particular issues of policy and technology for millimeterwave (>20 GHz) mobile technology, a development that was generally inconceivable a decade ago. But the recent exponential growth of mobile data demands along with new components and new systems approaches now makes this technology appear very promising. 5G will not have a single hallmark technology such as early generations of mobile technology. It will be a mixture of technologies, bands - both licensed and unlicensed as well as above and below 6 GHz. Millimeterwave systems will not be ubiquitous in the near future, if ever, due to their range limitations resulting from propagation and power source limits. But they may become very powerful systems for high bandwidth low latency transmission in densely populated areas. The industry expert speakers will review these issues from the components, systems, regulatory and policy perspectives.
Until a few years ago conventional wisdom was that such spectrum was unsuitable for mobile applications due to propagation issues. However MIMO research has shown that short range outdoor links with gigabit bandwidth are possible and may be commercially viable in urban environments. Further, such mmWave could be used for backhaul either in a different band than mobile links or possibly in the same band by keeping mobile and fixed antennas separated and using antenna beam separation. Non-communications use of mmWaves will also be mentioned also with pending national and internation regulatory issues.

IF8: Service Enablement at a Small-Cell Based Mobile Edge

Wednesday, 9 December 2015 • 10:30-12:00 • Sapphire KL

Organizer
  • Alex Reznik, InterDigital, United States of America
Panelists
  • Art King, Director of Enterprise Services & Technologies, SpiderCloud Wireless, Board Member of Small Cell Forum
  • Caroline Chan, Director of Wireless Access Strategy and Technology at Intel Network Platform Group (NPG)
  • Narayan Menon, CTO/EVP Engineering & Founder, XCellAir
  • Patrice Hédé, Standard Expert, Wireless Department, Huawei Technologies, Paris, France
  • Randy Cook, VP Sales and Business Development, Saguna Networks
  • Meir Cohen, Head of Business Development at Nokia
Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) provides access to cloud-like computing and storage resources at the “mobile edge” – i.e. at the within the radio access network. A deployment at the Mobile Edge can provide applications with significant benefits, for example the ultra-low latency necessary for emerging applications such as Tactile Internet.
The benefits of Mobile Edge Computing stem from the unique characteristics of the Mobile Edge that differentiate it from a typical cloud application hosting platform. These include extreme proximity to the user (typically just one or two network hops away); context associated with the radio access network; access to radio network information and integration with operator’s core network services. These can be leveraged by mobile network operators, vendors as well as application service providers to both improve existing services and deploy new ones and thus realize significant complementary value-add to their respective business models. ETSI’s recent launch Industry Specification Group (ISG) to define a standardized open environment for deployment of applications across multi-vendor MEC environments highlights an emerging industry consensus that MEC’s time has come.
In many ways, Small Cells and networks of Small Cells may provide the strongest case for MEC. They often possess the strongest context – associated with a particular enterprise, business (e.g. a coffee shop) or a venue (a stadium), thus allowing application providers to target their deployments to such specific contextual references. In many cases, most notably for enterprise applications, they are often highly integrated with the networks of potential application providers. In fact, the Small Cells Forum has recognized the Small Cells’ usefulness as service hosting points and published several white papers on the topic.
Nonetheless, positioning small cells as a generic compute and storage node poses some challenges associated with the capabilities of such devices (both computing capability and storage may be more limited at small cells then at larger RAN nodes), access to core network information (mobile operators consider many small cell nodes less than fully secure and limit exposure of certain information), limitations of backhaul that connect small cells both to the Mobile Network Core and the public Internet, etc.
Consequently, the purpose of this panel is to explore both the business benefits and the technical challenges associated with positioning Small Cells as a generic service hosting platform. The panelists represent several important industry players in the Small Cell and MEC spaces as well as key organizations such as Small Cells Forum and ETSI MEC ISG.

