9/12/2015

Technical Presentation from Narrownet (IT Aveiro)

The portuguese section of IEEE ComSoc hosted, at the Instituto de Telecomunicações in Aveiro, a Technical Presentation from Narrownet (http://narrownet.pt/).

This presentation focused in SigFox’s Ultra Narrow Band technology, covering its origins, different types and communication structures, as well as frequency utilization.

A demonstration featuring the operation of modem devices supporting this technology was done, complemented by the presentation of several practical use cases of experimental demonstrators.

5/11/2015

Talk by Dr. Artur Hecker (Huawei Technologies, Germany)

Title: “Towards an SDN-based MCN”

Local: Instituto de Telecomunicações, 18h, 5/11/2015

In this talk, we compare different ways, how today’s highly popular OpenFlow SDN (concept, principles, technologies) can be used in the telco networks. By juxtaposing the telco requirements and the SDN reality, we reveal several interesting findings about what SDN is and what it probably should be, hence identifying gaps for further SDN-related research. Then, assuming most of the identified problems are solved, we compare different ways how SDN could be employed in the core network realization of a mobile operator. Here, we start with an almost standard-conform “SDN as an interface to the data plane” and then progressively add NFV into the picture, get rid of tunnels, dissolve or remove some architectural entities, until we converge at a quite radical FULL-SDN redesign of the current MCN. During this walk along the design  space, we briefly introduce every idea trying to gather its pros and cons, when necessary by referring to the relevant state of the art at the origin of the respective ideas.

Finally, we are trying to justify the proposed Full-SDN approach for MCN design by looking at the promises of what today is generally referred to as 5G. We first discuss the architectural and operational advantages of the Full-SDN design. Then, we present our prototype implementations of some MCN functions and, by delving deeper into the implementations, show some more specific problems and bottlenecks in the SDN switches and the SDN controllers. Here, we intend to show some early, still unpublished, quantitative results as a motivation for further studies.

This talk mostly presents new, partly unverified ideas, and is therefore thought as a motivation for further research for Master- and PhD-level students. We hope to convey an idea about the current state of the 5G research, debunk some often-repeated myths about the SDN, confirm some fundamental truths about distributed systems but also show the promising potential of general abstractions and functionaldecoupling.

Short Bio

Dr. Artur Hecker (MSc from Universität Karlsruhe and PhD from the ENST, Paris) is Director of Future Networks Technologies at the European Research Center of Huawei Technologies. From 2006 to 2013, Artur was Associate Professor at Télécom ParisTech, where he was leader of Security and Networking group. Artur looks back at more than 15 years of entrepreneurial, academic and industry experience in networks, systems and system security research.

JUNE 2015 – HAMID JAFARKHANI

In the past month of June, we had the visit of the distinguished lecturer Hamid Jafarkhani, who presented us with two talks: one held in the Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon (29th of June) and the other at the Instituto de Telecomunicações in Aveiro (30th of June). The presentation slides can be found here.

Abstract:

We present a general description of current wireless communication  technologies. We argue the need for cooperative wireless networks and discuss the existing methodologies.
We present the distributed nature of the network and the distributed beamforming methods that  use full channel state information. Then, we address the role of quantized feedback in relay networks.
Finally, we discuss the effects of interference in wireless relay  networks and the design of  quantized feedback in wireless relay-interference networks.

Bio:
Hamid Jafarkhani is a Chancellor’s Professor at the Department of  Electrical Engineering and Computer Science,  University of California, Irvine, where he is also the Director of Center for Pervasive Communications and Computing and the Conexant-Broadcom Endowed Chair.

Dr. Jafarkhani ranked first in the nationwide entrance examination of  Iranian  universities in 1984.
He was a co-recipient of the American Division Award  of the 1995 Texas Instruments DSP Solutions Challenge.
He received an  NSF Career Award in 2003.
He received the UCI Distinguished Mid-Career Faculty Award for Research in 2006 and the  School of Engineering Fariborz Maseeh Best Faculty Research Award in 2007.
Also,  he was  a co-recipient of the 2002 best paper award of ISWC, the 2006 IEEE Marconi Best Paper Award in Wireless  Communications,  the 2009 best paper award of the Journal of Communications and Networks, the 2012 IEEE Globecom best paper award (Communication Theory
Symposium), the 2013 IEEE Eric E. Sumner Award, and the 2014 IEEE Communications Society Award for Advances in Communication.

He is listed as a highly cited researcher in http://www.isihighlycited.com. According to the Thomson Scientific, he is one of the top 10 most-cited researchers in the field of “computer science” during 1997-2007.
He is a Fellow of AAAS, an IEEE Fellow, a Distinguished Lecturer for IEEE Communications Society, and the author of the book “Space-Time Coding: Theory and Practice.”

5th of February 2015 – SEMINAR, Thursday, 18h00, Complexo Interdisciplinar, Conference Room, Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon

Building the future – Evolution beyond mobile internet
Eng. João Picoito – Nokia Networks
(joint organisation of IEEE ComSoc Portugal Chapter and IST/Technical University of Lisbon)
Photo #1 Photo #2