W11: Integration of Sensing, Computing, and Communication in 6G Networks

Co-chair: Kai Liang, Xidian University, China
Co-chair: Mikko Uusitalo, Nokia Bell Labs, Finland
Co-chair: Henk Wymeersch, Chalmer University of Technology, Sweden
Co-chair: Xiaoli Chu, University of Sheffield, UK

Keynote Speaker: Chih-Lin, China Mobile Research Institute, China
Keynote Speaker: Tommy Svensson, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden

Abstract: Diverse and rigorous requirements, emerging scenarios and services call for 6G networks with the feature of integrated sensing, computing, and communication for continuous performance improvement. Although the integration of sensing and communication, and the integration of computing and communication have been discussed in recent years, jointly designing the sensing, computing and communication functionalities in mobile networks is still in its infant stage. Therefore, we propose a workshop at IEEE VTC 2022 Spring to provide a timely venue for an in-depth discussion about the concepts, architecture, enabling technologies, challenges and applications of the integration of sensing, computing, and communication in 6G networks. We will invite 1 or 2 keynotes and solicit at least 8 high-quality oral presentations for the half day workshop.

The TPC chairs and members will actively promote this workshop by taking full advantage of their contacts/networks, mail lists and public talks. Moreover, this workshop is assisted by FuTure Mobile Communication Forum (http://www.future-forum.org/en/), which devotes itself to promoting state-of-the-art communication technologies and has 45 members worldwide, such as Nokia Shanghai Bell, Ericsson, Qualcomm, Intel, NTT DoCoMo, NEC, Samsung Electronics, Huawei, ZTE, China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, Tsinghua University and so on. In addition, this workshop is supported by the EU H2020- ICT-2020-2 projects Hexa-X (https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101015956) and RISE-6G (https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101017011) RISE6G and the National Key R\&D Program of China (2019YFE0113200), each having a strong consortium of industry and academic partners who will contribute keynote talks and promote the workshop.

Co-chair Bios:

Kai Liang

Bio: Dr. Kai Liang is a lecturer in the State Key Laboratory of Integrated Service Networks (ISN) at Xidian University, China. He received his PhD degree in Telecommunications Engineering at Xidian University in 2016. From September 2014 to September 2015, he was a visiting research student at the University of Essex, UK, funded by the China Scholarships Council. His current research interests include the integration of sensing, computing, and communication, open networks, and wireless powered communications. He has organized 2 workshops at IEEE GLOBECOM in 2019 and 2020.

Mikko Uusitalo

Bio: Dr. Mikko Uusitalo is Head of Research Department Radio Systems Research Finland at Nokia Bell Labs Finland. Mikko is leading the European 6G Flagship project Hexa-X. He obtained a M.Sc. (Eng.) and Dr.Tech. in 1993 and 1997 and a B.Sc. (Economics) in 2003, all from predecessors of Aalto University. Mikko has been at Nokia since 2000 with various roles, including Principal Researcher and Head of International Cooperation at Nokia Research. Mikko is a founding member of the CELTIC EUREKA and WWRF, the latter one he chaired for 2004-2006. Mikko is a WWRF Fellow. Mikko has more than 70 granted patents or patent families and roughly same amount in the application phase. Mikko has organized before panels, sessions and workshops at various international events.

Henk Wymeersch

Bio: Prof. Henk Wymeersch obtained the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering/Applied Sciences in 2005 from Ghent University, Belgium. He is currently a Professor of Communication Systems with the Department of Electrical Engineering at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden. He is also a Distinguished Research Associate with Eindhoven University of Technology. Prior to joining Chalmers, he was a postdoctoral researcher from 2005 until 2009 with the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prof. Wymeersch served as Associate Editor for IEEE Communication Letters (2009-2013), IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications (since 2013), and IEEE Transactions on Communications (2016-2018). During 2019-2021, he was an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer with the Vehicular Technology Society. His current research interests include the convergence of communication and sensing, in a 5G and Beyond 5G context. He currently serves as work package leader on localization and sensing in the Hexa-X and RISE6G projects.

Xiaoli Chu

Bio: Prof. Xiaoli Chu is a professor in the EEE Department at University of Sheffield, UK. She is co recipient of IEEE ComSoc 2017 Young Author Best Paper Award and is the lead editor/author of the book Heterogeneous Cellular Networks (CUP, 2013). She is Senior Editor for IEEE Wireless Communications Letters and Editor for IEEE Communications Letters. She was Co-Chair of the Recent Results tract of IEEE VTC2019-Fall and the Wireless Communications Symposium for IEEE ICC 2015, Workshop Co-Chair for IEEE GreenCom 2013, and has co-organized 8 workshops at IEEE GLOBECOM and ICC.

Deadlines:
Workshop paper submissions due EXTENDED: 23 March 2022
Acceptance notification: 17 April 2022
Final paper submission due: 1 May 2022

To submit a paper to this workshop, please visit: https://vtc2022s-rr-wks.trackchair.com/track/2046

W9: ExpCCAM: Experimental Approaches for Evaluating and Showcasing Low-Latency CCAM Applications

Co-chair: Sébastien Faye, Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology, Luxembourg
Co-chair: Ion Turcanu, Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology, Luxembourg

Keynote Panelist

• Olav Tirkkonen, Aalto University, Finland
• Marco Rapelli, Politecnico di Torino, Italy
• Sanket Partani, University of Kaiserslautern, Germany
• Joshwa Pohlmann, Barkhausen Institut, Germany

Abstract:  Assessing the performance of Cooperative, Connected, and Automated Mobility (CCAM) applications and associated wireless technologies has been the subject of many research studies during the last few years. Numerical analysis, simulation, emulation, and physical demonstrators are all approaches that have been used by the scientific community to experiment, prototype and test their work – but often in a scattered way and with only little potential for re-use. At least this was the case before the efforts made through popular experimentation frameworks like Eclipse SUMO, OMNeT++, OpenAirInterface, and many others – paving the way for accessible, realistic interfaces with real-time components.

In this context, this workshop aims to bring together the research community working on experimental approaches for evaluating, testing, and showcasing the capabilities of CCAM applications in the era of ultra low-latency communication technologies, and more specifically 5G. With a network infrastructure not being deployed on Europe’s major roads until 2025, it is of tremendous interest  to propose solutions to study the deployment and scalability potential of future CCAM applications – which might involve varying architecture requirements and protocol choices (e.g., 5G NR, LTE, IEEE 802.11p).

This workshop is specifically targeting contributions that showcase laboratory-sized, fully reproducible experiments, be it numerically or in a physical format. Relevant topics include, but are not limited to:

• Performance evaluation of vehicular networks for automotive services
• Simulation or emulation of low-latency communication networks, including 5G
• Simulation or emulation of CCAM services
• Physical demonstrators and prototypes of low-latency networks and/or CCAM applications
• Platforms for raising awareness about the benefits of low-latency communication and connected mobility
• Experiments of vehicular network technologies for automotive services
• All of the above, but applied to applications comparable or similar to CCAM for demonstration purposes

Workshop Program Schedule – Sunday, 19 June 2022

First slot (9:00 – 10:30):

• Welcome (Ion Turcanu, 5 min)
• Keynote (Sebastien Faye, 30 min + 10 min Q&A) – “A Nation-Wide Digital Twin of Luxembourg: opportunities, challenges and use-cases for CCAM”
• Paper 1 (20 min + 10 min Q&A): “Quantitative Assessment of CCAM Applications on Greenhouse Gas Emissions”

Second slot (11:00 – 12:30):

• Paper 2 (20 min + 10 min Q&A): “ROS2-based Small-Scale Development Platform for CCAM Research Demonstrators”
• Panel (30 min + 10 min Q&A): “Open Experimental Platforms for CCAM: benefits, challenges, and opportunities”

Information about the workshop organization:

• Organizers: Dr Sébastien Faye, Dr Ion Turcanu (Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology – LIST)
• Peer review activities will be additionally supported by Dr Maximilian Matthe (Barkhausen Institut)

Co-chair Bios:

Sébastien Faye

Bio: Dr. Sébastien Faye is Senior Research and Technology Associate at LIST and works on projects related to 5G, Smart Mobility and IoT. Sébastien hold a MSc degree in telecommunication from UPJV (Amiens, France, 2009). Between 2009 and 2014, Sébastien was a web entrepreneur and created several web services and two startups. From 2011, as a PhD candidate at Telecom ParisTech (Paris, France), he focused on distributed systems applied to intelligent transportation systems. Between 2014 and 2017, he was a Research Associate at UL/SnT and responsible for the VehicularLab team. He is the Principal Investigator of 5G-EMIT (SMC) and Work Package leader in 5G-INSIGHT (FNR/ANR). He was the Quality Manager of 5GMOBIX (H2020) and has already worked on several other national and European initiatives related to 5G telecommunication, smart mobility and IoT. Sébastien is also the author of two patents about location profiling based on network traces.

Ion Turcanu

Bio: Dr. Ion Turcanu is a Research and Technology Associate at the Luxembourg Institute of Science  and Technology (LIST). He received his Ph.D. degree in information and communications technologies and his M.Sc. degree in computer science from the University of Rome Sapienza in 2018 and 2014 respectively. Until 2021, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT), University of Luxembourg, in the group of Prof. Thomas Engel. In 2016, he was a visiting scholar with the Distributed Embedded Systems group of Prof. Falko Dressler at Paderborn University. His research interests include communications protocols for multi-technology vehicular networks, time-sensitive networking for in-vehicle communications, and next-generation cellular networks. He is part of the ITIS department at LIST, which performs research and innovation activities in information systems and services.

