Monday 23rd April 13.30 – 15.00 Munster
Value Chains and Their Use in Wireless Systems Research
Moderated by Francis Mullany, Bell Labs Ireland
The impact of any given technology is highly dependent on the economic/business context to which it is applied. Successful adoption of new technology can only occur if there is a viable business case for all economic players in the value chain, from component manufacturer, to system manufacturer, to service provider, through to the end user.
Value chain/microeconomic perspectives are used to make decisions all along the complete lifecycle of wireless communications systems, from design to manufacture to deployment to use & maintenance. However, such a viewpoint has been less common in research. Nonetheless, a value-chain perspective can be used as a method to assess the viability of new approaches to wireless systems and technology. Alternatively, economic metrics can be used directly in research itself, as variables to optimise a given architecture, solution, or technology.
The panel will discuss their experience in economic analysis of technological systems, the interaction between technology and economics, and the use of value chains in wireless systems research.
Biographies
Francis Mullany is a technical manager with Bell Labs Ireland, Alcatel-Lucent with responsibility for hardware platform research. He joined Bell Labs in 1998 as a research engineer with the Wireless Research Laboratory in the UK. He received B.E. and Ph.D. degrees in Electronic Engineering from University College Dublin, National University of Ireland. Dr. Mullany has wide experience of research into wireless access network technology, particularly with respect to radio system design, physical-layer algorithms, and analog and digital hardware architectures. More recently, his research interests have centred on the interaction between economics, business processes, and wireless network transport.
Linda Doyle is the director of the Emerging Networks Strand within the CTVR (Centre for Telecommunications Value-Chain Research) and has been a lecturer in the Department of Electronic & Electrical Engineering at Trinity College Dublin since 1997. Her research has focused on the design of future generation communication systems with a particular emphasis on mobile wireless networks. Her research group is interdisciplinary in nature and draws students from a wide range of backgrounds from electronics, to computer science to the humanities. Dr. Doyle has done pioneering work on the development of software radio on general-purpose processors. She has a Ph.D. from Trinity College Dublin and has published over 30 papers across her various diverse areas of interest.
Ulf Essler is active at the Center for Information and Communications Research (CIC) at the Stockholm School of Economics. He conducts research on adoption, assimilation, and effects of information technologies within firms and in markets. He has a background in literature, systems theory and cybernetics, and is the project co-ordinator for the EUREKA project “Mobile City Moments”. He is also active as an Independent Evaluator in EU’s FP5 and FP6, and work as a consultant for telecom companies on issues of marketing and strategy.
Philippe Herve is part of the Alcatel-Lucent Europe & North CTO organization in charge of, amongst others, enterprise and vertical segments. Prior to his new function, he was directing a research team in Bell Labs on access technologies. Dr. Herve has been involved in technology for telecommunications for the last 15 years. His main interest is the application of broadband services and technologies in new market segments such as transportation, government and health. He holds a Ph.D. from Eindhoven University of Technologies and a MSc from Montpellier University.
Monday 23rd April 2006 19.00 – 21.30 Lansdowne & Pembroke
Professors’ Forum: A Glimpse Beyond the Horizon
Moderated by Lajos Hanzo, University of Southampton, UK
- Sergio Benedetto, Politecnico di Torino, Italy
The Contribution of Information and Communication Theory to Shape the Future of Wireless Communications
- Marco Luise, University of Pisa, Italy
3.5G + 3.5G + 3.5G = 4G: Wireless Solutions that Might Find Their Way into 4G
- Arne Svensson, Chalmers University, Sweden
A Wireless Communication Network to Improve Traffic Safety – Future Challenges and Possibilities
Tuesday 24th April 13.30 – 15.00 Munster & Leinster
Wireless Mesh and Sensor Networks: Paving the way to the future
or yet another ….??
