ICNC

Distinguished Lectures

ICNC 2015 features 6 Distinguished Lectures, which are OPEN to ALL attendees of the conference and workshops.

Ender Ayanoglu (IEEE Fellow)

Professor, University of California, Irvine, USA

Title: Green Cellular Communications: What Are the Potential Gains and How to Achieve Them?

Time: 10:00-12:00, Monday, Feb. 16, 2015

Abstract:

Conventional cellular wireless networks were designed with the purpose of providing high throughput for the user and high capacity for the service provider, without any provisions of energy efficiency. As a result, these networks have an enormous Carbon footprint. For example, only in the United States, the Carbon footprint of the cellular wireless industry is equal to that of about 3/4 million cars. In addition, the cellular network is highly inefficient and therefore a large part of the energy dissipated is wasted.

In this lecture, we first analyze the energy dissipation in cellular wireless networks and point to sources of major inefficiency. We also discuss how much more mobile traffic is expected to increase so that this Carbon footprint will increase tremendously more. We then discuss potential sources of improvement at the physical layer as well as at higher layers of the communication protocol hierarchy. For the physical layer, we discuss new modulation formats and new device technologies and what they may bring in terms of energy efficiency gain. At higher layers, considering that most of the energy inefficiency in cellular wireless networks is at the base stations, we discuss multi-tier networks and point to the potential of exploiting mobility patterns in order to use base station energy judiciously. We discuss link adaptation and point to why energy efficiency, and not power efficiency should be pursued and what it means for the choice of link rates. We show how much gain is possible by energy-efficient link rate adaptation. We describe the gains due to the exploitation of nonuniform traffic in space, relays and cooperation, device-to-device communications, multiple antenna technques, and in particular coordinated multipoint and massive MIMO, sleeping modes for the base stations, the techniques of cell breathing and cell zooming, the energy trap problem for the mobile terminals, and the potential approaches for video that provide energy efficiency. We also review several survey papers and books published on this topic.

By a consideration of the combination of all potential gains, we conclude that an improvement in energy consumption in cellular wireless networks by orders of magnitude is possible. The lecture will present in detail where to concentrate research to achieve the largest gains.

Biography:

Ender Ayanoglu received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University, Stanford, CA in 1982 and 1986, respectively, in electrical engineering. He was with the Communications Systems Research Laboratory, part of AT&T Bell Laboratories, Holmdel, NJ until 1996, and Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies until 1999. From 1999 until 2002, he was a Systems Architect at Cisco Systems, Inc., San Jose, CA. Since 2002, he has been a Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, where he served as the Director of the Center for Pervasive Communications and Computing and held the Conexant-Broadcom Endowed Chair during 2002- 2010.

His past accomplishments include invention of the 56K modems, characterization of wavelength conversion gain in Wavelength Division Multiplexed (WDM) systems, and diversity coding, a technique for link failure recovery in communication networks employing erasure coding in 1990, prior to the publication of the first papers on network coding. During 2000-2001, he served as the founding chair of the IEEE-ISTO Broadband Wireless Internet Forum (BWIF), an industry standards organization which developed and built a broadband wireless system employing Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) and a Medium Access Control (MAC) algorithm that provides Quality-of-Service (QoS) guarantees. This system is the precursor of today’s Fourth Generation (4G) cellular wireless systems such as WiMAX, LTE, and LTEAdvanced.

From 1993 until 2014 Dr. Ayanoglu was an Editor, and since January 2014 is a Senior Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Communications. He served as the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Communications from 2004 to 2008. From 1990 to 2002, he served on the Executive Committee of the IEEE Communications Society Communication Theory Committee, and from 1999 to 2001, was its Chair. Dr. Ayanoglu is the recipient of the IEEE Communications Society Stephen O. Rice Prize Paper Award in 1995 and the IEEE Communications Society Best Tutorial Paper Award in 1997. He has been an IEEE Fellow since 1998.

Russell Hsing (IEEE Fellow, BCS Fellow)

Chair Professor, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan

Title: Wireless 5G: Challenges from Technical & Services Aspects (PPT)

Time: 16:00-18:00, Monday, Feb. 16, 2015

Abstract:

Right after iPhone was released on June 29, 2007, Steve Jobs’ Un-equilibrium Relationship occurs immediately (i.e. Create a fascinating market gap of a “Demands >> Supply” scenario for consumers), and then affect the “Quality of Services” seriously for many wireless operators ultimately. Now the number of wireless subscribers who use smart phones for video streaming applications and high-speed wireless data usage keeps increasing every day. It has been estimated that the traffic volumes will be increased by at least 10X ~ 1000X from 2010 to 2020. The requirement for energy consumptions will also be sharply increased accordingly. Although more and more wireless operators are now starting to deploy the wireless 4G-LTE systems around the globe, but it is clear that the current technologies could not fulfill many of the demanded emerging services (e.g. Internet of Vehicles), the new type of social media enabled traffic pattern, and specifically the anticipated data storm ahead of us.

