IEEE TCN November 2019

IEEE ComSoc Techncial Committees: educate, promote and accelerate the technological advancements in communications and networking

IEEE ComSoc TCN Editorial Team: Nelson Fonseca , Muhammad Zeeshan Shakir , and Lisandro Zambenedetti Granville

IEEE ComSoc Technical Committees provide a prolific opportunity to educate about, promote and accelerate the evolution of technological advancements in communications and networking by fostering a variety of technical activities in the related areas. We are very excited to distribute the inaugural issue of IEEE ComSoc Technical Committees Newsletter (TCN). The main goal of the newsletter is to disseminate information about the activities conducted by IEEE ComSoc Technical Committees and Emerging Technologies Initiatives and the technologies furthered by them. We intent to publish the Newsletter twice each year and provide some balanced coverage of news from the Technical Committees and Emerging Technologies Initiatives, interviews of leaders and researchers representing the Technical Committees and Emerging Technologies Initiatives, as well as short technical articles that share findings and advancements in communication and networking technologies.

In this issue, we first present a short but very interesting interview of Roberto Saracco presenting challenges of 5G and paving the way toward the 6G network. We hope you will enjoy his love of the technology and his vision for future directions of wireless networks. This issue of the Newsletter presents seven invited short technical articles. The first article by Yasser Al-Eryani and Ekram Hossain presents a novel cell-less architecture driven by AI to address the challenges of highly dense wireless networks. The second article by Bruno Volckaert, Bjorn Claes, Laurens D’Hoog, Miel Verkerken, Tim Wauters and Filip De Turck presents the usage of state of the art machine learning algorithms for anomaly detection in internal networks, which seems very useful for the enterprise. The third article by Ender Ayanoglu presents an overview of the ever escalating energy inefficiency problems in data centers and presents a list of potential solutions from the literature. The fourth paper by Ahmed A. Al-habob and Octavia A. Dobre presents the favorable integration of mobile edge computing for AI computations to offload the resource intensive learning processes of AI toward mobile edge computing servers. In the fifth article, Urbashi Mitra, Dhruva Kartik and Libin Liu present two interesting case studies explaining the use of neural networks for dynamic decisions making in wireless networks. The sixth article by Yangfei Lin, Jie Li presents a consortium blockchain architecture to enable data integrity through smart contracting. The last article by Shui Yu discusses the use of AI for future wireless networks in connection with theoretical mathematical models, including an overview of the trends and available tools to use AI for future networks effectively.

In this newsletter, we also presents consolidated reports from IEEE ComSoc Technical Committees and Emerging Technologies Initiatives to share their past, ongoing and future planned technical activities and views, findings, and advancements.

We would like to take this opportunity to welcome any suggestions from the community members and also would like to invite you to contribute technical articles to the IEEE ComSoc Technical Committees Newsletter. More details on submission processes can be found under the section ‘Authors Kit’.

Present and Future of Communications

An interview with Roberto Saracco by Fabrizio Granelli

ARTICLES

A Dynamic Cell-Less Architecture for Ultra-Dense Wireless Networks

Yasser Al-Eryani and Ekram Hossain

The next generation of wireless networks will have to serve a massive number of users within small geographical areas and this will give rise to dense/ultra-dense deployment of access points (APs)/base stations (BSs) with overlapping coverage areas. In such a scenario, devices will be served simultaneously by multiple APs/BSs (e.g. through multi-point user associations and multi-point transmissions) for efficient hand-off, frequency allocation and interference management. This article proposes the use of a dynamically changing cell-less wireless network architecture that copes with the high complexity of a fully-centralized cell-less architecture in an ultra-dense network deployment scenario. It also discuses the use of artificial intelligence (AI)-based methods to form clusters of APs efficiently as well as non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) to satisfy the massive wireless connectivity requirement.

Deep Learning Approaches as a Key Enabler for Next-Generation Network Intrusion Detection Systems

Bruno Volckaert, Bjorn Claes, Laurens D’Hoog, Miel Verkerken, Tim Wauters and Filip De Turck, IDLab-UGent-IMEC

Due to the increasing dependence on a company’s internal network for the exchange of information, protecting these networks is key. One essential defense is using a network intrusion detection system (NIDS). Most commercial NIDS are signature-based, meaning their effectiveness is highly dependent on the threat database used. To overcome this, we present anomaly detection incorporating various machine-learning models, including multilayer perceptrons, convolutional neural networks and residual networks. Promising results are obtained on the NSL-KDD data set with ROC-AUC scores above 0.93 on deep convolutional neural networks.

