T1. Unlicensed Spectrum Technologies: From Wi-Fi to 5G and beyond
Abstract: A broad range of new technologies are being developed as mobile operators eye the unlicensed spectrum to address the exponential traffic growth. The omnipresent Wi-Fi is being upgraded to its latest flavour (802.11ax) to support uplink multi-user MIMO and achieve higher user throughputs. Moreover, Wi-Fi systems operating in the mmWave frequencies (802.11ad) are commencing to be commercially deployed to avail of a wider bandwidth. Meanwhile, LTE-WLAN aggregation (LWA) efficiently realizes licensed/unlicensed spectrum bundling through the 3GPP dual connectivity framework, whereas LTE Unlicensed and License Assisted Access (LAA) employ a native LTE carrier aggregation technology. The newly standardized MulteFire technology also builds upon LTE but does not even require a licensed carrier anchor, allowing stand-alone unlicensed operations and attracting a new class of wireless providers. Forward-looking Massive MIMO Unlicensed features the capability of placing radiation nulls towards neighboring nodes, boosting spatial reuse and enhancing coexistence. In this tutorial, we will cover in detail — and provide a better understanding of — current and recently proposed unlicensed technologies. On the basis of their key principles, we will identify the rich research opportunities and tackle the fundamental challenges that arise when operating in the unlicensed spectrum.
Bio:
Adrian Garcia-Rodriguez (Member, IEEE) received the MSc degree in telecommunications engineering from the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Las Palmas, Spain, in 2012, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical and electronic engineering from University College London, London, U.K., in 2016. He has held research positions in the research institute for technological development and Communication Innovation (IDeTIC) at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain, between 2010-2012, and in the RF group of Nokia Bell Labs, Dublin, Ireland, in 2015. Since 2016, he is a post-doctoral researcher in the Small Cells Team of Nokia Bell Labs, Dublin, Ireland. His research interests include signal processing for wireless communications with emphasis on massive MIMO communications, unlicensed spectrum technologies, heterogeneous networks and energy-efficient communications. He is co-inventor of several patent applications for wireless communication systems operating in the unlicensed spectrum. He was a tutorial speaker at IEEE WCNC 2018, and delivered the industrial presentation “Drone Base Stations: Opportunities and Challenges Towards a Truly “Wireless” Wireless Network”, which won the Most Attended Industry Program Award at IEEE Globecom 2017. Adrian was named an Exemplary Reviewer for IEEE Communications Letters in 2016 and IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications in 2017.
Giovanni Geraci (Member, IEEE) was born in Sicily, Italy. Since 2016, he is a Research Scientist at Nokia Bell Labs, Ireland, working on wireless communications, networking, and signal processing, with current focus on UAV communications and unlicensed spectrum technologies. On these topics,
he has published over 40 between book chapters, journal articles, and conference papers, all in recognized venues, and he is co-inventor of a dozen EU/US pending patents. Prior to joining Bell Labs, he was with the Singapore University of Technology and Design in 2014-2015, and held research appointments at the University of Texas at Austin, USA, in 2013, at Supelec, France, in 2012, and at Alcatel-Lucent, Italy, in 2009. He received B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees from Università di Palermo and from Politecnico di Milano, Italy, in 2005 and 2009, respectively. At the University of New South Wales, Australia, he earned a Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering and telecommunications 2014. Giovanni is deeply involved in the research community, being an Editor for IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications and IEEE Communications Letters, and a tutorial speaker at IEEE WCNC 2018 and IEEE ICC 2018. He is a very lucky individual, having had the privilege to work with brilliant mentors and colleagues, be welcomed in over 50 countries, and live across six continents, whether for studying, working, or volunteering.