Deadlines:
Workshop paper submissions due EXTENDED: 23 March 2022
Acceptance notification: 17 April 2022
Final paper submission due: 1 May 2022

To submit a paper to this workshop, please visit: https://vtc2022s-rr-wks.trackchair.com/track/2044

For additional information or this workshops call-for-papers: ExpCCAM CFP-1

W8: Enabling Technologies for Terahertz Communications (ETTCOM)

Co-chair: C. Faouzi Bader, Technology Innovation Institute, Abu Dhabi, UAE
Co-chair: Mohamed-Slim Alouini, King Abdullah Unviersity of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia
Co-chair: Maziar Nekovee, University of Sussex, UK
Co-chair: Mehmet Unlu, TOBB University of Economics and Technology, Ankara, Turkey

Keynote Speaker: Devin Brinkley
Keynote Speaker: Volker Jungnickel
Keynote Speaker: Mehdi Bennis
Keynote Speaker: Markku Juntti

Abstract: Sub-Terahertz technology, or what is more and more labelled by the scientific community as beyond 5G communication systems, has attracted great interest from academia and industry. This is due to several interesting features of sub-THz waves, including the tens and hundreds of GHz bandwidths available. Also, as millimetre-wave communication systems mature, the focus of research is, naturally, moving to the sub-THz range. With the increase in bandwidth requirements, the D bands (110-170 GHz) and then the H bands (220-330 GHz) are being increasingly studied for future communication applications. Broad bandwidth of the THz bands can be used for terabit-per-second (Tbps) wireless indoor communication systems.

With the attractive feature of ultra-broadband, the exploitation of sub-THz band for future wireless/optical communication has become a hot topic in last years. Although lots of research efforts have been undertaken with state-of the-art devices and channel propagation, sub-THz techniques are still not enough mature compared to microwave or photonics. As THz for wireless communication cannot be simply implemented with existing techniques, some key issues remain to be addressed before completing their deployment and commercialization. The first and most important is the availability of high-performance devices including powerful sub-THz sources, high gain antennas and sensitive THz detectors, for overcoming the physical attenuation from free-space link.

The THz band gives access to many applications in very diverse domains, ranging from Terabit WPAN to Terabit/s file transferring, small backhaul cells, server farms, or virtual and augmented reality applications. Nevertheless, there are many challenges from the device, communication, and networking perspectives, which require fundamentally new solutions.

Co-chair Bios:

C. Faouzi Bader

Bio: Faouzi Bader received his PhD degree (with Honours) in Telecommunications in 2001 from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), Madrid-Spain. He joined the Centre Technologic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya (CTTC) in Barcelona-Spain as research associate in 2002, and from 2006- to 2013 as Senior Research Associate. Since June 2013, he is as Associate Professor at CentraleSupélec in France. His research activities mainly focus on IMT-advanced systems as; THz wireless communications, 5G networks and systems, and Cognitive Radio communication environment. He has been involved in several European projects from the 5th-7th EC research frameworks (8 EU funded projects and 10 national projects), from 2012 to 2013 he has been the general coordinator and manager of the EC funded ICT “EMPhAtiC” project focusing on “Enhanced Multicarrier Techniques for Professional Ad-Hoc and Cell-Based Communications”. Since 2017, he is as Honorary Adjunct Professor at University of Technology Sydney (Australia), and since 2018 as the Head of Signals & Communications department at Institute of Electronics and Telecommunications of Rennes (IETR), Rennes-France. From 2020 to end 2021, he took the position of the director of research at Institut Supérieur D’Electronique de Paris-ISEP (France). He has published over 40 journals and 136 papers in peer-reviewed international conferences, more than 13 book chapters, and 4 edited books. He served as Technical Program Committee member in major IEEE ComSoc and VTS conferences (ICC, PIMRC, VTC spring/fall, WCNC, ISWCS, GLOBECOM, ICT). He is IEEE Senior Member from 2007. Prof. F. Bader is actually the CS’s coordinator of BRAVE French national project (2017-2021), where the main goal is the achievement efficient waveform for THz/Terabits wireless communication devices.

Mohamed-Slim Alouini

Bio: Mohamed-Slim Alouini (Fellow of IEEE and OSA) 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 at 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. His current research interests include modelling, design, and performance analysis of wireless communication systems

Dr. Alouini has published more than 500 journal papers on the above subjects and he is the co-author of the best-selling textbook Digital Communication over Fading Channels published by Wiley. The impact of his work has continued to grow as evidenced by the enormous number of citations to his publications. He was elected to the Fellow grade of the IEEE in 2009, rather early in his career. With more than 46,000 citations, and an h-index of 78 by Google Scholar, it is not surprising that Prof. Alouini was been selected several times by the Thomson ISI Web of Knowledge as a Highly Cited Researcher. The nominee has had sustained remarkable contributions to wireless communications theory, practice, mentorship of students, and academic and professional service and leadership. He has been serving as an editor in three major IEEE journals (IEEE Transactions on Communications, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, and IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing).

Maziar Nekovee

Bio:  Prof. Maziar Nekovee is Dean of the AI Institute and Managing Director of the 6G Lab (https://6g-lab.org) at University of Sussex.  He is CTO of Quantrom Technologies, a start-up focusing on disruptive technologies for and investment in mobile communication and AI sectors. His current research focuses on THz communication for 6G and beyond, the applications of 5G/6G and AI in the health and other verticals, and sustainability. Prior to joining U. Sussex in 2017, he was Head of Samsung’s European research and collaboration in 5G, where he developed new radio access technologies operating in millimetre-wave bands. Prior to Samsung he was with BT, where he worked on a range of fixed and wireless technologies, including cognitive radio/dynamic spectrum sharing, WiFi based V2X, peer-to-peer and IP multicast.

From February 2017 to February 2019, he was also Head of Department of Engineering and Design at Sussex during which period he oversaw a threefold increase in Department’s research funding, significant clime in league tables, successful introduction of two undergraduate programs in Robotics and two new Masters, including one in 5G Mobile Communications, and the establishment of new teaching and research collaborations with China, the Middle East and Africa. Maziar sits (as the only UK academic) at the EU’s 5G Infrastructure Association, where he advises the EC on 5G and beyond-5G Strategic Research Agenda. He is also on the steering board of the EPSRC-funded ComNet2 consortium in mobile technologies and the US National Academy of Science (NSF) funded research coordination network on 5G communications and networks and is Vice Chair of NetWorld 2020 European Technology Platform in Telecommunication Networks and Services, and a member of the Alliance for Internet of Things Innovation (AIIOT) and Telecom Infra Project (TIP). Dr. Maziar Nekovee is the author of 120+ highly cited papers, 15 patents and one book. He has a PhD in Physics and a first degree in EEE, both from the Netherlands. He is co-chair of NetWorld Europe ETP, WG on Enabling Technologies and Vertical.

Mehmet Unlu

Bio: Mehmet Unlu received his B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey in 2001, 2003, and 2009, respectively. He served as a research scientist at Cornell Nanoscale Science and Technology Facility (CNF), Ithaca, NY between 2009 and 2011, while he was working for Utah State University, Logan, UT. He joined the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI in 2011 as a postdoctoral research fellow. Between 2012 and 2018, he was a faculty member at the Ankara Yildirim Beyazit University. He is currently serving as a faculty member at the TOBB University of Economics and Technology, Ankara, Turkey. His major research interests are integrated terahertz components, plasmonics, optoelectronics, photonic integrated circuits, and NEMS.
Prof. Unlu received the “The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) Ph.D. Scholarship” between 2003 and 2009, the “Prof. Mustafa N. Parlar Education and Research Foundation-METU Thesis of the Year Award” in 2009 for his Ph.D. dissertation, “Best Student Paper Award (2nd place) in IEEE Antennas and Propagation Symposium (AP-S)” and “Best Student Paper Award (3rd place) in IEEE International Microwave Symposium (IMS)” in 2013, “Prof. Mustafa N. Parlar Education and Research Foundation Research Encouragement Award” in 2013, “International Union of Radio Science (URSI) Young Scientist Award” in 2014, and “Turkish Academy of Sciences Outstanding Young Scientist Award” in 2015. Prof. Unlu is a Senior Member of IEEE.

Deadlines:
Workshop paper submissions due EXTENDED: 23 March 2022
Acceptance notification: 17 April 2022
Final paper submission due: 1 May 2022

To submit a paper to this workshop, please visit: https://vtc2022s-rr-wks.trackchair.com/track/2043

W7: Distributed/Cell-Free Massive MIMO for Beyond 5G Networks

Co-chair: Yoji Kishi, KDDI Research Inc., Japan
Co-chair: Andreas F. Molisch, University of Southern California, USA
Co-chair: Giuseppe Caire, Technische Universität Berlin, Germany
Co-chair: Octavia A. Dobre, Memorial University, Canada

Keynote Speaker: Erik G. Larsson, Linkoping University, Sweden
Keynote Speaker: Pranav Madadi, Samsung Research USA, USA

Abstract: Distributed/Cell-Free massive MIMO has been a very active research topic in the past few years, and represents an attractive technology for next generation wireless networks beyond the current deployment of 5G. However, several questions and technical issues remain to be fully addressed in terms of real-world deployment, scalability, energy efficiency, operating frequency bands, OPEX and CAPEX effectiveness, and so on. This workshop will bring together leading researchers from industry and academia with the purpose of sharing their latest progress on these topics, and identify/discuss open issues and challenges for realizing and deploying distributed/cell-free massive MIMO for beyond 5G networks.

Co-chair Bios:

Yoji Kishi

Bio: Yoji KISHI received B.S. and M.S. degrees from Kyoto University, Japan in 1989 and 1991, respectively. He joined KDDI and engaged in the research and development on communications network planning and optimization for mobile, optical and satellite networks. Since 2016, he has been the head of future access network division. In addition to the research on beyond 5G/6G, the division deals with mobile antenna and propagation, dynamic spectrum sharing and access, software defined/ visualized RAN and so forth.