Energy Efficiency in Data Centers

Ender Ayanoglu, University of California

The energy consumption of data centers is reported to be a number between 1-3% in the United States or the world. With the new era of Internet-of-Things and the increased use of artificial intelligence, one can assume these numbers will grow substantially. This article investigates this problem and presents the current situation and potential future developments.

Mobile Edge Computing and Artificial Intelligence: A Mutually-Beneficial Relationship

Ahmed A. Al-habob and Octavia A. Dobre Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science, Memorial University

This article provides an overview of mobile edge computing (MEC) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) and discusses the mutually-beneficial relationship between them. AI provides revolutionary solutions in nearly every important aspect of the MEC offloading process, such as resource management and scheduling. On the other hand, MEC servers are utilized to avail a distributed and parallelized learning framework, namely mobile edge learning.

Neural Networks and Dynamic Wireless Systems: Two Case Studies

Urbashi Mitra, Dhruva Kartik and Libin Liu University of Southern California

While neural networks and machine learning have made strong gains in the performance of algorithms solving some challenging perceptual problems such as speech recognition or image classification, these methods are still in their nascence when it comes to solving wireless communications problems. Herein, two case studies of the use of neural networks in the design of dynamic wireless systems are considered: optimal policy design for transmission protocols and experiment selection for data-driven active decision making systems. In both cases, neural network architectures alone provided inferior performance. However, when coupled with important structural information such as the form of the optimal policy or the use of new metrics informed by the computationally expensive optimal solution, performance gains were achievable. Key challenges of neural network and machine learning methods are sensitivity to hyperparameter tuning, limited design rules for architectures and often significant training times. To this end, the use of structural side information and optimal-solution specific metrics can mitigate these negative features.

Public Integrity Auditing for Cloud Storage based on Consortium Blockchain

Yangfei Lin, University of Tsukuba, Jie Li, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shaozhen Ye, Fuzhou University

Consortium blockchain is introduced into public integrity verification for cloud storage. The auditor behaviors are recorded in the consortium blockchain and the smart contract is deployed to check the behavior of the auditor. The performance evaluations show that our proposed scheme can alleviate the burden on data owners.

When Artificial Intelligence Meets Communications: The Challenges We Are Facing

Shui Yu, University of Technology Sydney

Current communication systems have become extraordinarily large and complex in this big data age. As a result, the traditional mathematical tools are exhaustively serving the demands from unprecedented applications. We mainly depend on artificial intelligence to address the problems. However, AI algorithms are usually black-box based, lack interpretability, and therefore cannot be used in critical and expensive cases. We are now in the middle of many unknowns. In this article, we share our belief that mathematical model guided AI is the solution for the challenges we are facing. We also present our preliminary study on a few key parts, hoping it is helpful for energetic readers to further explore the promising uncharted fields.

Reports from ...

Report from the Optical Networking Technical Committee

By Xiaojun (Matt) Cao

Scope of ONTC

The Optical Networking Technical Committee will serve as ComSoc’s focal point in the area of optical networking technologies. The Technical Committee will play an active role in stimulating and organizing leading-edge optical networking symposia, workshops, sessions and tutorials at ICC and Globecom, and in particular serving OFC and other premier M & C venues. It will also work with the publication departments of ComSoc, existing ComSoc TCs and related societies to organize timely journal and magazine publications, including on-line publications at the ComSoc portal. The Technical Committee will also serve as a proactive facilitator in the dissemination of evolving optical networking standards by working closely with standards forums such as OIF, IETF, and ITU/T1.