Moderated by Neeli R. Prasad, CTiF, Aalborg University, Denmark
Wireless systems for industry have mostly used cellular-style radio links, using point-to-point or point-to-multipoint transmission. Traditional wireless formats have liabilities in industrial applications. These include rigid structure, meticulous planning requirements, and dropped signals. In contrast, wireless mesh networks are multihop systems in which devices assist each other in transmitting packets through the network, especially in adverse conditions. You can drop these ad hoc networks into place with minimal preparation, and they provide a reliable, flexible system that can be extended to thousands of devices. Having said that there are several challenges facing successful outdoor wireless municipal mesh (“muni-mesh”) network deployments.
· Lack of viable business case/ Return Of Investment (ROI)
- Who pays for the CAPEX, OPEX including maintenance and services?
- Will muni-mesh be an outdoor wireless network for all or a closed network only for public safety e.g. law-enforcement agency, ambulance, fire fighters, etc. where ROI is implicitly justified.
· Challenge from competing outdoor technologies (Licensed versus unlicensed technologies)
- Limited muni-mesh deployment to date
- Muni-mesh is data centric network which competes against mobile data through CDMA2000 EV/DO, GPRS/EDGE/WCDMA
- Licensed WiMAX (802.16e 2005 standard) with high RF power, controlled interference, QoS and mobility support
· Deployment challenges and lack of key application support, e.g., lack of voice support due to:
- Quality metrics for latency, jitter, packet loss, roaming time, need to be re-evaluated for mesh
- What levels of service (codecs) should it be design for?
- What factors determine the voice capacity of the mesh and how do they interact?
· Technical challenges
- Access is currently granted per VLAN or per AP basis - access must be made more intelligent to take into account the end-to-end availability of resources
- Voice packet handling (QoS) - The existing MAC features (packet discard, rate-shifting, etc.) apply only to the access link. A mesh has to support QoS-aware resource control
- Overload prevention - In a shared spectrum environment is always a concern which ties in with QoS and Call Admission Control
- Management/controls are needed to optimize voice over mesh?
Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) and wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are two emerging wireless technologies which will have important impact in the future. In fact, the significance of WSNs has led to it being labelled as one of the most important technologies in the 21st century. Such networks are : Self-Configuring and Self-Healing; have Redundancy and Scalability; Distributed; and have Diagnostic Monitoring
On the other hand, there are still many challenges:
- Role of passive versus active sensors
- CPU computation operations versus power consumption
- Self-learning, self-adapting capability of such tiny nodes
Biographies
Neeli Rashmi Prasad is associate professor and head of wireless security and sensor networks group, WING division, Center for TeleInfrastruktur (CTIF), Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark. She received her Ph.D. from University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, Rome, Italy, in the field of “adaptive security for wireless heterogeneous networks” in 2004 and M.Sc. (Ir.) degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands, in the field of “Indoor Wireless Communications using Slotted ISMA Protocols” in 1997. She joined Vodafone, Maastricht, The Netherlands as a Radio Engineer in 1997. November 1998 till May 2001, she worked as Systems Architect for Wireless LANs in Wireless Communications and Networking Division of Lucent Technologies, Nieuwegein, The Netherlands. From June 2001 to July 2003, she was with T-Mobile Netherlands, The Hague, The Netherlands as Senior Architect for Core Network. Subsequently, from July 2003 to April 2004, she was Senior Research Manager at PCOM:I3, Aalborg, Denmark. In addition to her publications in journals, international conferences and chapters in books, she has co-edited a book titled “WLAN Systems and Wireless IP for Next Generation Communications” and coauthored a book on “Wireless LANs and Wireless IP Security, Mobility, QoS and Mobile Network Integration” published by Artech House in 2001 and 2004 respectively. In December 1997 she won Best Paper award for her work on ISMA Protocol (Inhibit Sense Multiple Access).
She was WPMC05 TPC co-chair. She is the coordinator of EC NoE CRUISE.
Her current research interest lies in wireless security, mobility, mesh networks, wireless sensor networks and heterogeneous networks.