Andreas F. Molisch

Bio: Andreas F. Molisch (Fellow, IEEE) received the Dipl.Ing., Ph.D., and Habilitation degrees from the Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria, in 1990, 1994, and 1999, respectively.,He spent the next ten years in the industry, at FTW, Vienna, AT&T (Bell) Laboratories, Middletown, NJ, USA, and Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs, Cambridge, MA, USA, (where he rose to Chief Wireless Standards Architect). In 2009, he joined the University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles, CA, USA, as a Professor, and founded the Wireless Devices and Systems (WiDeS) Group. In 2017, he was appointed to the Solomon Golomb—Andrew and Erna Viterbi Chair. Overall, he has published four books (among them the textbook Wireless Communications, currently in its second edition), 21 book chapters, 260 journal articles, and 360 conference papers. He is also the inventor of 60 granted (and more than 20 pending) patents and a coauthor of some 70 standards contributions. His research interests revolve around wireless propagation channels, wireless systems design, and their interaction. Recently, his main interests have been wireless channel measurement and modeling for 5G and beyond 5G systems, joint communication caching computation, hybrid beamforming, ultra wide band (UWB)-/time of arrival (TOA)-based localization, and novel modulation/multiple access methods.,Dr. Molisch is a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, the American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS), and the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer, and a member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. He received numerous awards, among them the IET Achievement Medal, the Technical Achievement Awards of the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society (Evans Avant Garde Award) and the IEEE Communications Society (Edwin Howard Armstrong Award), the Technical Field Award of the IEEE for Communications, and the Eric Sumner Award. He has been an editor of a number of journals and special issues, the general chair, the technical program committee chair, the symposium chair of multiple international conferences, and the chairman of various international standardization groups.

Giuseppe Caire

Bio: Giuseppe Caire is currently an Alexander von Humboldt Professor with the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Technical University of Berlin, Germany. He received the Jack Neubauer Best System Paper Award from the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society in 2003; the IEEE Communications Society and Information Theory Society Joint Paper Award in 2004 and in 2011; the Okawa Research Award in 2006; the Alexander von Humboldt Professorship in 2014; the Vodafone Innovation Prize in 2015; an ERC Advanced Grant in 2018; the Leonard G. Abraham Prize for best IEEE JSAC paper in 2019; and the IEEE Communications Society Edwin Howard Armstrong Achievement Award in 2020. He is a recipient of the 2021 Leibinz Prize of the German National Science Foundation (DFG). He has been a Fellow of IEEE since 2005. He has served in the Board of Governors of the IEEE Information Theory Society from 2004 to 2007, and as an officer from 2008 to 2013. He was President of the IEEE Information Theory Society in 2011.

Octavia A. Dobre

Bio: Octavia A. Dobre (Fellow, IEEE) received the Dipl.Ing. and Ph.D. degrees from the Polytechnic Institute of Bucharest, Romania, in 1991 and 2000, respectively. Between 2002 and 2005, she was with New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA. In 2005, she joined Memorial University, Canada, where she is currently a Professor and the Research Chair. She was a Visiting Professor with Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, and the Université de Bretagne Occidentale, France. Her research interests encompass wireless, optical, and underwater communication technologies. She has (co)authored over 350 refereed articles in these areas. She is a fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada and the Canadian Academy of Engineering. She was a Fulbright Scholar, a Royal Society Scholar, and a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Communications Society. She obtained the best paper awards at various conferences, including IEEE ICC, IEEE GLOBECOM, IEEE WCNC, and IEEE PIMRC. She serves as the Editor-in-Chief (EiC) of the IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society. She served as the general chair, the technical program co-chair, the tutorial co-chair, and the technical co-chair for symposia at numerous conferences. She was the EiC of the IEEE Communications Letters, a senior editor, an editor, and a guest editor for various prestigious journals and magazines.

Deadlines:
Workshop paper submissions due EXTENDED: 23 March 2022
Acceptance notification: 17 April 2022
Final paper submission due: 1 May 2022

To submit a paper to this workshop, please visit: https://vtc2022s-rr-wks.trackchair.com/track/2042

W6: Digital-twin-assisted AI for 6G Wireless Networking

Keynote Speaker: Xianbin Wang, Western University, Canada
Keynote Speaker: Trung Q. Duong, Queen’s University Belfast, UK

General Chairs
Qiang Ye, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada
Berk Canberk, Istanbul Technical University, Turkey
Octavia A. Dobre, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada
Bin Lin, Dalian Maritime University, China

TPC Co-chairs
Ning Zhang, University of Windsor, Canada
Khaled Rabie, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK
Dajiang Chen, UESTC, China
Zijun Gong, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Guangzhou, China
Hesham Moussa, Huawei, Canada

Publicity Chairs
Zhi Liu, The University of Electro-Communications, Japan
Lei Liu, Xidian University, China

TPC Members
Hassan Aboubakr Omar, Huawei Technologies, Ottawa, Canada
Xuanli Wu, Harbin Institute of Technology, China
Khalid Aldubaikhy, Qassim University, Saudi Arabia
Tao Huang, James Cook University, Australia
Mushu Li, University of Waterloo, Canada
Muhammad Ismail, Tennessee Tech University, USA
Huaqing Wu, McMaster University, Canada
Tao Han, New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA
Junling Li, University of Waterloo, Canada
Wen Wu, Peng Cheng Laboratory, China
Jie Gao, Marquette University, USA
Weisen Shi, Huawei Technologies, Ottawa, Canada
Haixia Peng, California State University Long Beach, USA
He Fang, Soochow University, China
Zehui Xiong, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore
Nan Chen, Tennessee Tech University, USA
Peng Yang, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China
Kaige Qu, University of Waterloo, Canada
Yuan Zhang, UESTC, China
Cheng Huang, University of Waterloo, Canada

Abstract: With the increasing data volume and network complexity in six generation (6G) wireless networks, efficient data collection and processing will be the pivotal factor to improve the training accuracy of artificial intelligence (AI) modules for making network management decisions. Digital twin (DT), as an effective means of data digitalization, has recently attracted great attention from both academia and industry. By creating concise but accurate abstraction/virtualization of both network-level and user level data/functionalities from the physical domain, the DT can well improve the efficiency of large-scale data processing for guiding the 6G network intelligence. To spark more ideas and potential research directions in this booming field, this workshop aims at inviting experts and professionals around the world to share thoughts, insights, results, and experience on applying DT to future wireless networking from both theoretical and practical perspectives.

Co-chair Bios:

Qiang Ye

Bio: Qiang Ye received the Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Waterloo, ON, Canada, in 2016. Since Sept. 2021, he has been an Assistant Professor with the Department of Computer Science, Memorial University of Newfoundland, NL, Canada. Before joining Memorial, he had been with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Technology, Minnesota State University, Mankato, USA, as an Assistant Professor from Sept. 2019 to Aug. 2021 and with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo as a Postdoctoral Fellow and Research Associate from Dec. 2016 to Sept. 2019. He has published over 45 research articles on top ranked IEEE Journals and Conference Proceedings. He is/was TPC co-chairs/members for several international conferences and workshops, including the IEEE GLOBECOM’20, VTC’17, VTC’20, ICPADS’20, and INFOCOM’22. He serves as associate editors for IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society, Peer-to-Peer Networking and Applications, International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks, and Wireless Networks. He is a member of IEEE.

Berk Canberk

Bio: Berk Canberk has been an Adjunct Associate Professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Northeastern University, since 2016. He is currently a Professor with the Department of Computer Engineering, Istanbul Technical University (ITU). He also serves as an Editor for IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTER, IEEE TRANSACTIONS IN VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, Computer Networks (Elsevier), and Computer Communications (Elsevier). His current research interests include software-defined networking (SDN), intelligent aerial networks, and next generation network management systems. He was a recipient of the IEEE Turkey Research Incentive Award in 2018, the IEEE INFOCOM Best Paper Award in 2018, The British Council (U.K.) Researcher Link Award in 2017, the IEEE CAMAD Best Paper Award in 2016, Royal Academy of Engineering (U.K.) NEWTON Research Collaboration Award in 2015, the IEEE INFOCOM Best Poster Paper Award in 2015, the ITU Successful Faculty Member Award in 2015, and the Turkish Telecom Collaborative Research Award in 2013. He is a Senior Member of IEEE.

Octavia A. Dobre

Bio: Octavia A. Dobre received the Dipl. Ing. and Ph.D. degrees from the Polytechnic Institute of Bucharest, Romania, in 1991 and 2000, respectively. Between 2002 and 2005, she was with New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA. In 2005, she joined Memorial University, Canada, where she is currently a Professor and Research Chair. Her research interests encompass various wireless technologies, such as non-orthogonal multiple access and full duplex, as well as optical and underwater communications, and machine learning for communications. She has contributed over 400 refereed papers in these areas. Dr. Dobre serves as the Editor-in-Chief (EiC) of the IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society. She was the EiC of the IEEE Communications Letters, Senior Editor, Editor, and Guest Editor for various prestigious journals and magazines. Dr. Dobre was a Royal Society Scholar, Fulbright Scholar, and Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Communications Society. She obtained Best Paper Awards at various conferences, including IEEE ICC, IEEE Globecom, IEEE WCNC, and IEEE PIMRC. Dr. Dobre is a Fellow of IEEE, a Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada, and a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering.