Recent Conferences

ICC 2019, May 20-24, 2019, Shanghai, China
OECC/PSC 2019, Jul. 7-11, 2019, Fukuoka, Japan
GC 2019, Big Island, Hawaii, ONS Chairs: Reza Nejabati, Mohan Gurusamy
ICC 2020, Dublin, Ireland, ONS Chairs: Zuqing Zhu (ONTC), Roberto Rojas-Cessa
GC 2020, Taiwan, ONS Chairs: Jiajia Chen (ONTC), Abdelmoula Bekkali
ICC 2021, Montreal, Canada, ONTC Chairs: Nominations submitted
ICCCN, Jul. 29-Aug.1, 2019, Valencia, Spain
FOAN, Sep. 2-4, 2019, Sarajevo
ECOC, Sep. 22-26, 2019, Dublin
ACP, Nov. 2-5, 2019, Chengdu, China

Recent Journals:

Journal of Optical Communications and Networking (JOCN)
- A special issue is planned on Open Optical Networks
Optical Communications and Networks Series (OCNS) in IEEE Communications Magazine
- At least two Series published in ComMag each year
IEEE Networking Letters
- A new journal launched by ComSoc
- Fast track of review, 4-page letter style papers

Report from the Technical Committee on e-Health

By Hsi-Pin Ma

Call for Papers

IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (J-SAC)
Internet of Things for In-Home Health Monitoring
Publication Date: Third Quarter 2020
Manuscript Submission Deadline: 1 December 2019

Internet of Things (IoT) has emerged as one of the most trending topics of technology in recent times since it gives rise to a number of trends and services related to different scenarios. Thanks to its multidisciplinary approach, IoT has been phenomenal in revolutionizing many aspects of traditional healthcare paradigms. At the same time, traditional healthcare systems can no longer satisfy the needs of a continuously growing and developing society. The world today needs to face the aging of population and the inherent need of assisted-living environments for elderly people.

This special issue aims at bringing together researchers from academia and industrial players to contribute with their latest research works from various fields of the state-of-the-art, pertaining to this new IoT paradigm at which disruptive solutions in medical sciences, healthcare and aging evolve with the unprecedented connecting power of IoT. The theme of this special issue is based on a three-fold approach. First, to discuss the latest advancements in the field of IoT for eHealth by presenting innovative and efficient solutions for in-home remote monitoring. Second, to illustrate the aspects of applying IoT in healthcare by experimental results, to analyze the effects over lifestyle and healthcare systems and the response to technology-assisted medical care and treatments. Third, to provide further directions for research posing new problems and challenges in the in-home remote monitoring field.
The special issue invites original and breakthrough research in the field of IoT for eHealth. High-quality surveys, tutorial and practical use-cases in real life scenarios are also welcomed. Contributions to this special issue should include (but not limited to):
   •   IoT sensors and architectures for in-home remote monitoring
   •   e-Health services and Applications
   •   Cloud and Edge computing for IoT-eHealth
   •   Interoperability and standards for IoT-eHealth
   •   Telemedicine and tele rehabilitation
   •   e-Health Devices and Instruments
   •   Big Data Analytics in eHealth
   •   Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence in eHealth
   •   Digital Signal Processing (DSP) algorithms towards early diagnosis
   •   IoT-based remote healthcare for elderly
   •   Ambient Assisted Living IoT for active and healthy aging
   •   Safety, Security and Ethics in IoT-eHealth
   •   Data privacy in IoT-eHealth
   •   e-Health Supporting Technologies
   •   Exploiting 5G for eHealth in-home monitoring solutions

Submission Guidelines

Prospective authors should prepare their submissions in accordance with the rules specified in the Information for Authors of the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (J-SAC) guidelines. Authors should submit a PDF version of their complete manuscript to EDAS.

Important Dates

Submission Deadline: 1 December 2019
Notification of Acceptance: 1 May 2020
Final Manuscript Due: 15 May 2020
Publication: Third Quarter 2020

Guest Editors

Joel J. P. C. Rodrigues
Inatel, Brazil, IT, Portugal, UFPI, Brazil
Honggang Wang
University of Massachusetts (UMass) Dartmouth, US