Paulo T. de Sousa is Head of Sector, Internet of the Future, in the Directorate-General Information Society, European Commission. Previously he headed the sector Mobile and Wireless beyond 3G, the largest strategic objective of the IST Programme, funding leading research on future telecommunications systems. He coordinated the Broadband Access For All strategic objective in the Information Society Programme (IST), with the aim of creating a cheaper, faster and more reliable internet. He has been instrumental in the pursuing of a Broadband Europe, with emphasis on alternate technologies such as power line communications. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Luanda, Angola and his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Missouri at Columbia (USA). He has an extensive background on telecommunications network planning and design with several multinational companies, including Rockwell International, Nortel and Verizon. He served as an ITU consultant in BanglaDesh and received two IEEE Outstanding Service Awards. He is co-author of the book “Network Systems” and a former Rotary Foundation Fellow.
Anand Raghawa Prasad, Senior Member IEEE and Member of ACM, leads the network level security models group as a manager at DoCoMo Euro-Labs, Munich, Germany. At the same time he is business and technical advisor of Sabita a holding company in Denmark. He received his Ph.D. degree in the field of WLANs protocols, security and deployment and MSc (Ir.) degree in the field of self similarity in ATM network traffic from Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands, in 2003 and 1996, respectively. From 1996 to 1998 he worked as research engineer and later as project leader at Uniden Corporation, Tokyo, Japan. From 1998 to 2000, he was a distinguished member of technical staff and worked as systems architect for IEEE 802.11 based WLANs (WaveLAN and ORiNOCO) in Lucent Technologies, Nieuwegein, The Netherlands. Subsequently, he was technical director at Genista Corporation, Tokyo, Japan, and technical advisor of PCOM:I3, Aalborg, Denmark. He was a voting member of IEEE 802.11 and he is an active participant of 3GPP. In addition to his publications in journals, international conferences and chapters in books, he has 25 patent applications in the field of wireless communications and networking. He has co-edited a book titled “WLAN Systems and Wireless IP for Next Generation Communications” and co-authored a book on “Wireless LANs and Wireless IP: Security, Mobility, QoS and Mobile Network Integration” and “Security in Wireless Networks and Mobile Platforms” all published by Artech House in 2002, 2005 and 2006 respectively. He has participated in organization of several International Conferences including VTC, PIMRC, ACM WMASH and WPMC. Currently he is General Co-Chair of ACM Multimedia 2007. He was a guest editor of a special issue on “Security for Next Generation Communications” of Kluwer International Journal on Wireless Personal Communications and he is a guest editor of a special issue on “Seamless Handover in Next Generation Wireless/Mobile Communications” of Springer International Journal on Wireless Personal Communications.
Seung-Woo Seo, School of EECS, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea. Seung-Woo Seo received the B.S. and M.S. degrees from Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, both in electrical engineering and the Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from Pennsylvania State University, University Park in USA. He was on the Faculty of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Pennsylvania State University, and was a Member of the Research Staff in the Department of Electrical Engineering in Princeton University, Princeton, NJ. In 1996, he joined the Faculty of Seoul National University, where he is currently a Professor in the School of Electrical Engineering. Prof. Seo has served as a committee member in various international conferences and workshops. He also served for six years as a director in managing the campus network in Seoul National University. His research areas include computer and network security, and performance evaluation of high speed wireless networks.
Elena Gaura, received her BSc in Electrical Engineering from the Technical University of Cluj Napoca, Romania in 1989, following it with an MSc two years later. In 1991, she joined the same institution on a professional basis. In 1996 she came to the UK, initially as a Research Assistant at Brunel University, Uxbridge. In 1998 she joined Coventry University, in order to pursue her PhD, researching the integration of Artificial Intelligence (in particular Neural Networks) and MEMS sensors to produce enhanced performance Microsystems. By the time her PhD was awarded in 2000, she was serving as a Senior Lecturer in Computer Science. With the establishment of the Cogent Computing Applied Research Centre in 2006, Elena was appointed as the inaugural director.
Over the course of her career, Elena has accrued a formidable academic reputation. She has 90 refereed publications, and is a frequent organiser of symposia at Nanotech (NSTI), the world’s largest nanotechnology conference. She is a member of many nationwide Microsystems advisory bodies and, since 2002, a member of the EPSRC College of Peers.