IF9: Clearing a Path to Wide-scale Transport SDN Deployment

Tuesday, 8 December 2015 • 16:15-18:00 • Sapphire KL

Organizer
  • Dave Brown, OIF VP of Marketing; Alcatel-Lucent
Panelists
  • Dave Brown, OIF VP of Marketing; Alcatel-Lucent: "Transport SDN Drivers, Needs, Challenges"
  • Jonathan Sadler, OIF Technical Committee Vice Chair; Coriant: "Global Transport SDN Prototype Demo"
  • Lyndon Ong, OIF Market Awareness and Education Committee Co-Chair; Ciena: "SDN Framework and APIs"
  • Vishnu Shukla, OIF Carrier Working Group Chair; Verizon: "Virtual Transport Network Service"
Recent proof-of-concept, prototype technology demonstrations and field trials have shown progress in the evolution to commercial SDN deployment. Service providers, network element providers and software vendors are collaborating in standards bodies, industry fora and laboratories to identify and address technical and business challenges standing in the way of broader market adoption.
In this session, OIF panelists will review findings from its Global Transport SDN Prototype Demo and outline components of a tool kit aimed at clearing a path to wide-scale transport SDN deployment.

IF10: The Future Evolution of LTE

Wednesday, 9 December 2015 • 10:30-12:00 • Sapphire GH

Organizer
  • Sabine Roessel, Intel, Germany
Panelists
  • Lisa Englund, Ericsson, Sweden
  • Lei Wan, Huawei, China
  • Amitava Ghosh, Nokia, United States of America
  • Takehiro Nakamura, NTT DOCOMO, Japan
  • Jin Yang, Verizon, United States of America
Soon commercial LTE devices will deliver Mobile Broadband DL data rates of up to 600 Mbps and LTE Rel-12 in theory even supports 4 Gbps in Downlink. On the other end LTE Rel-12 and beyond will serve the Internet-of-Things with dedicated device types. Meanwhile 5G is about to steal the show from LTE and the future evolution of LTE. This panel will try to find answers to the following questions: To what extent will LTE evolve before 5G takes over or will LTE be the dominant over-arching radio access technology hosting 5G access? Which vertical segments will be covered by LTE evolution, and what are unique evolution opportunities for LTE? What are critical 5G requirements, spectrum and use scenarios, network paradigms, etc. that LTE evolution cannot provide?
Representatives of network infrastructure vendors and service providers, leaders of Radio Access Network business and R&D units as well as 3GPP leaders, have been invited.

IF11: Critical Communication – A Panel Discussion

Wednesday, 9 December 2015 • 13:30-15:00 • Sapphire KL

Organizer
  • Farrokh Khatibi, Qualcomm Technology Inc., United States of America
Panelists
  • Nada Goldie, Chief of Wireless Networks Division in the Communications Technology Laboratory, NIST
  • Sameer Vuyyuru, VP/GM, Location Based Services and Platforms business, TCS
  • Rao Yallapragada, Director of Advanced Technologies, Intel Corporation
  • Farrokh Khatibi, Qualcomm Technology Inc., United States of America
Critical Communication covers a broad range of topics such as Emergency Communication, Public Safety, etc. Critical Communication includes activities ranging from any emergency situation to prevention of, or protection from, events that could danger the safety of the general public.
The Global Public Safety market using LTE is projected to reach $10 Billion by 2018. In 2012, the U.S. Congress established the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet), a government owned authority. FirstNet was given the entire Band Class 14 at 700 MHz. Also, $7B in auction proceeds is budgeted to fund FirstNet to construction & operation of a nationwide LTE-based network. Worldwide, UK Home Office and other governmental entities around the world are also actively pursuing Public Safety.
A panel of experts will discuss the technical aspects of Critical Communication and its four pillars. There will also be discussion on the ongoing standardization effort of the various aspects of the Critical Communication, as well as the deployment status.