Bin Lin

Bio: Bin Lin received the B.S. and M.S. degrees from Dalian Maritime University, Dalian, China, in 1999 and 2003 respectively, and the Ph.D. degree from the Broadband Communications Research Group, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada, in 2009. She is currently a Full Professor and Dean of Communication Engineering Department, School of Information Science and Technology, Dalian Maritime University. She has been a Visiting Scholar with George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA, from 2015 to 2016. Her current research interests include wireless communications, network dimensioning and optimization, resource allocation, artificial intelligence, maritime communication networks, edge/cloud computing, wireless sensor networks, and Internet of Things. Dr. Lin is a senior member of IEEE, and an associate editor of IEEE Transaction on Vehicular Technology and IET Communications.

TPC Chair Bios:

Ning Zhang

Bio: Ning Zhang is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Windsor, Canada. He received the Ph.D. degree from the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada, in 2015. After that, he was a postdoc research fellow at the University of Waterloo and University of Toronto, Canada, respectively. His research interests include connected vehicles, mobile edge computing, wireless networking, and machine learning. He is a Highly Cited Researcher and on the World’s Top 2% Scientists list by Stanford University. He serves as an Associate Editor of IEEE Internet of Things Journal, IEEE Transactions on Cognitive Communications and Networking, and IEEE Systems Journal; and a Guest Editor of several international journals, such as IEEE Wireless Communications, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, IEEE Internet of Things Journal, and IEEE Transactions on Cognitive Communications and Networking. He also serves/served as a general chair for IEEE SAGC 2021, a TPC chair for IEEE VTC-Fall 2021 and IEEE SAGC 2020, a track chair for several international conferences including IEEE ICC 2022, IEEE IECON 2021, CollaborateCom 2021, IEEE VTC 2020, AICON 2020 and CollaborateCom 2020, and a co-chair for numerous international workshops. He received IEEE TCSVC Rising Star Award for outstanding contributions to research and practice of MEC and IoT Service; NSERC PDF award, and 6 Best Paper Awards from IEEE Globecom, IEEE WCSP, IEEE ICC, IEEE ICCC, IEEE Technical Committee on Transmission Access and Optical Systems, and Journal of Communications and Information Networks, respectively. He has been a senior member of IEEE since 2018.

Khaled Rabie

Bio: Khaled M. Rabie (Senior Member, IEEE) received the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical and electronic engineering from the University of Manchester, in 2011 and 2015, respectively. He is currently a Senior Lecturer with the Department of Engineering, Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU), UK. He has worked as a part of several largescale industrial projects and has published 150+ journal and conference articles (mostly IEEE). His current research interests focus on the next-generation wireless communication systems. He serves regularly on the technical program committee (TPC) for several major IEEE conferences, such as GLOBECOM, ICC, and VTC. He has received many awards over the past few years in recognition of his research contributions including the Best Paper Awards at the 2021 IEEE CITS and the 2015 IEEE ISPLC, and the IEEE ACCESS Editor of the month award for August 2019. He is currently serving as an Editor of IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS, an Editor of IEEE Internet of Things Magazine, an Associate Editor of IEEE ACCESS, an Area Editor for Physical Communications (Elsevier), and an Executive Editor for the TRANSACTIONS ON EMERGING TELECOMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGIES (Wiley). He guest-edited many special issues in journals including IEEE Wireless Communications Magazine (2021), Electronics (2021), Sensors (2020), IEEE Access (2019). Khaled is also a Fellow of the U.K. Higher Education Academy (FHEA).

Dajian Chen

Bio: Dajiang Chen (Member, IEEE) received the Ph.D. degree in information and communication engineering from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC), Chengdu, China, in 2014.,He is currently an Associate Professor with the School of Information and Software Engineering, UESTC. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Broadband Communications Research Group, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada, from 2015 to 2017. His current research interest includes physical layer security, secure channel coding, and machine learning and its applications in wireless network security and wireless communications. Dr. Chen served as the Workshop Chair for BDEC-SmartCity’19 (in conjunction with IEEE WiMob 2019). He also served as a guest editor for several international journals, such as Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing, and International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks. He also serves/served as a Technical Program Committee Member for IEEE Globecom, IEEE ICC, IEEE VTC, IEEE WPMC, and IEEE WF-5G.

Zijun Gong

Bio: Zijun Gong received the B. Eng. and M. Eng. Degrees from Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT), Harbin, P. R. China, in 2013 and 2015, respectively. In 2021, he got his Ph.D. degree at Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, NL, Canada. From May to December 2021, he worked at University of Waterloo as a postdoc. He is currently an assistant professor with the IOT Thrust in Information Hub, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (GZ). His research interests lie in statistical signal processing and optimization, including channel estimation in massive MIMO, and millimeter wave communications, radio propagation modeling, localization of WSN, localization of underwater vehicles. He received the Best Paper Award at the IEEE Globecom’17, Singapore, December 2017.

Keynote Speaker Bios:

Xianbin Wang

Bio: Xianbin Wang received the Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the National University of Singapore in 2001. He was with the Communications Research Centre Canada (CRC) as a Research Scientist/a Senior Research Scientist from July 2002 to December 2007. From January 2001 to July 2002, he was a System Designer at STMicroelectronics. He is currently a Professor and the Tier-1 Canada Research Chair of Western University, Canada. He has over 450 highly cited journal articles and conference papers, in addition to 30 granted and pending patents and several standard contributions. His current research interests include 5G/6G technologies, the Internet of Things, communications security, machine learning, and intelligent communications. Dr. Wang is a fellow of the IEEE, the Canadian Academy of Engineering, and the Engineering Institute of Canada. He has received many awards and recognitions, including Canada Research Chair, the CRC President’s Excellence Award, the Canadian Federal Government Public Service Award, Ontario Early Researcher Award, and six IEEE best paper awards. He was involved in many IEEE conferences, including GLOBECOM, ICC, VTC, PIMRC, WCNC, CCECE, and CWIT in different roles, such as the General Chair, the Symposium Chair, the Tutorial Instructor, the Track Chair, the Session Chair, the TPC Co-Chair, and a Keynote Speaker. He is currently serving as the Chair for the IEEE London Section and the ComSoc Signal Processing and Computing for Communications (SPCC) Technical Committee. He serves/has served as the editor-in-chief, the associate editor-in-chief, and an editor/an associate editor for over ten journals. He has been nominated as an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer several times during the last ten years. He is an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer.

Trung Q. Duong

Bio: Trung Q. Duong is a Chair Professor of Telecommunications at Queen’s University Belfast (UK), where he was a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) (2013-2017), a Reader (Associate Professor) (2018-2020), and Full Professor from August 2020. He also holds a prestigious Research Chair of Royal Academy of Engineering. His current research interests include wireless communications, machine learning, realtime optimisation, and data analytic. He is an author/co-author of over 400 publications. Dr. Duong currently serves as an Editor for the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, and an Executive Editor for IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS. He has served as an Editor/Guest Editor for IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMMUNICATIONS, IEEE WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, IEEE COMMUNICATIONS MAGAZINES, IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS, and IEEE JOURNAL ON SELECTED AREAS IN COMMUNICATIONS. He was awarded the Best Paper Award at the IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference (VTCSpring) in 2013, IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC) 2014, IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM) 2016 and 2019, IEEE Digital Signal Processing Conference (DSP) 2017, and International Wireless Communications & Mobile Computing Conference (IWCMC) 2019. He is the recipient of prestigious Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellowship (2015-2020) and has won a prestigious Newton Prize 2017. He is a Fellow of IEEE (2022 Class).

Deadlines:
Workshop paper submissions due EXTENDED: 23 March 2022
Acceptance notification: 17 April 2022
Final paper submission due: 1 May 2022

To submit a paper to this workshop, please visit: https://vtc2022s-rr-wks.trackchair.com/track/2041

For additional information and the workshop call-for-papers: VTCSpring2022CFP_DigitalTwin

W5: Data Driven Optimization for 6G Wireless Networks

Accepted Papers:

– AoI and Throughput Optimization for Hybrid Traffic in Cellular Uplink Using Reinforcement Learning
Chien-Cheng Wu, Zheng-Hua Tan and Cedomir Stefanovic (Aalborg University)

– Channel Charting Assisted Beam Tracking
Parham Kazemi,  Hanan Al-Tous ( Aalto University), Christoph Studer (ETH Zürich) and Olav Tirkkonen (Aalto University)

– Collision Resolution with Deep Reinforcement Learning for Random Access in Machine-Type Communication
Muhammad Jadoon, Adriano Pastore and Monica Navarro (Centre Tecnologic Telecomunicacions Catalunya)

– Control-Aware Scheduling Optimization of Industrial IoT
Pedro Maia de Sant Ana (Bosch), Beatriz Soret, Petar Popovski (Aalborg University) and Nikolaj Marchenko (Bosch)

– Heuristic Inspired Precoding for Millimeter-Wave MIMO Systems with Lens Antenna Subarrays
Sinasi Cetinkaya (University of South Florida) Liza Afeef (Istanbul Medipol University), Gokhan Mumcu  and Hüseyin Arslan (University of South Florida)

– Intermodulation Interference Detection in 6G Networks: A Machine Learning Approach (Invited paper)
Faris B. Mismar (Bell Labs Consulting, USA)

– Random Access Protocol Learning in LEO Satellite Networks via Reinforcement Learning (Invited paper)
Ju-Hyung Lee (Korea University), Hyowoon Seo ( Kwangwoon University), Jihong Park (Deakin University), Mehdi Bennis, (University of Oulu), Joongheon Kim and Young-Chai Ko ( Korea University)

– Scalable Joint Learning of Wireless Multiple-Access Policies and their Signaling
Mateus Pontes Mota, Alvaro Valcarce Rial ( Nokia Bell Labs France) and Jean-Marie Gorce (INSA Lyon)

– Swish-Driven GoogleNet for Intelligent Analog Beam Selection in Terahertz Beamspace MIMO
Hosein Zarini  (Amirkabir University of Technology),Mohammad robatmilli (Sharif University of Technology), Mehdi Rasti  (Amirkabir University of Technology), Sergey Andreev (Tampere University of Technology), and  Pedro Henrique Juliano Nardeli (Lapeenranta University of Tehcnology)

– Three-Dimensional Scrambling Code for Multi-User MIMO Systems
Wei Gao,  Xiaodong Ji, Xiqing Liu and Mugen Peng (Beijing University of Posts & Telecommunications)

– Attacker Identification in LoRaWAN Through Physical Channel Fingerprinting
Sobhi Alfayoumi  and  Xavier vilajosana  (Open University of Catalonia)

Program Schedule: 19 June 2022

14:00 – 14:05 Welcome address
14:05 – 15:30 Technical session I: (Keynote  45 mint. and Q&A 10 mint.  + 2 presentations, each 15 mint.)
15:30 – 16:00  Coffee break
16:00 – 17:30 Technical session II: (6 presentations, each 15 mint.)

