International Black Sea Conference on Communications and Networking
5-8 June 2017 – Istanbul, Turkey

Tutorials

Tutorial 1:

Nuria González Prelcic

Title: Signal Processing for Millimeter Wave Wireless Communications

Date and Time: June 8, 2017  9:00 AM -12:30 PM

Bio: Nuria González Prelcic is currently an Associate Professor in the Signal Theory and Communications Department, University of Vigo, Spain. She has held visiting positions with the University of New Mexico (2011), and The University of Texas at Austin (2014, 2015 and 2016). Her main research interests include signal processing theory and signal processing for wireless communications: filter banks, compressive sampling and estimation, multicarrier modulation, channel estimation and MIMO processing for millimeter wave communications. She has co-authored around 20 journal and conference papers in the topic of signal processing for mmWave communications since December 2014, including a tutorial published in the IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing.  She is also serving as guest editor for the forthcoming special issue of this journal on signal processing for mmWave wireless communications. She has been the founder director of the Atlantic Research Center for Information and Communication Technologies (AtlantTIC) at the University of Vigo from 2010 to 2017.

Abstract: Communication at millimeter wave (mmWave) frequencies is defining a new era of wireless communication. The mmWave band offers much higher bandwidth communication channels than presently used in commercial wireless systems. Wireless local area networks are already exploiting the 60 GHz mmWave band, while 5G cellular systems are likely to operate at other mmWave frequencies. Because of the large antenna arrays, different channel models, and new hardware constraints, signal processing is different in mmWave communication systems. This tutorial will provide an overview of mmWave wireless communication from a signal processing perspective. Topics covered include propagation models and the presence of sparsity in the channel, power consumption and resulting hardware constraints, MIMO techniques in mmWave including beam training, hybrid beamforming, MIMO with low-resolution analog-to-digital converters, and channel estimation. Millimeter wave communication is a topic of extreme interest right now in the signal processing and communication theory communities. We also note it is a significant area of interest for the US Government, with the FCC just releasing a notice of inquiry for using mmWave spectrum for mobile communication and suggesting potential spectrum. This tutorial opens the door to future applications of mmWave to cellular, transportation, massive MIMO, and wearables, reviewing as well current applications in WLAN. We believe that our tutorial is very timely given the growing interest in mmWave for cellular communication in particular.

 

Tutorial 2:

Evgeny Khorov

Title: Wi-Fi for 5G: Faster and Smarter

Date and Time: June 8, 2017  9:00 AM -12:30 PM

Bio: Evgeny Khorov received his BS and MS degrees with honors from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) in 2008 and 2010, respectively, and PhD degree in Telecommunications from Institute for Information Transmission Problems (IITP RAS) in 2012. Currently he is a Senior Researcher and Team Leader at IITP RAS and Associate Professor at MIPT. Previously he was Deputy Head of IoT Lab at Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology. His research interests include 5G, Internet of Things, multiple channel access, QoS provisioning, cross-layer optimization, and performance evaluation methods. He has developed numerous mathematical models of networking protocols and designed several solutions, which are described in over 60 papers. Evgeny has led a number of national and international projects sponsored by academia foundations (RSF, RFBR, Ministry of Education) and industry. Being a member of IEEE 802.11 that develops and standardizes Wi-Fi, Evgeny Khorov has designed several improvements which were included in the 802.11ax standard aka High Efficiency WLANs. In 2015 Huawei RRC awarded him as the Best Cooperation Project Leader. Apart from that he received Russian Government Prize in 2016, Moscow Government Prize for Young Scientists in 2013, and Best Paper Award at ISWCS 2012.