IF12: Intellectual Property Panel - Recent developments in patent laws and policies relevant to our industry

Wednesday, 9 December 2015 • 13:30-15:00 • Sapphire GH

Organizer
  • Ron Katznelson, Bi-Level Technologies, United States of America
  • Keith Grzelak, Chair, IEEE-USA IP Professionals
Panelists
  • Francesco Zaccà (Director in ICT - Telecommunications, European Patent Office)
  • Caroline Dennison (Deputy Director, Office of Patent Legal Administration, US Patent and Trademark Office)
  • Rob Sterne (Sterne, Kessler, Goldstein & Fox, P.L.L.C)
  • Latonia Gordon (Microsoft Corp.)
  • James Harlan (InterDigital Corp.)
  • Yan Hui (Co-Founder, CEO, AirHop Communications)
As the patent licensing and enforcement landscape changes, as patent legislation efforts in the US Congress advance, and as the courts render decisions that materially alter the patent law, entrepreneurs, engineers and inventors must inform themselves of these developments. This panel will address these issues including questions such as "Should I apply for a patent on my invention, or should I keep it a trade secret?"; "What subject matter or computer-implemented inventions qualify for patent protection?"; "Will my patent be challenged once issued, and how will I be able to use it?"; "Should I contribute my invention to an industry standard, and if so, what should I expect as required licensing terms?" These issues will be addressed by the panel along the following topics:
  1. Standard-Essential Patents, FRAND licensing and the 2015 IEEE-SA Patent Policy.
  2. The moving target of patent-eligible subject matter and computer-implemented inventions in view of the US Supreme Court Alice decision.
  3. Post grant administrative patent invalidation proceedings at the US Patent Office - the implications to patent owners and users.
  4. Shifts in trade-offs and incentives for legal protection of inventions – patents v. trade-secrets and open-source strategies.
These topics will be addressed from the perspective of large, small and startup companies and also as viewed by Patent Offices.

IF13: Reaching the Unreached - Providing Internet Services Where Wireless or Wired Access Can’t Reach

Wednesday, 9 December 2015 • 10:30-12:00 • Sapphire OP

Organizers
  • Michael Lubin, ViaSat, United States of America
  • Upkar Dhaliwal, Future Wireless Technologies, San Diego CA
Panelists
  • Peter Atwal, Incode, United States of America
  • Steve Gardner, ViaSat, United States of America
  • Jj Shaw, O3B Networks, United States of America
  • Michael Bergen, Avascent, United States Minor Outlying Islands
  • Hamid Hemmati, Facebook, United States of America
Some 4 Billion people are not on the internet. Some are beyond reach of current infrastructure. For some the internet is beyond their economic reach. The ITU has set as a target that internet be provided at a cost no more than 5% of GDP/capita. In some countries such a number implies that a meaningful internet service would need to be provided at less than $20 per year! It is well known that increased internet access and usage can contribute to increased GDP/capita. Many countries have instituted national broadband initiatives to increase internet access for social inclusion, eHealth, e Learning, e Government—each potentially contributing to more stable societies and enhanced quality of lives. The potential savings from eHealth alone could be comparable to global military expenditures.
Against this backdrop, incumbents in and new entrants to internet technology and service are investing in a variety of technologies to reached the large population of unreached. A combination of coverage and economic efficacy is required. The wireless industry is making advances in 5G, femto-cells, WiFi, use of unlicensed spectrum to address both congestion issues in dense metro areas as well as provision of lower cost hotspot-type services. Sub $10 wireless ARPUs are already a reality in India and sub-Saharan Africa. Advances are being made in high capacity GEO, LEO and potentially MEO satellite constellations. Demonstrations and pilot projects utilizing balloons have occurred with operations imminent in certain countries. Drone technology is being advanced. Each such technology has its own metrics for assessing success: speed provided, latency, IRR versus various ramp up and penetration rates, cost of providing a GB of internet data, etc.
Today’s panel members represent a cross section of incumbents and new entrants investing in reaching the unreached through the various abovementioned technologies. Each will discuss the problem they are trying to address, the technologies being advanced and progress to date, and the metrics by which they will judge success. It is hoped that presenters will discuss one metric by which all can be judged for economic efficacy—cost per internet GB delivered—since cost of access is a key obstacle for so many of the unreached.