Note: The time allocated for each presentation  is 15 mints;  12 mint. for presentation and 3  mint. for Q&A.

Technical session I
– 14:05 – 15:00 Keynote Speech
– 15:00 – 15:15  Random Access Protocol Learning in LEO Satellite Networks via Reinforcement Learning
– 15:15 – 15:30 Channel Charting Assisted Beam Tracking

Technical session II
– 16:00 – 16:15 Collision Resolution with Deep Reinforcement Learning for Random Access in Machine-Type Communication
– 16:15 – 16:30 Swish-Driven Google Net for Intelligent Analog Beam Selection in Terahertz Beam space MIMO
– 16:30 – 16:45 Heuristic Inspired Precoding for Millimeter-Wave MIMO Systems with Lens Antenna Subarrays
– 16:45 – 17:00 Attacker Identification in LoRaWAN Through Physical Channel Fingerprinting
– 17:00 – 17:15  Scalable Joint Learning of Wireless Multiple-Access Policies and their Signaling
– 17:15 – 17:30 Three-Dimensional Scrambling Code for Multi-User MIMO Systems

Keynote Speaker: Wei Yu, University of Toronto

Title: Learn to Optimize for Wireless Communications

Abstract: Machine learning will have an important role to play in the optimization of future-generation physical-layer wireless communication system design for the following two reasons. First, traditional wireless communication design always relies on the channel model, but models are inherently only an approximation to the reality. In wireless environments where the models are complex and the channels are costly to estimate, a machine learning based approach that performs system-level optimization without explicit channel estimation can significantly outperform the traditional channel estimation based approaches. Second, modern wireless communication design often involves optimization problems that are high-dimensional, nonconvex, and difficult to solve efficiently. By exploring the availability of training data, a neural network may be able to learn the solution of an optimization problem directly. This can lead to a more efficient way to solve nonconvex optimization problems. In this talk, I will use examples from optimizing a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) system, precoding for a massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system, and active sensing for mmWave channel initial alignment to illustrate the benefit of learning-based physical-layer communication system design. We illustrate that matching the neural network architecture to the problem structure is crucial for the success of learning based approaches.

Keynote Speaker:

Wei Yu

Bio: Wei Yu received the B.A.Sc. degree in Computer Engineering and Mathematics from the University of Waterloo, Canada, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, U.S.A. He has been with the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Toronto since 2002, where he is now Professor and holds a Canada Research Chair in Information Theory and Wireless Communications. Prof. Wei Yu is a Fellow of IEEE, a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, and a member of the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists of the Royal Society of Canada. He received the Steacie Memorial Fellowship in 2015, the IEEE Marconi Prize Paper Award in Wireless Communications in 2019, the IEEE Communications Society Award for Advances in Communication in 2019, the IEEE Signal Processing Society Best Paper Award in 2008, 2017 and 2021, the Journal of Communications and Networks Best Paper Award in 2017, and the IEEE Communications Society Best Tutorial Paper Award in 2015. Prof. Wei Yu was an IEEE Communications Society Distinguished Lecturer in 2015-16. He served as the Chair of the Signal Processing for Communications and Networking Technical Committee of the IEEE Signal Processing Society in 2017-18. Prof. Wei Yu was the President of the IEEE Information Theory Society in 2021.

Co-chair Bios:

Hanan Al-Tous

Bio: Hanan Al-Tous (Senior Member, IEEE) is a research fellow at Aalto university. Her research interests include cooperative communications, energy harvested sensor networks, resource allocation for wireless communications, game theory, compressive sensing and machine learning.

Cedomir Stefanovic

Bio: Cedomir Stefanovic received the Diploma Ing., Mr.-Ing., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Novi Sad, Serbia. He is currently a Professor with the Department of Electronic Systems, Aalborg University, where he leads the Edge Computing and Networking Group. He is a principal researcher on a number of European projects related to IoT, 5G, and mission-critical communications. He has coauthored more than 100 peer-reviewed publications. His research interests include communication theory and wireless communications. He serves as an editor for the IEEE Internet of Things Journal.

Sergey Tambovskiy

Bio: Sergey received M.Sc. degree in wireless systems & networks (radio frequency engineering) from Russian Technological University in 2015. Same year he joined Huawei Technologies as a senior research engineer. Where he worked on topics of hybrid beamforming, antenna array calibration, neural networks for digital pre-distortion and Bayesian source separation for intermodulation correction. In September of 2019 he joined Ericsson Research (funded by Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie project) to work on topic of “Machine learning for real-time radio signal processing”. His current research interests are in topics of Bayesian optimisation and Gaussian processes for system identification and wireless networks.

Olav Tirkkonen

Bio: Olav Tirkkonen: (Senior Member, IEEE) is associate professor in communication theory at the Department of Communications and Networking in Aalto University, Finland. He has published some 300 papers, is the inventor of some 85 families of patents and patent applications and is coauthor of the book “Multiantenna transceiver techniques for 3G and beyond”. His current research interests are in coding for random access and quantization, quantum computation, and machine learning for cellular networks. He is an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communication.

Hugo Tullberg

Bio: Hugo Tullberg is a Principal Researcher at Research Area Radio, Ericsson Research, Stockholm, where he works with Beyond-5G/6G communication systems. His research interests include communication and information theory, machine learning and artificial intelligence with applications to lower protocol layers, and network reliability and security. He is a member of the Technical Committee of Signal Processing for Communications and Networking within the IEEE Signal Processing Society.

Alvaro Valcarce Rial

Bio:  Alvaro Valcarce (Senior Member, IEEE) is a research engineer at Nokia Bell Labs, France, where he focuses on the application of reinforcement learning to L2 and L3 problems for the development of beyond 5G technologies. His background is on LTE cellular networks, small-cells, computational electromagnetics, optimization algorithms and machine learning. He also has experience on the usage of satellite & cellular systems in aeronautical environments.

This Workshop has moved to virtual only.

W4: 4th Workshop on Connected Intelligence for IoT and Industrial IoT Applications- C3IA

Co-chair: Abdellah Chehri, University of Quebec (UQAC), Canada
Co-chair: Gwanggil Jeon, Incheon National, Korea
Co-chair: Imran Ahmed, Institute of Management Sciences, Pakistan
Co-chair: Marco Anisetti, University of Milan, Italy

Abstract: Nowadays, industrial enterprises and companies are addressing the challenge of transforming the Industrial IoT (IIoT) ideas, Industry 4.0, Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), and similar concepts into reality. In the Industry 4.0 era, various data management research challenges have to be addressed. Huge amounts of heterogeneous sensor data have to be processed in real-time to control the production machines. Data processing through smart devices is more significant compared to information processing capacity. Nowadays, data becomes humongous, even coming from a single source. Besides, unstructured data from production reports or external sources must also be integrated to analyze and optimize the production process. Therefore, when data emanates from all heterogeneous sources distributed over the globe, its magnitude makes it harder to process up-to a needed scale.
The world has seen many breakthroughs in machine learning and artificial intelligence research. By integrating the advances in smart devices, and big data analysis with the advances in machine learning, the future role of smart systems, networks, and applications is becoming limitless. It’s expected to revolutionize the future of the world within the next few years.

Co-chair Bios:

Abdellah Chehri

Bio: Dr A. Chehri is a professor and researcher at the University of Quebec- UQAC, Canada. He received his Ph.D. in 2009 from Laval University, Quebec, Canada. He joined the University of Ottawa in July 2009 as a post-doc fellow and member of Wireless Heterogeneous Sensor Networks in the e-Society WiSense project. From 2012 to 2014, he was with BLiNQ Networks in Kanata, where he was involved in the development and testing of dual-carrier NLOS TDD backhaul for small-cell 4G/LTE mobile applications. He worked as an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Ottawa and as a Manager of Next-Generation Network (NGN) /VoIP & Emerging Technologies at Bell Canada. Dr. Chehri received many prestigious awards, including, Dean’s Scholarship Award, Postdoctoral Studies (University Ottawa), Scholarship Fund to Support Success (Laval University), Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, MITACS, NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship. Dr. Chehri served as a workshop co-chair of the first IEEE International Humanitarian Technology Conference (IEEE ICC 2012). He served as guest editor and severed as a technical reviewer for several international conferences and journals.

Gwanggil Jeon

Bio: Dr. G. Jeon received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from Hanyang University, Korea, in 2003, 2005, and 2008, respectively. From 2009 to 2011, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Ottawa, Canada, and from 2011 to 2012, he was an assistant professor at Niigata University, Japan. He is a professor at Xidian University, China and Incheon National University, South Korea. His research interests fall under the umbrella of image processing, deep learning, artificial intelligence, smart grid, and Industry 4.0.