Abstract: Wi-Fi is evolving. While 3GPP allows Wi-Fi to be just one of many radio-access technologies in a 5G suite, Wi-Fi itself becomes much more mature and powerful. During his 25-year history, it has extended its market from local area networks connecting computers, to the main Internet access technology available anywhere and anytime. Apart from obvious increase of data rates from generation to generation – 802.11 b, a/g, n, ac – special amendments to the Wi-Fi standard has been improved to provide QoS support, enable mesh networking, decrease power consumption. Thus Wi-Fi becomes not only faster but also smarter. The tutorial will focus on recent revolutionary amendments – existing or being under development – which increase its transmission range up to 1 km and make Wi-Fi suitable for Internet of Things and Industrial Internet applications (802.11ah), open the door for multi-gigabit millimeter wave communications (802.11ad/ay), improve performance in dense environment and introduce OFDMA (802.11ax), make networks greener (low power wake up radio) and provide new services in addition to data transmission, e.g. positioning (802.11az). We will discuss the existing solutions as well as open issues and possible problem statements.

 

 

Tutorial 3:

Muhammad Zeeshan Shakir and Mohamed-Slim Alouini

Title: Backhaul/Fronthaul for Ultra-Dense HetNets: Requirements, Emerging Technologies and Industrial Practices

Date and Time: June 8, 2017  2:00 PM -5:30 PM

Bio: Muhammad Zeeshan Shakir (S’04, M’10, SM’16) is an Assistant Professor in Networks in the School of Engineering and Computing at University of the West Scotland (UWS), UK where he is a member of research institute for Artificial Intelligence, Visual Communication and Network (AVCN). Before joining UWS in Fall 2016, he has been working at Carleton University, Canada, Texas A&M University, Qatar and KAUST, Saudi Arabia on various national and international collaborative projects. Most of his research has been supported by industry partners such as NATS, T4i Engineering, Huawei, TELUS and sponsored through competitive funding agencies such as Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF) and KAUST Global Research Fund (GCR). Dr. Shakir’s main research interests include design, development and deployment of diverse wireless communication systems, including hyper-dense heterogeneous small cell networks, Green networks and 5G technologies such as D2D communications, Networked-flying platforms (NFPs) and IoT. Dr. Shakir has a track record of more than 75 technical journal and conference publications including many in the world’s most reputable journals in the areas of wireless communications, communication theory and green communications networks. He has also contributed to 7 books. Dr. Shakir is co-editor of two books and co-author of a book entitled Green Heterogeneous Wireless Networks published by Wiley John & Sons and endorsed by IEEE Press. Dr. Shakir has been/is giving tutorials on emerging wireless communication systems at IEEE flagship conferences such as IEEE ICC 2016, Kuala Lumpur, IEEE ICUWB 2015, Montreal, IEEE GLOBECOM 2014/2015, Austin/San Diego, IEEE BlackSeaSom 2015, Constanta, Romania and IEEE ICC 2014, Sydney. He is the founding organizer and technical Chair of IEEE Workshop Next Generation Backhaul/Fronthaul Networks – BackNets, collocated annually with IEEE conferences. He has been/is also serving as a Chair/Co-Chair of several workshops/special sessions such as BackNets 2017, GRASNET 2017, BackNet 2016/2015, and GreenICT 2015 in IEEE flagship conferences, such as ICC, WCNC, VTC and GlobalSIP. He has been also serving on the technical program committee of different IEEE conferences, including Globecom, ICC, and WCNC. He is an Associate Technical Editor of IEEE Communications Magazine and has served as a lead Guest Editor/Guest Editor for IEEE Communications Magazine, IEEE Wireless Communications and IEEE Access. Dr. Shakir is serving as a Chair of IEEE ComSoc emerging technical committee on backhaul/fronthaul communications and networking. He has been serving as an active member to several IEEE ComSoc technical committees. From January 2012 to January 2016, he served as an elected Secretary to the IEEE DySPAN 1900.7 working group. He is a Senior Member of IEEE, an active member of IEEE ComSoc and IEEE Standard Association.