IF14: Wearables: Our Experiences and Thoughts for the Future

Tuesday, 8 December 2015 • 16:15-18:00 • Sapphire CD

Organizers
  • Nikhil Jain, Qualcomm Technology Inc., United States of America
  • Upkar Dhaliwal, Future Wireless Technologies, San Diego CA
Panelists
  • Patricia Robb, Intel Corp, United States of America
  • Klaus Doppler, NOKIA, United States of America
  • Peter Atwal, Incode Consulting, United States of America
  • Mohit Bhushan, Mediatek, United States of America
  • Antony Rix, TTP, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
  • Joseph Paradiso, MIT Media Labs, USA
  • Ryan Barnett, Google, USA
This panel is a discussion of the work done in releasing the first crop of wearables to the world. Early pioneers present their struggles as they worked to put out the first set of gadgets that humans could wear. They will discuss how the early learnings from user mold the features and capabilities of the wearables. What succeeded and failed through real stories in corporate labs will be discussed.
The second part of the panel would be a discussion of what needs to happen to make wearables the must have product for the consumers. Challenges that lie ahead and the opportunities to solve these key problems. Panelists will be well known folks that have actually either built hardware or have developed key building blocks to build hardware.

IF15: 5GPPP Architecture panel

Wednesday, 9 December 2015 • 13:30-15:00 • Sapphire OP

Organizers
  • Simone Redana, NOKIA, Germany
  • Bernard Barani, EC, Belgium
Panelists
  • Chris Pearson, 4G Americas, United States of America
  • Takashi Shimizu, 5GMF Network Architecture Committee
  • Huang Hua, IMT-2020 Promotion Group, China
  • Jungshin Park, 5G Forum, Korea, The Republic of
Mobile networks have become the main communication vehicle for the upcoming connected society. In addition to humans, billions of machines will be connected to the network in the future, yielding a 10.000 traffic increase beyond 2020. However, such traffic increase does not necessarily lead to a similar increase in the revenue of mobile network operators, which need to make very high investments to handle all this traffic. This challenges the deployment of a mobile network that can satisfy the requirements of the society and at the same time is sustainable for network operators.
A fundamental piece to address this challenge is the design of a novel mobile network architecture that provides the necessary flexibility to offer new services in an efficient way and inherently can share or distribute infrastructure resources dynamically, such that operators can increase their revenue through the new services, while leveraging the efficiency of the architecture to do so in a cost-effective way.
Current mobile networks are not well suited to address the above challenge. In 4G mobile networks, large effort was made in making the air interface fully adaptive to changing radio conditions, but lack similar functionality to optimize the network side. Eventually, while current architectures have been very successful in the last few years, they do not provide the required flexibility to cope with the service and traffic diversity required by 5G mobile networks as well as the current trends in terms of topologies.
Such trends (in terms of traffic and topologies) make networks increasingly heterogeneous and require tailored solutions to adapt to each specific scenario and service in an efficient way. The central goal of this panel is to discuss about future mobile network architectures that can flexibly adapt its operation to the specific characteristics and requirements of a given service and scenario. Invited panelists from China, Europe, Japan, Korea and US will present and discuss the recent results from those regions.