The Next-Generation Mobile Networks (NGMN) Alliance has established a Wireless 5G Initiative early this year and will announce their Wireless 5G White paper as guidelines and references for the future Wireless 5G next year. From Services and Applications point-of-view, this talk will first describe the reasons WHY we need to have “ wireless 5G” initiated now, HOW we will pursue it and WHAT will be the final results which we could anticipate to have. A few proposed features (such as Small Cell Networks, Extremely Low Latency Delay for End-to-End Wireless Networks, Smart Data Pricing, Fog Networking-based Vehicular Networks and Telematics Applications) for the future wireless 5G will be discussed.

It can be anticipated that Wireless 5G will bring consumers many disruptive technologies, applications, and services in the foreseeable future. Using IoV as an example, the speaker will present his view on opportunities, challenges, and potential solutions. He will propose a few functional features for the future wireless 5G Networking Systems. It will directly benefit to the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) and the next generation High Speed Rail (HSR) Train applications & services.

Biography:

Dr. T. Russell Hsing, Life Fellow of the IEEE and Fellow for the British Computer Society (BCS), is now Chair Professor of National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan, Guest Professor of Peking University in China, Adjunct Professors with the Arizona State University in US, Yonsei University in Korea, and Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is also Advisory Council member for DataMi (TUBE, Inc.), a spin-off from Princeton University. Since March 2014, he has been Advisor for the Next Generation Mobile Networks (NGMN) Alliance. Currently, his research efforts are concentrating on Wireless 5G, Internet of Vehicles, Software Defined Networks and Technology Entrepreneurship.

From 1976 to 2012, He was with the Applied Research Center at Bellcore/Telcordia as Director (1986-1995) and then Executive Director (1995-2012). He has also established and supervised the Directors for Telcordia Applied Research Centers in Taiwan and Poland (2004-2012). He accumulated rich R&D experience of 35 years through affiliations with Burroughs, Xerox, GTE Labs, Telco Systems, and Bellcore/Telcordia. He has led a research team to propose and then to develop the world’s first working QAM-based ADSL system from 1987 to 1995. He has also led a team to build the world’s first working DCT chip for video communication applications. In 2002, he was given a responsibility to build the Emerging Technologies and Services R & D Department for Vehicular Telematics, Healthcare, and physical security systems applications. He pioneered the technology commercialization in emerging technologies and services through joint business ventures with commercial partners. He holds a B.Sc. (1970) fromTaiwan, M.Sc. (1974) and Ph.D (1977) of Electrical Engineering, the University of Rhode Island. His research and publications cover communication signal processing, multimedia communications, wireless technologies & sensors network, vehicular networks & telematics, video communications and VLSI implementations. He co-edits the ICT book series for John Wiley & Sons, Inc. since 2007. Within the IEEE Communications Society, he was member (2006-2008) and chair (2010-2011) of the Fellow Evaluation Committee, and a member of the Award Committee (2010-2012). He was founding chair (2010-2012) of Sub-TC on Vehicular Networks and Telematics Applications for the IEEE Communications Society. Within the IEEE, he was a member (2008-2010)/ Chair (2010-2011)/Past Chair (2012) for the IEE Kiyo Tomiyasu Technical Field of Award (TFA) Committee, and then the IEEE Eric Sumner TFA Committee (2010-2012). He has been a member for the IEE Fellow Committee since 2012, and the Strategic Planning Committee in 2013. Currently his research interests are in the areas of Wireless 5G, Internet of Vehicles (IoV) and Software-Defined Networks. He is now teaching a course of “Technology Entrepreneurship: Curiosity, Opportunity, Risk, and Money” at the National Chiao Tung University.