T2: NOMA for Next Generation Wireless Networks: State of the Art, Research Challenges and Future Trends
Abstract: Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) is an essential enabling technology for the fifth generation (5G) wireless networks to meet the heterogeneous demands on low latency, high reliability, massive connectivity, improved fairness, and high throughput. The key idea behind NOMA is to serve multiple users in the same resource block, such as a time slot, subcarrier, or spreading code. The NOMA principle provides a general framework, where several recently proposed 5G multiple access techniques can be viewed as special cases. Recent demonstrations by industry show that the use of NOMA can significantly improve the spectral efficiency of mobile networks. Because of its superior performance, NOMA has been also recently proposed for downlink transmission in 3rd generation partnership project long-term evolution (3GPP-LTE) systems, where the considered technique was termed multiuser superposition transmission (MUST). In addition, NOMA has been included into the next generation digital TV standard, e.g. ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee) 3.0, where it was termed Layered Division Multiplexing (LDM). This tutorial is to provide an overview of the latest research results and innovations in NOMA technologies as well as their applications. Future research challenges regarding NOMA in 5G and beyond are also presented.
Bio: Zhiguo Ding received his B.Eng in Electrical Engineering from the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications in 2000, and the Ph.D degree in Electrical Engineering from Imperial College London in 2005. From Jul. 2005 to Apr. 2018, he was working in Queen’s University Belfast, Imperial College, Newcastle University and Lancaster University. Since Apr. 2018, he has been with the University of Manchester as a Professor in Communications. From Oct. 2012 to Sept. 2018, he has also been an academic visitor in Princeton University.
Dr Ding’ research interests are 5G networks, game theory, cooperative and energy harvesting networks and statistical signal processing. He is serving as an Editor for IEEE Transactions on Communications, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, and Journal of Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing, and was an Editor for IEEE Wireless Communication Letters, IEEE Communication Letters from 2013 to 2016. He received the best paper award in IET ICWMC-2009 and IEEE WCSP-2014, the EU Marie Curie Fellowship 2012-2014, the Top IEEE TVT Editor 2017 and IEEE Heinrich Hertz Award 2018.
T3. Wireless Link Virtualisation and Network Function Virtualisation in Cognitive Radio Networks: theories, use-cases and hands-on experiments
Abstract:
Virtualisation is a topic of great interest in the area of wireless communication systems, as it promises to enable new services, flexibility and dynamicity, and more efficient resource use. However, there are not many implementations of virtualisation in wireless networks to date, and there are still many research challenges. Cognitive Radio Networks are a perfect starting point for virtualisation, as they share many design principles, such as flexibility and dynamicity.
In this tutorial we describe two types of virtualization in wireless networks, and subsequently show how we have implemented virtualisation, building on cognitive radio systems. We discuss the theory behind the virtualisation implementations, and provide demonstrations and interactive experiments that students can use to understand virtualisation in cognitive radio networks more thoroughly.
Bio (s):
Dr. Yi Zhang is a Research Fellow at CONNECT in Trinity College Dublin working in Professor Luiz DaSilva’s research team. Since he joined CONNECT, he has been the technical lead at Trinity College Dublin for three European Commission projects: fp7-CREW, H2020-eWINE, and H2020-FUTEBOL. His research interest includes Software-Defined Radio, LTE device-to-device communication, optical-wireless network integration, and experimental testbed implementation. He received his PhD degree from Tsinghua University, China in 2012 and his Master’s and Bachelor’s degree from the same university. Before joining CONNECT, he was a postdoc researcher at Politecnico di Torino, Italy from 2012 to 2015. He was also a visiting PhD student at University of California, Davis, from 2008 to 2010. He is currently an associate editor of IEEE Access Journal and has been a reviewer for over 10 IEEE journals.
Dr. Jonathan van de Belt received his PhD in Electronic Engineering from Trinity College Dublin in 2018, and is a Research Fellow at CONNECT, Trinity College Dublin. He is working with Professor Luiz DaSilva, and is the team lead for the European Project ORCA. His research interests include wireless network virtualization, software-defined radio, wireless resource optimization, and embedded systems. Before joining Professor DaSilva’s group, Jonathan worked on Cyber Physical Systems at Intel Labs Europe for 6 months. He has also previously worked at Xilinx Research Laboratory, Ireland from 2012 to 2013. Jonathan received the B.A.I. degree in engineering and the B.A. degree in mathematics from Trinity College Dublin (TCD) in 2012.