IF16: Emerging technologies in IEEE 802.11 WLAN (Wi-Fi)

Wednesday, 9 December 2015 • 15:30-17:00 • Sapphire CD

Organizer
  • Amal Ekbal, National Instruments, United States of America
Panelists
  • Ron Porat, Senior Principal Engineer, Broadcom
  • Monisha Ghosh, Professor, University of Chicago
  • Rakesh Taori, Senior Director, Samsung Research America
  • Chittabrata Ghosh, Research Scientist, Intel
  • Simone Merlin, Qualcomm
The IEEE 802.11-based wireless local area network (WLAN) technologies (popularly known as “Wi-Fi”) have grown into one of most ubiquitous wireless access technologies across consumer and enterprise markets. The evolution of IEEE 802.11 standards has significantly increased data rates of wireless access from 11Mbps (802.11b in 1999) to multi-Gbps (802.11ac) today. The latest standard, 802.11ac, is now broadly available in the market providing higher link performance using larger bandwidth (80MHz and 160MHz), higher order constellations (256QAM) and downlink multi-user-MIMO (MU-MIMO).
Notwithstanding the phenomenal progress made in the past years, the IEEE 802.11 recently (mid 2014) launched a new task group called 802.11ax, also known as high-efficiency WLAN (HEW), to discuss the next generation of the standard after 802.11ac. It is clear now that the days when the Wi-Fi network was considered a mere convenience is behind us. It has become a critical part of our home, enterprise and, even, cellular operator access networks. This ever increasing popularity is leading to dense and overlapping deployments of Wi-Fi in both indoor and outdoor scenarios. The current protocols were not designed with these use cases in mind and network performance can suffer. The group is considering technologies that could lead to better performance under such dense deployments to increase per-user and per-unit-area throughput, improve interference sensitivity and robustness and provide better support for outdoor use cases. The panelists will discuss the physical layer (PHY) and medium access control layer (MAC) technologies being considered by 802.11ax such as orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA), uplink MU-MIMO, dynamic sensitivity control, dynamic clear channel assessment, etc., and share latest results on the expected performance improvement provided by these changes. The panelists will also discuss the challenges they see in the future regarding high performance usage of 2.4GHz and 5GHz unlicensed bands by 802.11ax and beyond.
While 802.11a/b/g/n/ac standards are the most well-known and deployed 802.11 standards, there are a number of other important standardization efforts of note within the umbrella of the IEEE 802.11 working group. One of them is 802.11ad (popularly known as “WiGig”), which pioneered the use of millimeter wave bands for wireless communication. This standard delivers up to 6.7Gbps using 2.16GHz of bandwidth in the 60GHz unlicensed band to address use cases such as ultra-high-speed short-range data transfer, wireless docking, interactive gaming, augmented reality, virtual reality etc. The market penetration trend of this standard was slow due to challenges in efficient and low-power chip designs in millimeter wave bands, especially for mobile devices, but is expected to pick up significantly over the next couple of years as some of those challenges are being overcome. A new task group called 802.11ay has been formed to look into the next generation of 60GHz technologies. The goal is to reach at least 20Gbps by taking advantage of MIMO and channel bonding. The panelists will review the lessons learned from 802.11ad, protocol and implementation related challenges faced by 802.11ay and the future of millimeter wave and higher frequency bands for wireless communications.

IF17: Big Data for Information and Communications Technologies

Wednesday, 9 December 2015 • 15:30-17:00 • Sapphire KL

Organizers
  • Jinsong Wu, Universidad de Chile, Chile
  • Periklis Chatzimisios, Alexander TEI of Thessaloniki, Greece
  • Jie Li, University of Tsukuba, Japan
Panelists
  • Mahmoud Daneshmand, Stevens Institute of Technology, USA
  • Kwang-Cheng Chen, National Taiwan University, Taiwan
  • Larry Smarr, University of California, San Diego, USA
  • Yang Yang, ShanghaiTech University, China
  • Richard Yang, Yale University, USA
  • Jie Li, University of Tsukuba, Japan
  • Jinsong Wu,Universidad de Chile, Chile
The goal of the Industrial Panel of Big Data for Information and communications Technologies is to provide a premier platform for discussing the issues of the research, development, and standardization community of big data for information and communications technologies to interact and exchange technical ideas, to identify major R&D challenges and investigate solutions in the development of methodology and solution for big data processing, analysis, and networking science and technologies. The topics may be discussed in the panel, such as theories, algorithms, solutions, practices, applications, and challenges for big data processing, analysis, analytics, integration, retrieval on information and communications technologies.