Imran Ahmed

Bio: Imran Ahmed (Senior Member, IEEE) received a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of Southampton, Southampton, U.K, in 2014. Currently, he is working as an Associate Professor with the Institute of Management Sciences Peshawar, Hayatabad, Peshawar, Pakistan. His research interests mainly include artificial intelligence, deep learning, machine learning, data science, computer vision. He has attended several international conferences in these areas. He has published numerous articles in refereed journals and conference proceedings, including IEEE Access, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, IEEE Internet of Things Journal, International Journal of Machine Learning and Cybernetics, IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica, Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Humanized Computing, Multimedia Tools and Applications, Cluster Computing, IEEE Annual Ubiquitous Computing, Computer Communications, Electronics & Mobile Communication Conference (UEMCON), ACM/SIGAPP Symposium On Applied Computing at Pau, France, and many others. He has also been acting as a reviewer of journals, such as IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, IEEE Access, Journal of Ambient Intelligence, Elsevier, etc.

Marco Anisetti

Bio: Dr. M. Anisetti is an Associate Professor at the Università degli Studi di Milano. Marco’s research interests are in the area of Computational Intelligence and its application to the design of complex systems and services. Recently, he has been investigating the adoption of Computational Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence techniques in the area of Security mechanisms for distributed systems, with particular consideration of Cloud and SOA security and software/service certification where Computational Intelligence provides new notions of ordering and matching of security properties. He is currently applying Big Data analytics to compute security and assurance metrics of Cloud systems and IoT systems in order to verify compliance to standards and policies. He has published several papers in journals and conference proceedings, and has served in the program committee of several international conferences.

Deadlines:
Workshop paper submissions due EXTENDED: 23 March 2022
Acceptance notification: 17 April 2022
Final paper submission due: 1 May 2022

To submit a paper to this workshop, please visit: https://vtc2022s-rr-wks.trackchair.com/track/2039

W3: 4th International Workshop on Decentralized Technologies and Applications for IoT (D’IoT) 2022

Co-chair: Sandeep Pirbhulal, Norwegian Computing Center, Norway
Co-chair: Ali Hassan Sodhro, Kristianstad University, Sweden
Co-chair: Muhammad Muzammal, Bahria University, Pakistan

Keynote speaker: Giancarlo Fortino, University of Calabria, Italy

Abstract: The D’IoT workshop 2022 will focus on technology advancements and applications of the decentralized technologies aka blockchain for IoT and big data. The submissions are expected in areas such as Theories and applications of Big Data Analytics for IoT, Decentralized applications for Healthcare informatics under IoT, privacy preserving visualization techniques for data from IoT devices, security and privacy in IoT using decentralized techniques, next generation decentralized applications for IoT, Decentralized IoT applications in Smart cities, Decentralized applications for FoG and Edge computing driven IoT, Visions on Decentralized Trustless Systems for IoT, and others. The workshop is concerned with inter-disciplinary and cross-domain studies spanning a variety of areas in computer science including enriched IoT data management on Blockchain, mobile computing, information extraction and retrieval, and security, as well as other disciplines such as management information science.

Technical Program Committee:

Awais Ahmad, Mid Sweden University, Sweden
Claudio Savaglio, University Calabria, Italy
Victor Hugo C. de Albuquerque, University of Fortaleza (UNIFOR), Brazil
Xiang, Wei, James Cook University, Australia
Mir Muhammad Lodro, University of Nottingham, UK
Ijaz Ahmad, Technical Research Centre of VTT, Finland
Qinghua Wang, Kristianstad University, 29188-Kristianstad
Habtmau Abie, Norwegian Computing Center, Norway
Ijlal Loutfi, Norwegian Computing Center, Norway
Kashif Nisar, University Malaysia Sabah, Malaysia
Noman Zahid, The University of Faisalabad, Pakistan
Nuno Pombo, University of Beira Interior, Covilha, Portugal
Eshrat E Alahi, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China.
Lei Wang, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
Yacine Ouzrout, University Lumiere Lyon 2, France
Ankur Shukla, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway

Co-chair Bios:

Sandeep Pirbhulal

Bio: Dr. Sandeep Pirbhulal received his Ph.D. degree in Pattern Recognition and Intelligent Systems from the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (SIAT-UCAS), China (2014-2018). He has also received a PhD degree equivalence from the University of Beira Interior (UBI), Covilha, Portugal, in October 2020. In addition, he did his Master’s Degree in Telecommunication and Networks (2012-2014), and Bachelor’s Degree in Telecommunication Engineering (2007-2011) from Karachi Institutes of Economics and Technology (KIET), and Mehran University of Engineering and Technology (MUET), Pakistan, respectively. He is currently working as a senior research scientist at Norwegian Computing Center, Norway. Moreover, he served as a Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science, KIET, Pakistan, from 2013 to 2014. He was also a research scholar at SIAT-UCAS China (2018-2019), and UBI Portugal (2019-2020), NTNU Norway (2020-2021).

Dr. Pirbhulal has vast experience of 7-8 years in Academia & Research. His current research focuses on critical infrastructure security, tele-healthcare, network security, information security, privacy, and security for WSNs, wireless body sensor networks (WSNs), and Internet of Things. He has published more than 85 scientific articles (including peer reviewed journals and international conferences) with 2002 citations on Google scholar, an H-index of 25, and an i-index of 41 comprising IEEE Transactions, Elsevier’s JCR Q1 other high impact factor venues. He has reviewed more than 100 papers in the reputed peer-reviewed journal such as IEEE Access, IEEE JBHI, IEEE transactions etc. He is an editorial board member of MDPI Signals Journal (since 2020). Since, three years (2019-2021), he is the Organizing Chair of the Workshop on Decentralized Technologies and Applications for IoT (D’IoT) in conjunction with the IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC). He also serves as a TPC member of several conferences, seminars, and workshops at the national and international levels. Global Research Recognition: Dr. Sandeep Pirbhulal has achieved an outstanding achievement globally by featuring in Stanford University’s Top 2% Global Scientists List 2020 and 2021 due to my noteworthy research contributions in IoT, informatics, data privacy, cybersecurity, communication, and networks.

Ali Hassan Sodhro

Bio: Dr. Sodhro is currently working as a Senior Lecturer, Department of Computer Science, Kristianstad University, Kristianstad, Sweden. He worked as a Lecturer at the Department of Computer and System Science (DSV), Mid Sweden University, Östersund from Jan 2021 to Sept.2021. Before that, he worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Department of Computer Science, Electrical and Space Engineering, Luleå University of Technology, Luleå, Sweden from June 2020 to Dec 2020, and visiting Lecturer in the Applied Information Technology Department, Cognition and Communication division, Gothenburg University, Gothenburg, Sweden since Oct. 2020 to Jan 2021. Dr. Sodhro also worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Computer and Information Science Department, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden from Aug.2018 to May 2020. Before that, Dr. Sodhro worked as the Postdoctoral Researcher at DISP LAB University Lumiere Lyon2, Lyon, France under Erasmus Mundu’s SMARTLINK Project from Aug.2017 to July 2017.

He obtained his PhD in Computer Applications Technology from Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (SIAT, CAS), Shenzhen, China, and University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS), Beijing China in May 2016. He received both M.E in Communication Systems and Networks, and B.E in Telecommunication from one of the leading Engineering University of named, Mehran University of Engineering and Technology, Jamshoro Sindh Pakistan in 2011 and 2008, respectively. He is serving as an Associate Editor of top-notch journals such as, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems (T-ITS), and IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics (TII), IET Electronics Letters, Telecommunications System Journal-Springer and so on. He is researching in AI/ML for Edge/Cloud Computing, Smart and Healthcare Internet of Things (IoT)/Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), Physical Layer Security in 5G applications, Multimedia Transmission in Healthcare Applications, Green, Sustainable, and Reliable Healthcare Systems, Body Sensor Networks, and Wireless Sensor Networks, Energy Harvesting for Healthcare Systems. Dr. Sodhro is the recipient of several research awards, i.e., CAS PIFI as a visiting scientist, Third Best Paper Award with Cash Prize & Certificate at Guangzhou Annual Report Competition at Guangzhou, China, 2015, Best Graduate Award 2016 etc. He has more than 13 years of research and teaching experience.

Muhammad Muzammal

Bio: Dr. Muhammad Muzammal is currently an Associate Professor with the Department of Computer Science, Bahria University, Islamabad, Pakistan, also a Visiting Associate Professor under CAS President’s International Fellowship Initiative (PIFI) at the Centre of Big Mobile Intelligence, Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology (SIAT), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Shenzhen, and also the Vice Director of the Guangdong Provincial Research and Development Centre of Blockchain and Distributed IoT Security, Guangdong, China. He received the bachelor’s degree from IIUI, Pakistan, in 2005, the master’s degree from FAST-NU, Pakistan, in 2007, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Leicester, U.K, in 2012. He was a Software Analyst with LMKR. He His research interests are in large scale data mining, including algorithm design and mobility data mining. Recently, he is interested in block-chain technology with a focus on decentralized systems and mining.

Keynote Speakers Bios:

Giancarlo Fortino

Bio: Giancarlo Fortino is Full Professor of Computer Engineering at the Department of Informatics, Modeling, Electronics and Systems (DIMES) of the University of Calabria (Unical), Rende (CS), Italy. He is Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Sensors Council, term 2021-23. He is co-founder and CEO of SenSysCal S.r.l., a spin-off of University of Calabria, whose mission is the development of innovative systems and services based on Internet of Things technology for health care, energy management and structural health. He is the Director of the Postgraduate School (2nd Level Italian MSc) on INTER-IoT: Integrator and Manager of IoT Systems. His research interests include wearable computing systems and body sensor networks, Internet of Things, wireless sensor networks, agent systems, agent oriented software engineering, distributed computing and networks, multimedia streaming content distribution networks, GRID/Cloud computing. He organized as chair many int’l workshops and conferences (100+), was involved in a huge number of int’l conferences/workshops (500+) as IPC member, is/was guest-editor of many special issues (60+) on Content Networks, Multimedia Systems, Agent-based Computing, Wireless Sensor Networks, Body Sensor Networks, Cloud Computing in many ISI impacted journals (e.g. IEEE Trans. on Affective Computing, IEEE Trans. on Service Computing, IEEE Trans. on Automation Science and Engineering, IEEE Trans. on Human-Machine Systems, IEEE IoT Journal, IEEE Access, INFFUS, COMNET, JNCA, FGCS, JOS, SIMPAT, MONET, CERA, CCPE, EAAI, Sensors, IJDSN, MIS, Cluster Computing, MTAP, Simulation).