Simon Fong
University of Macau, China

Nada Philip
Kingston University, UK

Jia Chen
IBM, US

Report from the Satellite and Space Communications Technical Committee

By Tomaso deCola

The Satellite and Space Communications (SSC) TC has a long established tradition as a technical committee within ComSoc, as satellite systems and space exploration missions have been some of the key triggers for modern digital communication. Through the years, the focus of the committee has evolved so as to be aligned with the new trends and introduction of new technologies for both satellite and space communications. As to the latter, the focus has slightly moved toward DTN for deep space communications, although classical topics such as channel coding have always received the necessary attention. As to satellite systems, the attention has been recently moved toward the integration with terrestrial networks, as also supported in the context of non-terrestrial networks work item within 5G standardization within 3GPP. This trend is reflected in special issues appearing in the last two years in IEEE Network and IEEE Wireless Communications magazines. Last but not least, the technical committee was also involved in the report prepared in the context of IEEE Future Networks, where a dedicated task force has contributed to the chapter dealing with the role of satellites in 5G by working out a long-term roadmap. The committee envisions further future activities in this direction, by closely following new trends such as optical communications, artificial intelligence, and programmable networks, just to cite a few.

Report from the Molecular, Biological and Multi-Scale Communications Technical Committee (MBMC-TC)

By Tadashi Nakano

The Molecular, Biological and Multi-Scale Communications Technical Committee (MBMC-TC) aims to foster the interdisciplinary area of molecular, biological and multi-scale communications. Its technical area includes scientific understanding of molecular, biological and multi-scale communications and engineering applications of such communications. It focuses on non-traditional communications (molecular, biological and multi-scale communications) and is highly interdisciplinary involving biology, nanotechnology, medicine and other disciplines. It started in 2008 as the Technical Subcommittee on Nanoscale, Molecular and Quantum Networking. It was then reorganized in 2017 and became the Emerging Technology Initiative for MBMC. It gained full Technical Committee status in 2019 to be the MBMC-TC.

MBMC-TC has its flagship journal, the IEEE Transactions on Molecular, Biological and Multi-Scale Communications (T-MBMC). This journal was established in 2015 and quickly attained prestige with support from MBMC-TC members. T-MBMC has been accepted for inclusion in SCOPUS and it is ranked 19th among 260 (i.e., top 7% journal) in the computer networks and communications category and 56th among 604 in the electrical and electronic engineering category.

MBMC-TC regularly organizes SAC tracks at IEEE ICC and GLOBECOM (10 papers presented at ICC 2019 and another 10 papers to be presented at GLOBECOM 2019). MBMC-TC regularly meets at ICC and GLOBECOM. Also, many MBMC-TC members are involved in the organization of ACM NANOCOM and other events such as workshops (MBMC workshop). All ComSoc members are invited to join these activities. For more information, please visit our web site at https://mbmc.committees.comsoc.org/.

Report from the Emerging technologies initiatives – Full Duplex

By Fodor Gabor

(https://fdc.committees.comsoc.org/)

The FD-ETI is calling for contributions to the upcoming IEEE Wireless Communications, Special Issue on Full Duplex Communications Theory, Standardization and Practice. Call for Papers is/will be available at the following links:
https://fdc.committees.comsoc.org/call-for-papers-ieee-wcm/

The Call for Papers will also soon be available here:
https://www.comsoc.org/publications/magazines/ieee-wireless-communications/cfp

The FD-ETI continues organizing the Full-Duplex Workshop Series (see the https://fdc.committees.comsoc.org/workshop-series/ for details, Organizers, Steering Committee). The WS series will continue with the 6^th Full-Duplex Workshop at ICC2020, where the main organizers are ETI officers (WS on Full-Duplex Communications for Future Wireless Networks at ICC2020).

The FD-ETI is pleased to report that the proposal on Full Duplex Selected Areas of Communications (FD-SAC) is accepted at IEEE ICC2021.

The Full Duplex ETI team evolves the ongoing full duplex workshop series (https://fdc.committees.comsoc.org/workshop-series/) into a SAC track at ICC’21, which will be chaired by Taneli Riihonen. Our vision for the FD-SAC track is that it will bring together researchers and industry practitioners and that it will address all aspects of wireless and wireline applications of full duplex communications.