IF18: Education and Training for the Next Generation of Communications Engineers

Wednesday, 9 December 2015 • 15:30-17:00 • Sapphire GH

Organizers
  • Fabrizio Granelli, Università degli Studi di Trento, Italy
  • Michael Devetsikiotis, NC State University, United States of America
Panelists
  • Michele Zorzi, IEEE ComSoc’s Director of Education and Training: "Preparing the Next Generation of Communications Designers with Education and Training"
  • Tarek El-Bawab: "The Vision Behind Telecommunications Engineering’s New Recognition as a Unique Discipline"
  • Fabrizio Granelli: "The First ComSoc Summer School: Experiences and Best Practices"
  • Michael Devetsikiotis: "Remote learning, MOOCs and classroom flipping: recent experiences"
  • Erik Luther, National Instruments: "Hands-on Education for Communication Engineers and Industry Perspectives"
  • Norman Shaw, Director New Opportunities IEEE Standards Association, USA
Communications engineering education is now recognized as distinct education discipline by ABET (Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, Inc), which accredits more than 680 universities and colleges in 24 countries. It’s now the role of the communications community to design programs and the underlying courses and course materials needed to effectively train and prepare students for their careers. In this session we divide the time among invited lectures and panel discussion to learn the needs, available resources, and best practices that educators should consider and benefit from as they develop the classrooms and labs of the future. Panelists include educators, tool vendors, and employers to provide a balanced view covering all aspects of the classroom and lab.

IF19: Technical Strategies for Migrating to a New Broadband Network

Wednesday, 9 December 2015 • 15:30-17:00 • Sapphire OP

Organizer
  • Robin Mersh, Broadband Forum, United States of America
Panelists
  • Mark Fishburn, Broadband Forum, United States of America
  • George Dobrowski, Huawei / Broadband Forum, United States of America
  • Michael Fargano, CenturyLink, United States of America
  • David Allan, Ericsson, United States of America
The focus is on key issues of successful migration from networks that contain today’s fixed, static devices with limited programmability to the Forum’s Broadband 20/20 vision consisting of hybrid networks that embrace ultrafast, fully programmable, virtualized, broadband services. It covers the specific existing and new architectural, standards, software and certification technical work underway in the context of the value provided for all stakeholders. The Forum’s Broadband 20/20 vision is focused on new use cases and business opportunities that are enabled by the complementary and synergistic technologies of NFV and SDN enabling real time network cloud distributed through the WAN or next generation central office. This touches almost every Broadband Forum project from ultra-fast technologies to new software, hardware and M2M/IoT management in the home and business. Integral to all is seamless migration and harmonizing of NFV/SDN implementations with existing deployments to mitigate business risk while new revenue streams grow at the pace of the market.

IF20: Insatiable Explosive use of wireless connectivity in crowded Sub 6GHz bands

Tuesday, 8 December 2015 • 14:00-15:45 • Sapphire KL

Organizers
  • Reza Arefi, Intel Corp, United States of America
  • Peter Atwal, Incode Consulting, United States of America
Panelists
  • Michael Ha, FCC, United States of America
  • Prakash Moorut, NOKIA, United States of America
  • Masoud Olfat, Federated Wireless, United States of America
  • Antony Rix, TTP, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
  • Etienne Chaponniere, Qualcomm Incorporated, United States of America
  • Preston Marshal, Google
  • Peter Atwal, Incode Consulting, United States of America
In the course of a couple of short decades, mobile broadband has become an inseparable part and parcel of everyday lives of billions of people around the world. From the fast-growing megacities on every continent to rural and agricultural communities around the world, mobile broadband is a means for not only stay connected with friends and family, but a way to conduct business, and define the socio-economic identity of not just individuals but that of entire societies. It is therefore not a surprise that according to United Nations statistics, mobile industry, with a size well over a trillion dollars, is worth, and leads the economic growth around the world, more than twice the satellite and broadcasting industries combined.