Deadlines:
Workshop paper submissions due EXTENDED: 23 March 2022
Acceptance notification: 17 April 2022
Final paper submission due: 1 May 2022

To submit a paper to this workshop, please visit: https://vtc2022s-rr-wks.trackchair.com/track/2038

W2: 1st IEEE Workshop on Sustainable and Intelligent Green Internet of Things for 6G and Beyond

Co-chair: Muhammad Ali Jamshed, University of Glasgow, UK
Co-chair: Masood Ur-Rehman, University of Glasgow, UK
Co-chair: Xianfu Chen, VTT, Finland
Co-chair: Muhammad Ali Imran, University of Glasgow, UK

Keynote Speaker: Yan Zhange, University of Oslo, Norway
Keynote Speaker: Halim Yanikomeroglu, Carleton University, Canada

Abstract: 6G, is expected to satisfy unprecedented requirements in terms of throughput, latency, massive connections, etc. With the hyper-connectivity among humans and everything, we are anticipating Internet of Things (IoT) applications in various fields, including smart city, smart factory, etc. However, to facilitate these IoT applications, the issues related to the heterogeneity, application requirements, and limited resources, requires greener and more advanced hardware and software upgrades. Future IoT systems feature a larger number of devices and multi-access environments where different types of wireless spectrum, including Sub6 GHz, Millimetre-wave, and Terahertz, should be efficiently utilized. The increased in the number of IoT devices also increases the challenges in keeping a net zero carbon emission rate. A resource efficient IoT architecture should be designed to deal with the limited storage and computational capability of IoT devices. Technologies, such as intelligent reflecting surface, multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO), etc., are needed to be altered to support the challenges faced by these resource constraint IoT devices. Moreover, the network environment and system requirements change with the space and time, which require intelligent approaches. It is envisioned that the collaborative intelligence is the enabler for greener IoT systems. To enable a greener and smarter society, more research efforts should be conducted on collaborative intelligence and to incorporate new hardware upgrades for IoT systems. Therefore, this workshop aims at addressing the technical challenges for enabling collaborative intelligence and hardware upgrades for IoT systems, to support a greener and smarter society and to keep the 1.50 C goal of COP26 alive.

Co-chair Bios:

Muhammad Ali Jamshed

Bio: Muhammad Ali Jamshed received the B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from COMSATS University, Islamabad, Pakistan, in 2013 and the M.Sc. degree in Wireless communications from the Institute of Space Technology, Islamabad Pakistan, in 2016, and a Ph.D. degree from the University of Surrey, Guildford, U.K, in 2021. He is endorsed by Royal Academy of Engineering under exceptional talent category. He was nominated for Departmental Prize for Excellence in Research in 2019 at the University of Surrey. He served briefly as Wireless Research Engineer at BriteYellow Ltd, UK, and then moved to James Watt School of Engineering, University of Glasgow, as a Post-Doctoral Research Assistant. He has contributed to a patent (under review) and authored/co-authored 2 book chapters and more than 27 technical articles in leading journals and peer reviewed conferences. His main research interests include EMF exposure reduction, low SAR antennas for mobile handsets, machine learning for wireless communication, Backscatter communication, and wireless sensor networks. He is serving as a Reviewer for IEEE Wireless Communication Letter. Moreover, he served as a Reviewer, TPC, and the Session Chair, at many well-known conferences, i.e., ICC, WCNC, VTC, GlobeCom etc., and other scientific workshops.

Masood Ur-Rehman

Bio: Masood Ur Rehman (S’06–M’10–SM’16) received the B.Sc. degree in electronics and telecommunication engineering from University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore, Pakistan in 2004 and the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electronic engineering from Queen Mary University of London, London, UK, in 2006 and 2010, respectively. He worked at Queen Mary University of London as a postdoctoral research assistant till 2012 before joining the Centre for Wireless Research at University of Bedfordshire as a Lecturer. He served briefly at the University of Essex and then moved to the James Watt School of Engineering at University of Glasgow in the capacity of an Assistant Professor in 2019. His research interests include compact antenna design, radiowave propagation and channel characterization, satellite navigation system antennas in cluttered environment, electromagnetic wave interaction with human body, body-centric wireless networks and sensors, remote health care technology, mmWave and nano communications for body-centric networks and D2D/H2H communications. He has worked on several projects supported by industrial partners and research councils. He is currently leading an international consortium of 5 institutes and 2 government  entities on an ICRG project to devise wireless sensor-based solutions for combating deforestation. He has contributed to a patent and authored/co-authored 4 books, 8 book chapters and more than 120 technical articles (with an h-index of 21) in leading journals and peer reviewed conferences. Dr. Ur Rehman is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (UK), a member of the IET and part of the technical program committees and organizing committees of several international conferences, workshops, and special sessions. He is a committee member of IEEE APS/SC WG P145 and Pearson’s focus group on formative assessment. He is acting as an editor of PeerJ Computer Science, associate editor of IEEE Access, IET Electronics Letters and Microwave and Optical Technology Letters, topic editor for MDPI Sensors, editorial advisor to CambridgeScholars Publishing, and lead guest editor of numerous special issues of renowned journals. He is vice-chair of IEEE AP/MTT Scotland joint chapter and acted as TPC chair for UCET2020 and BodyNets2021 conferences. He also serves as a reviewer for EPSRC and international funding bodies, book publishers, IEEE conferences and leading journals.

Xianfu Chen

Bio: Xianfu Chen received his Ph.D. degree with honours in signal and information processing from Zhejiang University, China, in 2012. He is currently a senior scientist with the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. His research interests cover various aspects of wireless communications and networking, with emphasis on human-level and artificial intelligence for resource awareness in next generation communication networks.

Muhammad Ali Imran

Bio: Professor Muhammad Ali Imran (M’03, SM’12) received his M.Sc. (Distinction) and Ph.D. degrees from Imperial College London, UK, in 2002 and 2007, respectively. He is a Professor in Communication Systems in University of Glasgow, Dean University of Glasgow UESTC, Head of Communications Sensing and Imaging (CSI) research group and Director of Glasgow UESTC Centre of Educational Development and Innovation. He is an affiliate Professor at the University of Oklahoma, USA; Adjunct Research Professor AIRC, Ajman University UAE and a visiting Professor at 5G Innovation centre, University of Surrey, UK.

Deadlines:
Workshop paper submissions due EXTENDED: 23 March 2022
Acceptance notification: 17 April 2022
Final paper submission due: 1 May 2022

To submit a paper to this workshop, please visit: https://vtc2022s-rr-wks.trackchair.com/track/2037

W1: 1st IEEE International Workshop on Artificial Intelligence Enabled Autonomous Networks and Systems (IWAANETS 2022)

Co-chair: Jyri Hämäläinen, Aalto University, Finland
Co-chair: Raquel Barco, University of Malaga, Spain
Co-chair: Furqan Ahmed, Elisa Corporation, Finland
Co-chair: Muhammad Zeeshan Asghar, Aalto University, Finland

Keynote Speaker: Mehdi Bennis, University of Oulu, Finland
Keynote Speaker: Mérouane Debbah, Centralesupelec, France & Technology Innovation Institute,
UAE

Abstract: In recent years, mobile network operators have witnessed a phenomenal increase
in data consumption fueled by growing number of connected mobile devices, widespread popularity of Internet based mobile apps, and pervasive online services in different areas, ranging from business, entertainment, health, finance, to home and industrial automation. In order to meet the traffic demands while keeping the costs low, network operators need intelligent automation that not only optimizes the use of resources but also ensures promised quality of services and seamless connectivity to users at all times. Emerging challenges include increased network complexity, high degree of network density and heterogeneity, varying user demands in terms of data rates, reliability, and latency, and a wide range of dynamically changing mobility scenarios. Moreover, this trend is likely to continue in the future, especially for 6G and beyond, leading to further challenges not only in planning and roll-out, but also in configuring, operating, and optimizing mobile networks in a dynamic manner. In order to meet such challenges, intelligent network control coupled with fine-grained automation capabilities are needed. Due to advances in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), especially in machine learning (ML), in conjunction with the availability of cloud technologies and big-data processing tools, the concept of AI enabled autonomous networks is emerging as a viable approach for mobile network optimization. In particular, the massive amounts of data available to mobile operators offers an invaluable opportunity to develop intelligent data driven automation use-cases beyond standard self-organizing network paradigm. Application of AI/ML techniques on data aggregated from different sources available to network operators can lead to important insights into network performance and customer experience, not only useful for automated network optimization and energy efficient operation, but also for pro-active detection of anomalies in key performance indicators and network alarms, thereby complementing classic network operation and maintenance solutions with AI/ML empowered intelligent networking optimization and monitoring tools.