Report from the Technical Committee on Smart Grid Communications (TC-SGC)

By Angela Zhang

Recently Elevated to Technical Committee

The TC-SGC originated within ComSoc in 2010 as ETI, with the belief that Smart Grid will be a new development trend of modern power systems, and information and communication technologies (ICT) will play a crucial role not only in reducing losses and increasing efficiency, but also in managing and controlling the ever more distributed power grid to ensure stability and reinforce security. Over the years, the committee has successfully supported IEEE Smart Grid activities, and promoted ComSoc’s position in the development and promotion of Smart Grid related technologies. It is evident that Smart Grid has become one of the most important technological advancements of the electric power grid. A dynamic, secure, adaptable, and mission-critical ICT infrastructure has become an important foundation for the success of Smart Grid. This trend is expected to continue for many years to come, also considering the substantial capital investment by governments worldwide to foster the use of renewable energy production.

Mission: Communications and More for the Smart Grid

The TC-SGC’s mission is “to understand how the distributed nature of the sensing, computing, and actuation in Smart Utility Grids affects the design and operation of current and future data processing and networked control applications”. This mission has been further explored in a position paper available on the TC-SGC’s website. A number of special interest groups (SIGs) address specific aspects, ranging from communications aspects to data analytics and cyber security. Also, the impact of innovative energy applications on the Smart Grid and its ICT requirements is addressed within SIGs on micro grids, dynamic pricing and electric vehicles. The full list of SIGs can be found on the TC-SGC’s website.

Recent and Future Conference and Journal Activities

The 2019 edition of the annual TC-SGC flagship conference IEEE International Conference on Smart Grid Communications, Control and Computing has just successfully taken place in Beijing. The upcoming IEEE SmartGridComm 2020 is scheduled for 6 – 8 October 2020 in Arizona, USA. Please visit the conference website for further details.
A special issue of JSAC focused on Communications and Data Analytics in Smart Grid, which has been initiated by the TC-SGC, is scheduled for publication in the first quarter of 2020.
The TC-SGC regularly organizes dedicated tracks within IEEE ICC and IEEE GLOBECOM symposia.
Further activities are listed on the TC-SGC’s website.

First TC-SGC Smart Grid Comm Awards

The TC-SGC is proud to announce its first awardees:

The TC’s 2019 Outstanding Service Award has been presented to Stefano Galli for outstanding contributions to the foundation of the TC-SGC and of the SmartGridComm conference.
Petar Popovski has been selected to receive the TC-SGC’s 2019 Technical Achievement Award for pioneering contributions to 5G wireless systems and their application in smart grids.

Membership in TC-SGC

To become a member of the TC-SGC please contact the TC-SGC chair (see membership section of the TC-SGC’s website). The TC-SGC members usually meet twice a year. The most recent meeting took place in Beijing in conjunction with IEEE SGC, while the upcoming meeting will be organized in conjunction with IEEE ICC in Dublin. Meeting minutes are available on the meeting section of the website.

News from the Communication Theory Technical Committee (CTTC)

TCN CTTC-Nov-19-Figure1 — Figure 1 CTTC Officers from left-to-right: Maite Brandt-Pearce, Urbashi Mitra and Meixia Tao.

By Urbashi Mitra

The Communication Theory Technical Committee (CTTC) of the IEEE Communications Society is primarily interested in fundamental problems associated with the transmission of information. Of special interest is the novel use of communication theory and/or information theory to solve problems in areas that include (but are not limited to) source and channel coding, storage, modulation, detection, estimation, synchronization, multiple access, interference mitigation, and networking. Communications through all media such as wireless media, wireline, fiber, infrared, optical, magnetic storage, etc. are of interest. Applications, such as wired/wireless/hybrid networks, multi-antenna communications, short range acoustical links, long-distance space communications, voice, data, image, and multimedia transmission, and storage channels are included. As machine learning methods become more prevalent, CTTC researchers are at the forefront of the use of neural networks and machine learning for solving problems as varied as code design, network protocol optimization and wireless channel modeling. The CTTC is a vibrant technical committee with over 150 active members and a mailing list over a 1000 strong.

The current officers are: Chair – Urbashi Mitra (University of Southern California); Vice-Chair – Maite Brandt-Pearce (University of Virginia); and Secretary – Meixia Tao (Shanghai Jiao Tong University).