For this growth to continue and flourish even more, there is need for not only technological advancements and breakthroughs, but also spectrum as the main vehicle for wireless connectivity. Since not all spectrum is equal as far as propagation of radio waves are concerned, since early days there has been an initial focus on lower bands to provide range and coverage to help drive the economics of mobile broadband. Even though the need to support applications requiring higher peak throughput values such as streaming video has pushed operating frequencies into higher bands, and even though some of 5G applications and use cases are envisaged to operate in ultra-wide channels of several hundred MHz in the upper cm- and mm-wave bands, there is still an ever-growing need for spectrum below 6 GHz where traditionally cellular and Wi-Fi systems have been operating.

This panel, consisting of an interesting mix of industry and regulators, considers the short- and long-term needs for spectrum for mobile broadband in bands below 6 GHz. Specifically, by considering current usage, incumbents, and future trends in use of spectrum below 6 GHz, the panel discusses best ways of expanding mobile broadband applications in such frequencies as industry and regulators around the world prepare for expansion of existing 4G and emergence of 5G applications.

IF21: 5G, LTE and WLAN: Waveform Generation, Prototyping and Over-the-air testing of signals with MATLAB (Free tutorial seminar)

Monday, 7 December 2015 • 16:30-18:15 • Aqua 307

Organizer
  • Houman Zarrinkoub, Mathworks
In this workshop, you will learn about new wireless analysis and design capabilities on 5G, LTE and WLAN technologies with MATLAB. First, we will cover baseband modeling aspects including waveform generation, algorithm explorations, modulation and multiple antenna techniques, channel models and impairments and receiver algorithms. Then we showcase how to test prototypes on radios and verify system performance by connecting your algorithms to SDR devices and RF instruments. You learn how you can transmit and receive live radio signals and verify your designs with measurements on over-the-air acquired waveforms. With a progression of refined models you will learn how to simulate RF together with digital signal processing algorithms and find the most suitable trade-off between simulation speed and modeling fidelity. Throughout this presentation we will use MATLAB to compose algorithms and test-benches and perform over-the-air experiments.

IF22: 5G Cellular-IoT Challenges and Opportunities

Monday, 7 December 2015 • 14:15-16:00 • Sapphire 400

Organizer
  • Rath Vannithamby, Director - 5G Internet of Things research, Intel Labs
Panelists
  • Stefan Parkvall, Ericsson: C-IoT access network
  • Amitava Gosh, Nokia: 5G IoT, and comparison of LTE-M, C-IoT clean-slate and proprietary solutions like SigFox
  • Anthony Soong, Huawei: IoT access and core network Scalability issues
  • Wanshi Chen, Qualcomm: LTE evolutions for IoT Cat-0, Cat-M
  • Jin Yang, Fellow at Verizon: One access network to support varieties of IoT devices and services
Industry projections point to a huge explosion in the number of connected IoT devices, and it is expected that the current cellular networks cannot handle the high volume capacity, battery lifetimes of tens of years, low-latency, high-reliability, very large coverage area requirements of such devices. As a result, support for massive-number of low-cost, low-power, coverage-constrained devices, and devices enabling mission-critical applications with ultra-low-latency and high-reliability, are two major requirements of 5G architecture. Both requirements bring tremendous challenges to the 5G radio access and core network protocols design. For supporting massive-number IoT, evolutionary solutions are being developed as extensions over existing 3GPP LTE and GERAN technologies, but due to legacy restrictions they could be limited in supporting the 5G IoT requirements. Few clean-slate solutions are also being developed in 3GPP. In addition, proprietary solutions such as SigFox are also emerging. The panel will discuss the challenges and opportunities on massive-number and mission-critical IoT solutions.