She remains highly active in the research field, exploring issues of Microsensors Integration and Large Scale Wireless Networks, deploying MEMS technology to develop new techniques for integrating sensors, actuators and networking functions, with the ultimate aim of designing autonomous systems capable of large scale field sensing. In addition, she is engaged in examining the potential of AI techniques to solve design problems. She has extensive collaborative experience with both universities and industry and is eager to further develop such links in her current research endeavours.
Srdjan Krco, born in Novi Sad, Serbia, in 1970, holds a PhD degree from the University of Novi Sad, Serbia for his work in the area of mobile personal health monitoring systems. After graduation in 1994 till year 2000 he worked at the Department for Telecommunications and signal processing, University of Novi Sad, initially as a teaching and research assistant, and then as a lecturer and a research engineer. In September 2000, he joined Ericsson Ireland, where he held a number of positions (senior research engineer, system manager, project manager) and has worked in and managed a number of 3G product developments and wireless communication related research projects. He represented Ericsson Ireland at international research organizations like Wireless World Research Forum (WWRF) and Bluetooth SIG.
Currently, he is leading a research team at Ericsson Ireland focusing on wireless sensor networks and their application in the mobile networks context, in particular interaction and integration of wireless sensor networks into mobile networks and deployment of wireless sensor networks based mobile services. Srdjan is also interested in research and development of innovative mobile applications and services like mobile health care solutions.
Srdjan has published more than 30 peer reviewed papers and has filed 3 patents. He has served as a reviewer for several journals and international conferences and organized special sessions and summer schools on wireless sensor networks. Srdjan is an IEEE member.
James Brusey received his BApSc with distinction in Computer Science from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (now RMIT University), Melbourne, Australia, in 1996. In 2002, the same institution awarded him his PhD in Artificial Intelligence for a thesis entitled “Learning Behaviours For Robot Soccer”, which also won the Australian Computer Science Association’s award for Best Computer Science PhD Thesis for Australia and New Zealand in 2004. He has augmented his formidable research reputation with wide ranging professional experience in both industry and academia. His early experiences in the Swinburne Institute of Technology twined both threads together: as a systems programmer he maintained the in-house software and mainframe, whilst also lecturing on the x86 Assembly Language.
In 1989, he began working for AXA Australia, when they were still known as the National Mutual Life Association, as a systems programmer. The reliable and robust systems he developed earned his team two company awards for excellence. He left AXA in 1996, but within two years had returned to perform legacy mainframe maintenance and provide training for staff in diagnostic methods and mainframe assembly languages. This experience embellished his industrial training acumen acquired during his time as a technical consultant with Storage Technology Australia (StorageTek).
In October 2002 he came to the UK as a Senior Research Associate in Cambridge University’s Institute of Manufacturing, initially on a grant from MIT’s Auto-ID Centre. At Cambridge he acquired significant hands-on experience of working with RFID, constructing a realistic RFID demonstration, employing industrial robots. This formed a key deliverable for the Auto-ID Centre project. The Centre subsequently became EPCglobal Inc, and is responsible for the EPCglobal set of standards and specifications governing the use of RFID in the retail sector. These standards are founded on the principle of an Electronic Product Code (EPC), which uniquely identifies everything from forklift trucks to fizzy drinks cans. He joined the Cogent team as a Senior Lecturer in 2007.
Wednesday 25th April 10.50 – 12.20 Leinster
“Turbulence Ahead - Please fasten your seat belts!”
Moderated by Fiona Williams, Ericsson
Turbulence is now a key characteristic of the communications sector, no matter what aspect of the sector you are talking about. Globalisation, mergers, disruptive technologies, discussions on the Post-IP environment, new players with high market valuation and triple and quadruple play operators are all changing the face of the sector as we have known it in recent years. This panel session will provide insights into these changes, from a range of perspectives and the discussion will analyse how these changes will affect us in the coming decade.