Recent developments within CTTC include the creation of a web portal for the entry of nominations for our major CTTC awards: Technical Achievement Award, Early Achievement Award and the Service Award. The recipient of the 2018 Technical Achievement Award was Elza Erkip of New York University and of the 2018 Early Achievement Award, Ayfer Ozgur of Stanford University. There was no Service Award given in 2018. The 2019 recipients will be announced at Globecom 2019 in Waikaloa, Hawaii at the CTTC meeting to be held on Tuesday, December 10, 2019, 6:30 pm. CTTC leadership has also been working to streamline the endorsement process for IEEE Fellows and Communications Society Distinguished Lecturers and actively seeking participation from CTTC membership in such roles as symposia chairs for Globecom and ICC.

A highlight of the CTTC calendar is the annual Communication Theory Workshop (CTW) which brings together premier researchers from both academia and industry and features plenary speakers, invited special sessions, panels and poster sessions. This year, CTW was held May 26-29 in Selfoss, Iceland. The 2019 CTW organizing team included: Petar Popovski, General Chair, Aalborg University; Erik Larsson, Linkoping University and Urbashi Mitra, University of Southern California, as Technical Program Committee co-chairs. The 2019 CTW attendance broke prior records with an attendance of over 100 participants.

TCN CTTC Nov 19 Figure 3 — Figure 3 Members of the technical organizing committee: Standing - Wei Yu, Sudharman Jayaweera, Erik Larsson, Howard Huang; Seated- Anna Scaglione, Urbashi Mitra, Maite Brandt-Pearce and Jeff Andrews.

The tradition of CTW is an intimate environment where a high degree of one-on-one interaction is possible. Keynote speakers included Muriel Medard (MIT), who presented new results in fundamental communication theory; Andreas Mueller (Bosch), who outlined the essential communication challenges and needs for industry of the future; and Juan Garay (Texas A&M), who gave a tutorial on blockchain to the communication theorist attendees. There were five invited sessions on cutting edge topics, organized by internationally recognized leaders in the field: Social Networks and Information Systems (Anna Scaglione, Arizona State University); Resilience for Network Attacks (Bruno Sinopoli, Washington University in St. Louis); Communications in the Real World: Theory & Experiments (Howard Huang, Nokia Bell Labs); Communication Theory Core Topics (Wei Yu, University of Toronto); and Unconventional Communication: Emerging Modalities (Maite Brandt-Pearce, University of Virginia). There were two extremely lively panel discussions. Machine Learning: Salvation or Illusion? organized by Shuguang Cui of the University of California, Davis and Sudharman Jayaweera of the University of New Mexico; and Emerging IoT Applications That Will Drive 6G and New Communication Theory Problems organized by Jeff Andrews of the University of Texas, Austin. There was also a contributed poster session organized by Nuria González Prelcic (University of Texas at Austin, USA) and Luca Sanguinetti (University of Pisa, Italy). There were several innovations in the technical program. First, a data set competition was held with two applications: molecular communication channel modeling and positioning via massive MIMO. The object of the competition was to design and train an algorithm that can determine the position of a user, based on estimated channel frequency responses between the user and an antenna array.

TCN CTTC Nov 19 Figure 4 — Figure 4: The Blue Lagoon

student Maximillian Arnold. The winner of the competition was the team of Abdallah Sobehy, Eric Renault and Paul Muhlethaler, INRIA, France. In the molecular communication competition, the task was to design a molecular MIMO communication detection method using real measurements. The data was provided by Prof. Chan-Byoung Chae (Yonsei Univ, Korea) and assisted by graduate student Changmin Lee. The winning team here was Yu Huang, Xuan Chen, and Miaowen Wen, South China University of Technology, China.

The banquet dinner was held at the striking and innovative restaurant of the famous Blue Lagoon. Special thanks go to the University of Aalborg organizing team: Anders Tendal Christiansen,

Charlotte Kattrup Madsen and Anders E. Kalør) who handled all of the logistical aspects of the workshop.

Report from the Technical Committee on Communications Systems Integration and Modeling

The IEEE International Workshop on Computer Aided Modeling and Design of Communication Links and Networks (CAMAD) 2019 took place on 11-13 September 2019 in Limassol (Cyprus), and it was a very successful event, carried out over three days and bringing together researchers from several disciplines.