T4. Transceiver Design for Spectrum Sharing Full Duplex Radio
Abstract: Wireless spectrum is a scarce commodity in the today’s world where demand for higher data rates is increasing exponentially. In this context, efficient spectrum sharing techniques, such as cognitive radios (CRs), Radar-LTE co-existence, etc., can substantially increase spectrum utilisation efficiency by allowing licensed/unlicensed users to share the spectrum with other licensed users. On a related note, full-duplex (FD) radios have the potential to double the spectrum efficiency of current half-duplex systems by transmitting and receiving at the same time and frequency resources. Furthermore, spectrum sharing nodes can be deployed in FD mode as a FD node can transmit and sense the transmission of other nodes at the same spectrum resource. Accordingly, we design transceiver techniques, to facilitate spectrum sharing in FD communication systems from the perspective of both Spectrum and Energy efficiency
Bios:
Prof. Tharmalingam Ratnarajah (A96-M05-SM05) is currently with the Institute for Digital Communications, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK, as a Professor in Digital Communications and Signal Processing and the Head of Institute for Digital Communications. His research interests include signal processing and information theoretic aspects of 5G and beyond wireless networks, full-duplex radio, mmWave communications, random matrices theory, interference alignment, statistical and array signal processing and quantum information theory. He has published over 330 publications in these areas and holds four U.S. patents. He was the coordinator of the FP7 projects ADEL (3.7M€) in the area of licensed shared access for 5G wireless
networks and HARP (4.6M€) in the area of highly distributed MIMO and FP7 Future and Emerging Technologies projects HIATUS (3.6M€) in the area of interference alignment and CROWN (3.4M€) in the area of cognitive radio networks. Dr Ratnarajah is a Fellow of Higher Education Academy (FHEA), U.K.
Dr. Sudip Biswas received the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in signal processing and communications and digital communications from the University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, U.K., in 2013 and 2017, respectively. Currently, he is working as a research scientist at the Institute for Digital Communications, University of Edinburgh. His research interests include various topics in wireless communications and network information theory with
particular focus on stochastic geometry and possible 5G technologies such as massive MIMO, mmWave, fullduplex, energy harvesting, signal processing for IoT and NOMA communications.
Dr. Sudip Biswas (SM16, M17) received the B.Tech. degree in electronics and communication engineering from the Sikkim Manipal Institute of Technology, Sikkim, India, in 2010, the M.Sc. degree in signal processing and communications from The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, U.K., in 2013 and the Ph.D. degree in digital communications from the University of Edinburgh’s Institute for Digital Communications in 2017. Currently, I am working as a research scientist at the Institute for Digital Communications, University of Edinburgh. My primary research interests include various topics in wireless communications and network information theory with particular focus on possible 5G technologies such as IoT, mmWave, full duplex and NOMA and machine learning techniques for caching in future wireless networks.
Dr. Ali Cagatay Cirik (S’13–M’14) received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in telecommunications and electronics engineering from Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey, in 2007 and 2009, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of California, Riverside, CA, USA, in 2014. He held a Research Fellow positions at the Centre for Wireless Communications, Oulu, Finland, and the Institute for Digital Communications, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, U.K., between June 2014 and November 2015. His industry experience includes internships with Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs, Cambridge, MA, in 2012 and with Broadcom Corporation, Irvine, CA, in 2013. Currently, he is working as a Research Scientist with Sierra Wireless, Richmond, BC, Canada. He is also affiliated with the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada. His primary research interests include full-duplex communication, nonorthogonal multipleaccess, multiple-input and multiple-output signal processing, and convex optimization.
Dr. Keshav Singh (S’12, M’16) received the degree of Master of Technology in Computer Science from Devi Ahilya Vishwavidyalaya, Indore, India, in 2006, the M.Sc. in Information & Telecommunications Technologies from Athens Information Technology (AIT), Greece, in 2009, and the Ph.D. degree in Communication Engineering from National Central University, Taiwan, in 2015. Since 2016, he has been with Institute for Digital Communications, School of Engineering, University of Edinburgh, UK, where he is currently working as a Research Associate. He has also served as a Technical Program Committee Member for numerous IEEE conferences. His current research interests are in the areas of Green Communications, Resource Allocation, Full-Duplex Radio, Cooperative and Energy Harvesting Networks, Multiple-Input and MultipleOutput (MIMO), Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA), and Wireless Caching.