Ness B. Shroff (IEEE Fellow)

Ohio Eminent Scholar endowed Chair in Networking and Communications, The Ohio State University, USA

Title: Fast Data Retrieval and Processing in Cloud Storage and Computing Systems

Time: 10:00-12:00, Thursday, Feb. 19, 2015

Abstract:

We are in the midst of a data revolution. The total data generated by humans from the dawn of civilization upto 2003 (5 Exabytes) is now being generated every other day! Driven by a wide range of data-intensive devices and applications, this growth is expected to continue its astonishing march. To exploit the low-cost services offered by these resource-rich data centers, application developers are pushing computing and storage away from the end-devices and instead deeper into the data-centers. Hence, the end-users' experience is now dependent on the performance of the algorithms used for data retrieval, and job scheduling within the data-centers. Our goal has been to develop the analytical foundations and methodologies to enable cloud storage and computing solutions that result in low-latency services that are so important to the end user's experience. In this talk, I will overview some of our recent research efforts at fast data retrieval and fast data processing in these large-scale data center systems. Specifically, our focus will be on the new tools and techniques required to address these challenging issues, the progress made, and the open challenges that remain.

Biography:

Ness Shroff received his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University in 1994. He joined Purdue university immediately thereafter as an Assistant Professor in the School of ECE. At Purdue, he became Full Professor of ECE in 2003 and director of CWSA in 2004, a university-wide center on wireless systems and applications. In July 2007, he joined The Ohio State University, where he holds the Ohio Eminent Scholar endowed chair in Networking and Communications, in the departments of ECE and CSE. From 2009-2012, he served as a Guest Chaired professor of Wireless Communications at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, and currently holds an honorary Guest professor at Shanghai Jiaotong University in China and the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. His research interests span the areas of communication, social, and cyberphysical networks. He is especially interested in fundamental problems in the design, control, performance, pricing, and security of these networks. Dr. Shroff is the editor at large for the IEEE/ACM Trans. on Networking, and also serves on the editorial board of the IEEE Trans. on Control of Networked Systems, IEEE Network Magazine, and the Networking Science journal. He has chaired various conferences and workshops, and co-organized two workshops for the NSF to chart the future of communication networks. Dr. Shroff is a Fellow of the IEEE and an NSF CAREER awardee. His work has received numerous best paper awards for his research, e.g., at IEEE INFOCOM 2008, IEEE INFOCOM 2006, Journal of Communication and Networking 2005, and Computer Networks 2003 (his papers also received runner-up awards at IEEE INFOCOM 2005 and IEEE INFOCOM 2013), and also student best paper awards (from all papers whose first author is a student) at IEEE WiOPT 2013, IEEE WiOPT 2012, and IEEE IWQoS 2006. Dr. Shroff received the IEEE INFOCOM Achievement Award for seminal contributions to scheduling and resource allocation in wireless networks. He is also listed as one of the most highly cited researchers by Thomson Reuters ISI, and in Thomson Reuters 2014 Book on The World's Most Influential Scientific Minds.

Edward Knightly (IEEE Fellow, Sloan Fellow)

Professor, Rice University, USA

Title: Diverse Spectrum Multi-User MIMO: from WLANs to Urban Access

Time: 13:30-15:30, Monday, Feb. 16, 2015

Abstract:

Multi-User MIMO provides the capability to simultaneously transmit to multiple wireless clients, yielding capacity that scales with the aggregate number of client antennas. In this talk, I will describe protocols and experimental systems for MU-MIMO wireless networks with applications spanning from WLANs to urban broadband access. I will demonstrate the impact of diverse spectrum access via a platform and experiments that span from 500 MHz to 5 GHz. Lastly, I will describe challenges and potential solutions for efficient high-performance access of diverse bands in various operating environments.

Biography:

Edward Knightly is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rice University in Houston, Texas. He received his Ph.D. and M.S. from the University of California at Berkeley and his B.S. from Auburn University. He is an IEEE Fellow, a Sloan Fellow, and a recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER Award. He received the best paper award from ACM MobiCom 2008 and serves on the IMDEA Networks Scientific Council.

Professor Knightly's research interests are in the areas of mobile and wireless networks with a focus on protocol design, performance evaluation, and at-scale field trials. He leads the Rice Networks Group. The group's current projects include deployment, operation, and management of a large-scale urban wireless network in a Houston under-resourced community. This network, Technology For All (TFA) Wireless, is serving over 4,000 users in several square kilometers and employs custom-built programmable and observable access points. The network is the first to provide residential access in frequencies spanning from unused UHF DTV bands to WiFi bands. Moreover, we developed the first multi-user beam-forming WLAN system that demonstrates the key performance feature to be provided by IEEE 802.11ac. We also co-developed a clean-slate-design hardware platform for high-performance wireless networks, WARP.