IEEE CAMAD 2019 was held as a stand-alone event in Limassol, Cyprus. This year IEEE CAMAD focused on communication and experimentation aspects of 5G networking and beyond. IEEE CAMAD hosted three workshops and 10 special sessions, bringing together a diverse group of scientists, engineers, manufacturers and providers to exchange and share their experiences and new ideas focusing on research and innovation results in the 5G domain. In addition to contributed papers, the conference also included a demo session, three keynote speeches and two tutorials.

TCN CSSIM Nove 19 Figure 2 — CAMAD general chair, Prof. Constandinos Mavromoustakis

The interesting keynotes were

Keynote 1: The Growing Field of Forecasting: Achievements and Limitations, by Prof. Spyros Makridakis (University of Nicosia)

Keynote 2: An Overview of Standardization Efforts of a Blockchain Based OSS-BSS Platform, by Dr. Shahar Steiff (PCCW Global)

Keynote 3: Performance Control, Reliability and Security in Wireless Sensor Networks and the Internet of Things, by Dr. Vasos Vassiliou (University of Cyprus)

The attractive tutorials were

Tutorial 1: Enabling Technologies for Crowd Sensing and Management, by Prof. Hossam Hassanein (Queen’s University) and Prof. Nizar Zorba (Qatar University)

Tutorial 2: Ambient Assisted Living and Environments - The VINCI innovation, by Dr. Piotr Krawiec (ICI)

TCN CSSIM Nov19 Figure 3 — Attendance to one of the sessions

IEEE CAMAD accepted 52 original papers this year out of a total of 107 papers submitted. All accepted papers were presented at the conference and all of them are included in the conference proceedings and IEEE digital library. The papers discussed the following topics:

Wireless PHY layers for 5G: design, analysis, and optimization
Wireless MAC protocols for 5G: design, analysis, and optimization
5G IoT networks, Platforms, Integration and Services
5G Multitenant Networks and End-to-End Network slicing
Adaptive content distribution in on-demand services
Backhaul/fronthaul for multi-tier ultra-dense heterogeneous small cell networks
Cognitive and Cooperative Communications
Commercial and Societal Impact of Networks, Data, and Adaptive Services
Context and location-aware wireless services and applications
Cross-layer design for massive MIMO and multiuser MIMO networks
Circular economy for ICT
Mobile social networks
Security, Privacy and Trust by Design
Mobility, location, and handoff management
Multimedia QoS, and traffic management
Multiple access in machine-to-machine communication
Network estimation techniques
Optical Communications & Fiber Optics for 5G
Quality of Experience: Framework, Evaluation and Challenges
Smart Grids: Communication, Modeling and Design
Testbed, experiments and prototype implementations of systems & services for 5G
Ultra low-latency and ultra high-reliability
Validation of Simulation Models with Measurements
Wireless body area networks and e-health services
Wireless broadcast, multicast and streaming

Report from the Technical Committee on Network Operations and Management

By Carol Fung

The CNOM TC represents The Committee on Network Operations and Management. It provides the Communications Society with a focus on network and service operation and management. CNOM actively encourages the exchange of information on the operational and technical management aspects of communication networks, and organizes publications and discussions of these topics. The CNOM TC currently has 1303 registered members. The officers are: Filip De Turck (Chair), Ghent University, Belgium; Marinos Charalambides (Vice Chair), University College London, UK; Carol Fung (Technical Program Chair), Virginia Commonwealth University, USA;

And Carlos Raniery Paula dos Santos (Secretary), UFSM, Brazil. The TC currently is actively involved in nine conferences, seven journals and a number of workshops. The TC is currently collaborating with TCCC and ITC for common Symposia at ICC/Globecom.

The IFIP/IEEE Integrated Management Symposium (IM) 2019 was successfully held from April 8-12, 2019 in Washington, DC, USA. The conference program consisted of Tech Sessions, a Mini Conference, Experience Sessions, Dissertation Sessions, Panels, Posters, Demos, Keynotes, a Distinguished Expert Panel, Tutorials, and Workshops. There were 157 paper submissions to the technical track and 39 papers were accepted to the main track yielding an acceptance rate of 24.8%. The conference attracted 172 participants. https://im2019.ieee-im.org/

In the past year, the following conferences have been held in the CNOM community: ICIN 2019, DRCN 2019, IM 2019, Netsoft 2019, NoF 2019, APNOMS 2019, LANOMS 2019, and CNSM 2019. The following journals in which CNOM community members are actively involved were publishing papers: IEEE TNSM, JNSM, IJNM, IEEE Communications Magazine (two special Series), IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials, and Springer Journal of Internet Services and Applications.