This workshop focuses on both theoretical aspects of AI/ML in wireless networks and emerging practical applications in autonomous and self-organizing mobile networks. Data-driven optimization algorithms and machine learning based intelligent network automation for mobile networks are particularly in scope. The aim is to bring together academic researchers, industry practitioners, and research and development community in general, to discuss relevant challenges, recent advances in the field of AI/ML, and the capabilities of emerging solutions. We invite submission of original work and unpublished contributions on related topics, which include but are not limited to the following:

• Big-data enabled intelligent self-organizing networks
• Deep and reinforcement learning for communications systems
• Federated learning for network automation algorithms
• Graph machine learning for large scale wireless networks
• Machine learning for automated anomaly detection systems
• Automated root-cause analysis and self-healing algorithms
• Data driven approaches for energy efficient networks
• Intelligent algorithms for ultra-reliable and low latency communications
• Key performance indicators (KPI) forecasting and alarm prediction
• Advanced algorithms for traffic forecasting and user behaviour prediction
• Artificial intelligence enabled zero touch network and service management
• Algorithms for quantum computing enabled mobile network automation
• Intelligent energy saving and new paradigms for green communications
• Distributed machine learning approaches for wireless systems
• Data analytics for large-scale network performance analysis
• Data driven intelligent radio resource management algorithms

Keynote Speakers:

Mehdi Bennis

Bio: Dr Mehdi Bennis is a full (tenured) Professor at the Centre for Wireless Communications, University of Oulu, Finland, Academy of Finland Research Fellow and head of the intelligent connectivity and networks/systems group (ICON). His main research interests are in radio resource management, heterogeneous networks, game theory and distributed machine learning in 5G networks and beyond. He has published more than 200 research papers in international conferences, journals and book chapters. He has been the recipient of several prestigious awards including the 2015 Fred W. Ellersick Prize from the IEEE Communications Society, the 2016 Best Tutorial Prize from the IEEE Communications Society, the 2017 EURASIP Best paper Award for the Journal of Wireless Communications and Networks, the all-University of Oulu award for research, the 2019 IEEE ComSoc Radio Communications Committee Early Achievement Award and the 2020 Clarviate Highly Cited Researcher by the Web of Science. Dr Bennis is an editor of IEEE TCOM and Specialty Chief Editor for Data Science for Communications in the Frontiers in Communications and Networks journal. Dr Bennis is an IEEE Fellow.

Mérouane Debbah

Bio: Mérouane Debbah is Chief Researcher at the Technology Innovation Institute in Abu Dhabi. He is an Adjunct Professor with the Department of Machine Learning at the Mohamed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence. He received the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the Ecole Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay, France. He was with Motorola Labs, Saclay, France, from 1999 to 2002, and also with the Vienna Research Center for Telecommunications, Vienna, Austria, until 2003. From 2003 to 2007, he was an Assistant Professor with the Mobile Communications Department, Institut Eurecom, Sophia Antipolis, France. In 2007, he was appointed Full Professor at CentraleSupelec, Gif-sur-Yvette, France. From 2007 to 2014, he was the Director of the Alcatel-Lucent Chair on Flexible Radio. From 2014 to 2021, he was Vice-President of the Huawei France Research Center. He was jointly the director of the Mathematical and Algorithmic Sciences Lab as well as the director of the Lagrange Mathematical and Computing Research Center. Since 2021, he is leading the AI & Telecom Systems center at the Technology Innovation Institute. He has managed 8 EU projects and more than 24 national and international projects. His research interests lie in fundamental mathematics, algorithms, statistics, information, and communication sciences research. He is an IEEE Fellow, a WWRF Fellow, a Eurasip Fellow, an AAIA Fellow, an Institut Louis Bachelier Fellow and a Membre émérite SEE. He was a recipient of the ERC Grant MORE (Advanced Mathematical Tools for Complex Network Engineering) from 2012 to 2017. He was a recipient of the Mario Boella Award in 2005, the IEEE Glavieux Prize Award in 2011, the Qualcomm Innovation Prize Award in 2012, the 2019 IEEE Radio Communications Committee Technical Recognition Award and the 2020 SEE Blondel Medal. He received more than 20 best paper awards, among which the 2007 IEEE GLOBECOM Best Paper Award, the Wi-Opt 2009 Best Paper Award, the 2010 Newcom++ Best Paper Award, the WUN CogCom Best Paper 2012 and 2013 Award, the 2014 WCNC Best Paper Award, the 2015 ICC Best Paper Award, the 2015 IEEE Communications Society Leonard G. Abraham Prize, the 2015 IEEE Communications Society Fred W. Ellersick Prize, the 2016 IEEE Communications Society Best Tutorial Paper Award, the 2016 European Wireless Best Paper Award, the 2017 Eurasip Best Paper Award, the 2018 IEEE Marconi Prize Paper Award, the 2019 IEEE Communications Society Young Author Best Paper Award, the 2021 Eurasip Best Paper Award, the 2021 IEEE Marconi Prize Paper Award as well as the Valuetools 2007, Valuetools 2008, CrownCom 2009, Valuetools 2012, SAM 2014, and 2017 IEEE Sweden VT-COM-IT Joint Chapter best student paper awards. He is an Associate Editor-in-Chief of the journal Random Matrix: Theory and Applications. He was an Associate Area Editor and Senior Area Editor of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SIGNAL PROCESSING from 2011 to 2013 and from 2013 to 2014, respectively. From 2021 to 2022, he serves as an IEEE Signal Processing Society Distinguished Industry Speaker

Co-chair Bios:

Jyri Hämäläinen

Bio: Jyri Hämäläinen is Full Professor of Aalto University, Finland. He received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from University of Oulu, in 1992 and 1998, respectively. From 1999 until the end of 2007 he was a Senior Specialist and Program Manager in Nokia where he worked with various aspects of mobile communication systems and 3GPP standardization. Hämäläinen was nominated to professor of Aalto University in 2008 and he was tenured in 2013. His research interests cover mobile and wireless systems, special focus being in irregular, dynamic and heterogeneous networks including e.g. 5G/6G, small cells, multi-antenna transmission and reception techniques, scheduling, relays and many other topics. Hämäläinen is author or co-author of over 230 scientific publications and 37 US patents or patent applications. He is a Senior Member of IEEE and an Expert Member of the Highest Administrative Court of Finland, nominated by the President of Finland. From 2015 Hämäläinen has been serving as a Dean in the Aalto University School of Electrical Engineering.

Raquel Barco

Bio: Raquel Barco is Full Professor in Telecommunication Engineering at the University of Malaga. Before joining the university, she worked at Telefonica (Madrid, Spain) and at the European Space Agency (ESA) (Darmstadt, Germany). As researcher she is specialized in mobile communication networks, artificial intelligence and smart-cities, having led projects funded by several million euros, published more than 100 papers in high impact journals and conferences, authored 5 patents and received several research awards. In addition, currently she is Vice-President for Smart-Campus at the University of Malaga.

Furqan Ahmed

Bio: Furqan Ahmed is with mobile network automation product team at Elisa Corporation, Finland, focusing on the development and productization of advanced network optimization solutions for commercial mobile networks. He is author or a co-author of numerous peer reviewed publications in this and related areas including pioneering work on the application of quantum computing for mobile network automation. He received his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Aalto University, Espoo, Finland, in 2016. During 2016-2017, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher with the Department of Communication Systems, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden. His current research interests include artificial intelligence and machine learning for network automation, anomaly detection, intelligent green communications and networks, network optimization algorithms, complex networks, graph theory, and quantum computing.

Muhammad Zeeshan Asghar

Bio: Dr. Muhammad Zeeshan Asghar is post-doctoral researcher at the department of communication and networking, Aalto University Finland. He was a principal investigator of BusinessFinland funded project of on 5G Cognitive Self-organizing Networks (CSON) at the University of Jyväskylä during the years 2017−2019. He raised 500K euro for the commercialization of his research on 5G. The project outcome is a startup company that provides R&D support to telecom vendor and mobile network operators on AI/ML powered network automation for 5G/6G networks. Prior to this, Muhammad worked as a Research Engineer for Nokia-Siemens Networks Solutions, Finland during 2008-2014. During this work he wrote one patent that was granted in year 2016. His research interests in 5G/6G Radio Access Networks, OpenRAN Architectures, AI/ML based network automation, private 5G/6G networks and industrial IoT.  Muhammad completed his Ph.D. in Wireless Communication at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland in 2016. He has received a several awards, including Future City Challenge (Jyväskylä) Winner 2018 and conference paper award at ICEIC Barcelona 2019.

Technical Program Committee:

Adnan Shahid, Ghent University, Belgium
Alain Mourad, Interdigital, UK
Alexis Dowhuszko, Aalto University, Finland
Amin Shahraki, Fraunhofer IIS, Germany
Athul Prasad, Nokia, USA
Federica Rinaldi, University of Reggio Calabria, Italy
Jessica Moysen, Huawei Technologies, Sweden
Jos´e Mairton B. da Silva Jr., KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
Kapal Dev, Munster Technological University, Ireland
Lina Mohjazi, University of Glasgow, UK
Mario Garcia-Lozano, Universitat Polit`ecnica de Catalunya, Spain
Metin Ozturk, Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University, Turkey
Mingzhe Chen, Princeton University, USA
Muhammad Ikram Ashraf, Nokia Bell Labs, Finland
Omer Bulakci, Nokia, Germany
Osman Yilmaz, Nokia, Finland
Petteri Lunden, Elisa Corporation, Finland
Phuong Luong, ´Ecole de technologie sup´erieure, Canada
Piergiuseppe Di Marco, University of L’Aquila, Italy
Sara Modarres Razavi, Ericsson, Sweden
Suzan Bayhan, University of Twente, Netherlands
Valeria Loscri, Inria Lille-Nord Europe, France

Deadlines:
Workshop paper submissions due EXTENDED: 23 March 2022
Acceptance notification: 17 April 2022
Final paper submission due: 1 May 2022

To submit a paper to this workshop, please visit: https://vtc2022s-rr-wks.trackchair.com/track/2036