Amir Said (IEEE Fellow)

Principal Researcher, LG Electronics, USA

Title: Future Challenges in the Implementation and Deployment of Media Processing and Compression

Time: 16:00-18:00, Thursday, Feb. 19, 2015

Abstract:

The dream of being “immersed” into different realities has always fascinated people, as shown by the excitement that the fictional “Holodeck” has created. However, while dreams are excellent for inspiration, professionals need to identify what is technologically feasible. In this talk we consider how technology is moving us nearer to this dream, but that to move further we need advances in many disciplines. For instance, “outside the box” issues range from human physiology and psychology to plain physics, while “inside the box” technologies range from signal processing, representation, and compression, to communications and parallel computation. We discuss some current trends, including ultra-high-definition and high-dynamic range displays, virtual reality, and light field displays, and how they are made possible by new processor architectures. Besides covering some technical problems that tend to be grossly underestimated, we also discuss the importance of not ignoring that, if not done right, immersion can produce terrible “side-effects,” like headaches and nausea.

Biography:

Amir Said is a principal researcher and program manager at LG Electronics, Mobile Research Lab, San Jose, CA. He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Univ. of Campinas, Brazil, and the Ph.D. degree in Computer and Systems Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY. After working at IBM, University of Campinas, and HP Labs, he joined LG Electronics in 2013. His current research interests are in the areas of multimedia signal processing, compression, 3D visualization, and efficient implementation in new processor architectures. He developed image and video coding solutions used in several HP printers and HP visualization software, has more than 100 technical publications, 30 US patents and applications, and co-authored the book Digital Signal Compression (Cambridge U.P.).

Dr. Said received several awards including Best Paper Award from the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society for his invention of the SPIHT image coding method (the most cited IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology paper); the IEEE Signal Processing Society Best Paper Award for his work on multi-dimensional signal processing, and the Most Innovative Paper Award at the 2006 IEEE Int. Conf. on Image Processing. Among his technical activities, he was Associate Editor for the SPIE/IS&T Journal of Electronic Imaging, and IEEE Transactions on Image Processing; a member of the IEEE SPS Multimedia Signal Processing, and the Image, Video, and Multidimensional Signal Processing Technical Committees, was technical co-chair of the 2009 IEEE Workshop on Multimedia Signal Processing, the 2013 Picture Coding Symposium, and has co-chaired conferences at the SPIE/IS&T Electronic Imaging since 2006. He is a fellow of the IEEE.

John R. Smith (IEEE Fellow)

Sr. Manager, IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, USA

Title: Semantics of Visual Discrimination (PPT)

Time: 13:30-15:30, Thursday, Feb. 19, 2015

Abstract:

The multimedia and vision community is making great progress on image recognition using data-driven machine learning techniques. However, given that image recognition capabilities are starting to work at a more significant scale, it is time to focus on more meaningful formulation of visual discrimination tasks. What this requires is more careful design and modeling of the visual semantic space that supports multiple facets of visual content description across semantic concepts of people, objects, scenes, actions, activities, events, etc. We highlight a number of semantic modeling issues related to inheritance, mutual exclusivity and completeness across the visual semantic space and discuss their important role for effective visual discriminative learning. We demonstrate results that explore different semantic modeling techniques and study their effect on visual discrimination in different image and video data domains.

Biography:

Dr. John R. Smith is Senior Manager, Intelligent Information Management Dept, IBM T. J. Watson Research Center. He leads IBM’s research in multimedia information retrieval including image/video content extraction, multimedia content-based search, video event detection and retrieval, and social media analysis. Dr. Smith is currently principal investigator for IBM Multimedia Analysis and Retrieval System (IMARS), which has been recognized by multiple awards including a Wall St. Journal innovation award. Dr. Smith is a long-time participant in the NIST TRECVID video retrieval evaluation and co-led the development of the Large Scale Concept Ontology for Multimedia (LSCOM), which has been incorporated into multiple TRECVID tasks since 2006. Dr. Smith earlier served as Chair, MPEG Multimedia Description Schemes Group from 2000-2004 and led the development of multiple parts of the MPEG-7 Multimedia Content Description Standard and MPEG-21 Digital Framework Standard. Dr. Smith also previously served as co-project Editor of MPEG-7 Multimedia Description Schemes and MPEG-7 Conformance specifications. While a student at Columbia University in the mid-1990’s, Dr. Smith conducted some of the earliest work on content-based image search (VisualSEEk) and Web image/video search (WebSEEk), which has been highly influential for researchers and practitioners. Dr. Smith has published more than two hundred papers in leading journals and conferences (14K citations, h-index of 55, i-index of 164). Dr. Smith is currently Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Multimedia and is a Fellow of IEEE.