Biographies
Fiona Williams was elected Chairperson of the eMobility Technology Platform in February, 2006. She is a Research Director of Ericsson, responsible for research laboratories working on network and applications research in Germany and the Intellectual Property Rights Unit with international responsibility. She was a founder of the Wireless World Research Forum and is Treasurer of the organization. She was an initiator the Wireless World Initiative in the 6th Framework Programme. Dr. Williams has been based in Ericsson in Germany since moving there in 1991. She moved to Germany from Ireland where she was responsible for the start-up and operations of an Ericsson-Eircom joint venture company focused on telecommunications research.
Rainer Zimmerman graduated in Engineering from the Technical University of Berlin in 1977 and obtained his Dr-Ing in 1985 from the same University. He worked from1977 to 1985 as a researcher for the Technical University Berlin and the Fraunhofer Society. He then joined the European Commission as a Project Officer for projects in the fields of Production Engineering, High Performance Computing (1990) and Software (1992). Since 1995 he held positions as Head of Unit for Telematics between Administrations-IDA, Software Systems and Services, Nanoelectronics and Photonics. He is currently Head of Unit for Future Networks of the Directorate General for Information-Society and Media.
Werner Mohr was graduated from the University of Hannover, Germany, with the Master Degree in electrical engineering in 1981 and with the Ph.D. degree in 1987. From 1987-1990 he has been senior engineer at the Institute of High-Frequency Technology at the University of Hannover. Dr. Werner Mohr is with Siemens AG, Mobile Network Division in Munich, Germany since 1991. He has been involved in the European RACE-II Project ATDMA. From 1995 to 1996 he was active in ETSI SMG5 for standardization of UMTS. Since December 1996 he was project manager of the ACTS FRAMES Project until the project finished in August 1999. This project developed the basic concepts of the UMTS radio interface. Werner Mohr is Head of Research Alliances in the Mobile Networks infrastructure division of Siemens Networks GmbH & Co. KG and from April 1, 2007 in a similar position of Nokia Siemens Networks. He was involved in the 5th Framework Program of the EU. Currently, Werner Mohr is the coordinator of the WINNER Project in Framework Program 6 of the European Commission and chairman of WWI (Wireless World Initiative). In addition, he is involved in the eMobility Platform. Werner Mohr was chair of the “Wireless World Research Forum – WWRF” from its launch in August 2001 up to December 2003. He is member of VDE and Senior Member of IEEE. 1990 he received the Award of the ITG in VDE. He is board member of ITG (Informationstechnische Gesellschaft) in VDE, Germany for the term 2006 to 2008. Werner Mohr is co-author of a book on “Third Generation Mobile Communications”.
Petri Mahonen is a full professor and chair of wireless networks at Aachen University. Previously he studied and worked in the United States, United Kingdom, and Finland, most recently as research director of networking at the Center for Wireless Communications, Oulu, Finland. He has been principal investigator in several international research projects, including several large European Union research projects for wireless communications. In November 2003 he was elected chairman of WG3 (cooperative and ad hoc networks) of the World Wireless Research Forum. He has published over 100 conference and journal articles. His current research focuses on wireless Internet, low-power communications including sensors, broadband wireless access, applied mathematical methods for telecommunications, and cognitive networking and radios.
Gerhard Wunder received his graduate degree of electrical engineering (Dipl.-Ing.) in 1999 and the Ph.d degree (on the peak-to-aver power ratio problem in OFDM) in electrical engineering in 2003 from Technische Universität (TU) Berlin, Germany. He is now with the Fraunhofer German-Sino Lab for Mobile Communications, Heinrich-Hertz-Institut, leading several industry and research projects in the field of OFDM, MIMO and HSDPA. He is also a lecturer for detection/estimation theory, stochastic processes and information theory at the TU Berlin, department for mobile communications. Recently, he also received the habilitation degree from the TU Berlin in the field of communication engineering. His general research interests include estimation and information theory as well as crosslayer design problems for wireless communication systems.