Bio: Mohamed-Slim Alouini (S’94, M’98, SM’03, F’09) was born in Tunis, Tunisia. He received the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, CA, USA, in 1998. He served as a faculty member in the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA, then in the Texas A\&M University at Qatar, Education City, Doha, Qatar before joining King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal, Makkah Province, Saudi Arabia as a Professor of Electrical Engineering in 2009. Prof. Alouini is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a member of the Thomson ISI Web of Knowledge list of Highly Cited Researchers and of the Elsevier/Shanghai Ranking list of Most Cited Researchers, and an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Communications Society. He is a recipient of the Recognition Award of the IEEE ComSoc Wireless Technical Committee in 2016 and a co-recipient of best paper awards in ten IEEE conferences (including ICC, GLOBECOM, VTC, PIMRC, and DySPAN). His current research interests include the modeling, design, and performance analysis of wireless communication systems.

Abstract: Heterogeneous small-cell networks (HetNets) are considered as one of the key architectural enablers to the challenging demands such as high spectral and energy efficiency of 5G mobile communication networks. Although the small-cell concept has been articulated and studied for many years within the 4G LTE framework, the concept has never found widespread application mainly due to the cost of deployment. In the conventional wireless networks, the cost of the macro-BS has been a dominant factor. The cost of a small-cell BS (SBS), on the other hand, is much lower in comparison to that of a macro-BS; but efficient and satisfactory operation of all these densely deployed small cells hinges on an economical and ubiquitous backhaul/fronthaul provisioning. Hence, there are considerable market interests on the development of innovative and smart backhaul/fronthaul solutions for ultra-dense HetNets. In this tutorial, we will first study the backhaul/fronthaul requirements (such as data rate, latency and implementation cost, etc.) and then present a comparative overview of several practical backhaul/fronthaul solutions for HetNets.  We will then explore Free-space optical (FSO) and mm-wave technologies as potential candidates to enable high capacity and low latency wireless backhauling/fronthauling. Hybrid backhaul/fronthaul approaches, such as usability of FSO and mm-wave with RF wireless backhaul/fronthaul systems will then be presented and discussed in detailed.  We will then cover a novel RAN architecture to realize a dense small-cell deployment, in which SBSs are connected to the core network through a vertical backhaul/fronthaul. The key technologies within this novel framework are the Networked Flying Platforms (NFPs) such unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or unmanned balloons and FSO.  Finally, the tutorial will present smart solutions to relax the backhaul/fronthaul requirements and discuss recent industrial practices for backhaul/fronthaul design in HetNets. Therefore, this tutorial targets to present an extensive overview of existing and emerging wireless backhaul/fronthaul solutions and their deployment implications in dense HetNet. Several simulation results and case studies will be presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the presented backhaul/fronthaul frameworks and their comparison to existing and other traditional technologies. Specifically, this tutorial will provide answers for the following:

  • What are the backhaul/fronthaul requirements for 5G networks (such as data rate, latency, reliability, etc.)?
  • What are the emerging high data rate competitive technologies to build wireless backhaul/fronthaul network between RRUs and BBUs in HetNet (NFPs, hybrid RF, FSO and mm-wave)?
  • What are the industrial practices for fronthauling and backhauling in HetNets?
  • What are the backhaul relaxation approaches (traffic offloading, D2D, Wi-Fi and WiGig enabled HetNets)?

 

 

Tutorial 4:

Hüseyin Arslan

Title: Flexible Radio Access Beyond 5G: A Future Projection

Date and Time: June 8, 2017  2:00 PM – 5:30 PM

Bio: Dr. Arslan (IEEE Fellow ) has received his BS degree from Middle East Technical University (METU), Ankara, Turkey in 1992; MS and Ph.D. degrees in 1994 and 1998 from Southern Methodist University (SMU), Dallas, TX. USA. From January 1998 to August 2002, he was with the research group of Ericsson Inc., NC, USA, where he was involved with several projects related to 2G and 3G wireless communication systems. Since August 2002, he has been with the Electrical Engineering Dept. of University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA, where he is a Professor. In December 2013, he joined Istanbul Medipol University to found the Engineering College, where he has worked as the Dean of the School of Engineering and Natural Sciences. He has also served as the director of the Graduate School of Engineering and Natural Sciences at the same university. In addition, he has worked as a part-time consultant for various companies and institutions including Anritsu Company, Savronik Inc., and The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey. Dr. Arslan’s research interests are related to advanced signal processing techniques at the physical and medium access layers, with cross-layer design for networking adaptivity and Quality of Service (QoS) control. He is interested in many forms of wireless technologies including cellular radio, wireless PAN/LAN/MANs, fixed wireless access, aeronautical networks, underwater networks, in vivo networks, and wireless sensors networks. His current research interests are on 5G and beyond, physical layer security, interference management (avoidance, awareness, and cancellation), cognitive radio, small cells, powerline communications, smart grid, UWB, multicarrier wireless technologies, dynamic spectrum access, co-existence issues on heterogeneous networks, aeronautical (High Altitude Platform) communications, in vivo channel modeling and system design, and underwater acoustic communications. He has served as technical program committee chair, technical program committee member, session and symposium organizer, and workshop chair in several IEEE conferences. He is currently a member of the editorial board for the IEEE Surveys and Tutorials and the Sensors Journal. He has also served as a member of the editorial board for the IEEE Transactions on Communications, the IEEE Transactions on Cognitive Communications and Networking (TCCN), the Elsevier Physical Communication Journal, the Hindawi Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Wiley Wireless Communication and Mobile Computing Journal.

Abstract: Today’s wireless services and systems have come a long way since the rollout of the conventional voice-centric cellular systems. The demand for wireless access in voice and multimedia applications has increased tremendously. In addition to these, new application classes like extreme mobile broadband communication, ultra reliable and low latency communications, massive machine type communications, and Internet of Things have gained significant interest recently for 5G. The trend on the variety and the number of mobile devices along with the mobile applications will certainly continue beyond 5G, creating a wide range of technical challenges such as cost, power efficiency, spectrum efficiency, extreme reliability, low latency, robustness against diverse channel conditions, cooperative networking capability and coexistence, dynamic and flexible utilization of wireless spectrum. In order to address these technical challenges, 5G waveforms and radio access technologies (RATs) should be much more flexible. The current 4G systems rely on the orthogonal frequency multiple access (OFDM) waveform, which is not capable of supporting the diverse applications that 5G and beyond will offer. This is because the traffic generated by 5G and beyond is expected to have radically different characteristics and requirements when compared to current wireless technology. For 5G to succeed, numerous waveform alternatives have been explored to best meet its various technical requirements. However, none of the alternatives were able to address all the requirements at the same time. During the standardization of 5G, one thing has become certain: there is no single enabling technology that can achieve all of the applications being promised by 5G networking. This will be even more pronounced beyond 5G. For this purpose, the concept of using multiple OFDM numerologies, i.e., different parameterization of OFDM based subframes, within the same frame has been proposed in 3GPP discussions for 5G. This concept will likely meet the current expectations in multiple service requirements to some extent. However, since it is almost obvious that quantity of wireless devices, applications, and heterogeneity of user requirements will keep increasing towards the next decade(s), the sufficiency of the aforementioned flexibility level remains quite disputable considering future expectations. Therefore, novel RATs facilitating much more flexibility are needed to address the aforementioned technical problems. In this tutorial, we will discuss the potential directions to achieve further flexibility in RATs beyond 5G. In this context, a framework for developing flexible waveform, numerology, and frame design strategies will be discussed along with sample methods in this direction. We will also discuss their potential role to handle various issues in the upper system layers. The tentative outline of the tutorial will be as follows:

  • Channel and waveform
  • Application and waveform
  • Introduction to OFDM and Multi-Carrier Modulation
  • OFDM advantages and problems
  • Adaptive, Flexible & Cognitive OFDM
  • Other Important Waveforms (SC-FDE, SC-FDMA, DFT-s-OFDM, UW-OFDM etc. )
  • Numerology and OFDM (OFDM variants from OFDM baseline)
  • Future concepts in Waveform:
    • mmWave waveform design (SC versus MC in mmWave)
    • Hybrid waveforms
    • Flexible waveforms
    • Non-orthogonal waveform design
    • Differential modulation (non-coherent modulation) in OFDM (minimal pilot OFDM design)
    • PHY security in OFDM (secure OFDM design)