There are several upcoming events (in the next six months) in the CNOM community, including:

23rd Conference on Innovation in Clouds, Internet and Networks 2020 (ICIN), Feb 24-27, 2020 in Paris, France.
16th International Conference on the Design of Reliable Communication Networks 2020 (DRCN), Mar 25-27, 2020 in Milan, Italy.
IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium 2020 (NOMS), April 20-24 ,2020 in Budapest, Hungary.
IEEE Conference on Network Softwarization 2020 (NetSoft), June 29-July 3 in Ghent, Belgium.

Report from Emerging technologies initiatives – Backhaul/fronthaul

By Muhammad Zeeshan Shakir

In this report, I would like to present progress of our Emerging Technology Initiative Backhaul/Fronthaul: Networking and Communications (ETI-BNC) from past four years to demonstrate the contribution of our ETI to the technical areas within IEEE ComSoc. ETI-BNC has been a forum for industrial and academic researchers and practitioners to identify and discuss the wireless backhaul/fronthaul requirements for emerging technologies and smart cities, associated challenges, recent development and smart end-to-end solutions pertaining to the fifth generation (5G) and beyond of mobile communication networks and ad hoc networks. ETI-BNC has provided a prolific opportunity to educate about, promote and accelerate the evolution of the next generation of backhaul/fronthaul networking and communications by fostering a variety of technical activities in related areas.

With over 120 active members (doubled since early 2017 and mostly industrial members) the ETI-BNC community has experienced significant growth in recent years. ETI has been organizing technical activities with consistency to bridge the research and development of cross-cutting technologies for future smart backhaul and fronthaul networking, communications and signal processing. So far, our members have organized the activities listed below. More details can be found on our website.

15 workshop activities, and with IEEE BackNets alone published over 40 articles in IEEE GC/ICC workshop proceedings over the past four years.
IEEE ICC/GC symposium chair/co-chair participation: GC 2019; ICC 2020, GC 2020.
Eight Special Issues (JSAC, Communications Magazine, IEEE Access, Wireless Communications, Transactions on Cognitive Communications and Networking, PHYCOM).
Three online newsletters (ETI-Blog), and an online panel: Backhaul and Fronthaul Provision for Smart Infrastructure.
Several tutorials with very active participation from industry (e.g., PIMRC 2019; GC 2019).

Recently, our ETI has published IEEE ComSoc Best Reading List: Backhaul and Fronthaul: Communications, Networking and Signal Processing, edited by myself, Prof Muhammad Imran from the University of Glasgow and Prof Walid Saad from Virginia Tech, which is expected to provide several archival papers and other online resources on the backhaul/fronthaul and related networking, communication, and signal processing issues that are useful for researchers working in this area.

Recently, our ETI-BNC has been evaluated by the ETI Chair and members as part of IEEE ComSoc rules and policies. Our ETI has received positive feedback from the review panel. Some of the important feedback includes improvement of our members in the following aspects of our organization and participation in ComSoc-wide activities: 1) to broaden the participation from our members across academia and industry to our ongoing programs and activities; 2) to take effective measures for interaction with relevant standardization bodies. For now, ETI-BNC will continue as ETI until the next review cycle.

To conclude with a final reminder: Our ETI blog aims to highlight key achievements of community members. Consequently, if you would like to share your recent achievements or highlight successful proposals which are of relevance to the community, please get in touch with the editors. I would like to take this opportunity to welcome any suggestions/interest from IEEE ComSoc members to make the ETI-BNC committee more engaging. You are welcome to either write to me at muhamamd.shakir@uws.ac.uk or subscribe to our ETI mailing list here. Stay tuned to our Activities Section for future events and activities and continue to participate in the ETI’s activities in future.

Publications