W2: 2nd Workshop on Mission Critical Communications

Co-chair: Hichan Moon, Hanyang University, South Korea
Co-chair: Dania Marabissi, University of Florence, Italy
Co-chair: Zak Kassas, Ohio State University, USA

 

Abstract: The advent of 5G and prospect for 6G have paved the way for new applications in mission critical communications including disaster monitoring, train/traffic controls and public safety. Mission critical communication provides reliable communication even in extreme environments. High accuracy positioning for a vehicle or a mobile phone has extended its applications to such as unmanned vehicles/drones, emergency rescue, and navigation in GPS-denied areas like tunnels, underground motorways and parking lots. The security in mission critical communications is highly required, since they are used for many businesses as well as public safety responders and organizations. It greatly increases the reliability of communications from several attacks.

The demand to support critical increases the requirements for highly reliable, secure and low latency communications. These requirements generate great challenges in several areas in communications systems including network architecture, air protocol, security and positioning systems. This Workshop focuses on several technologies related with mission critical communications to satisfy these challenges.

 

Program:

Session (Morning)

Keynote 1: The advent of Broadband Mission Critical Communications (by Federico Frosali, Leonardo Company, Italy)

Paper presentations

1. Beamforming Design for Double-RIS Assisted UAV Communication with Limited Feedback in Disaster Scenarios, Sihui Shang, shangsh_774@stu.xjtu.edu.cn, , [School of Information and Communication Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, China; ]|Dongyang Xu, xudongyang@xjtu.edu.cn, , [School of Information and Communication Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, China; ]
2. Rank and Condition Number Analysis for UAV MIMO Channels Using Ray Tracing, Donggu Lee, dlee42@ncsu.edu, 0000-0002-1869-6072, [Electrical and Computer Engineering, North Carolina State University, United States; ]|Ismail Guvenc, iguvenc@ncsu.edu, , [Electrical and Computer Engineering, North Carolina State University, United States; ]
3. Fuzzy Secret Key Generation based on Phase Extraction and Constellation Rotation, Ning Shen, sn872416614@stu.xjtu.edu.cn, , [School of Information and Communications Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, China; ]|Qinghe Du, duqinghe@mail.xjtu.edu.cn, , [School of Information and Communications Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, China; ]|Lei Lu, lu.lei@xjtu.edu.cn, , [School of Information and Communications Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, China; ]|Shijiao Zhao, zhshijiao@xjtu.edu.cn, , [School of Information and Communications Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, China; ]
4. MIMO-aided Irregular Repetition Schemes for Mission Critical Communications (Linlin Zhao, Xuefen Chi, Wanting Yang – Jilin University, China, Shaodan Ma, University of Macau, China; Guanghua Yang, Jinan University, China)
5. Novel Preamble for Accurate Synchronization of Frequency Hopped OFDM Links (Vignesh Ramachandran, Giridhar Krishnamurthy – Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India)

Session (Afternoon)

Keynote 2: LOCALIZATION-OF-THINGS: FROM FOUNDATION TO OPERATION TOWARD 6G ECOSYSTEM (by Prof. Moe Win, MIT, USA)

Paper Presentations

1. MARL-based Random Access Scheme for Delay-constrained umMTC in 6G (Jiseung Youn, Joohan park, Soojyeong Park, Seyoung Ahn, Abdul Rahim Ansari, Sunghyun Cho – Hanyang university, South Korea;
2. Neural Network Based Node Prioritization for Efficient Localization Carlos A. Gomez-Vega, cgomez@ieee.org, , [Department of Engineering and CNIT, University of Ferrara, Italy; ]|Moe Z. Win, moewin@mit.edu, , [Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States; ]|Andrea Conti, a.conti@ieee.org, , [Department of Engineering and CNIT, University of Ferrara, Italy; ]
3. Performance Comparison of Numerical Optimization Algorithms for RSS-TOA-Based Target Localization Jiwon Seo, jiwon.seo@yonsei.ac.kr, , [School of Integrated Technology, Yonsei University, South Korea; ]|Halim Lee, halim.lee@yonsei.ac.kr, , [School of Integrated Technology, Yonsei University, South Korea; ]
4. Deployment of a UAV-Based Fire Detection System Rushiv Arora, rrarora@cs.umass.edu, , [Computer Science, University of Massachusetts Amherst, United States; ]|Mohammadjavad Khosravi, mkhosravi@umass.edu, , [Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Massachusetts Amherst, United States; ]|Saeede Enayati, senayati@umass.edu, , [Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Massachusetts Amherst, United States; ]|Hossein Pishro-Nik, pishro@ecs.umass.edu, , [Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Massachusetts Amherst, United States; ]
5. Optimizing Tethered UAV Deployment for On-Demand Connectivity in Disaster Scenarios Balaji Kirubakaran, balaji.kirubakaran@vut.cz, 0000-0002-2234-140X, [1. FEKT , 2. Unit of Electrical Engineering, 1. Brno University of Technology (Czech Republic), 2. Tampere University (Finland), Czech Republic; ]|Jiri Hosek, hosek@vut.cz, 0000-0002-8382-9185, [1. FEKT, 2. Unit of Electrical Engineering, 1. Brno University of Technology (Czech Republic), 2. Tampere University (Finland), Czech Republic; ]
6. Experimental Quality Assessment of Cellular Networks and their Utilization for UAV Services Radek Mozny, radek.mozny@vut.cz, , [Department of Telecommunications, Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic; ]|Pavel Masek, masekpavel@vut.cz, 0000-0003-2976-6547, [Department of Telecommunications, Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic; ]|Martin Stusek, martin.stusek@vut.cz, 0000-0001-9030-1322, [Department of Telecommunications, Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic; ]|Karol Molnar, karol.molnar@honeywell.com, , [Aerospace, Honeywell, Czech Republic; ]|Marketa Palenska, marketa.salomounova@honeywell.com, , [Aerospace, Honeywell, Czech Republic; ]|Dmitri Moltchanov, dmitri.moltchanov@tuni.fi, , [Unit of Electrical Engineering, Tampere University, Finland; ]|Jiri Hosek, hosek@vut.cz, 0000-0002-8382-9185, [Department of Telecommunications, Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic; ]

 

Keynotes:

Keynote 1: The advent of Broadband Mission Critical Communications (by Federico Frosali, Leonardo Company, Italy)

What makes communication technology mission critical? Reliability. Availability. Redundancy. Security. Communications simply cannot fail when lives are at stake and every second counts.

While traditional narrow-band Land Mobile Radio (LMR) technologies such as TETRA and P25 systems have been capable of meeting mission critical requirements for voice (PTT) and short data services for a long time they are now unable to address the fast-evolving needs of current Public safety forces in terms of support for multimedia capabilities and interoperability across diverse public safety organizations. As a result, PS agencies around the world have turned their attention to mobile broadband technologies such as 4G and 5G for the future of critical communications

Since 2016 the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has been working to define, develop, and maintain the technical specifications for Mission Critical Services, or MCX, over broadband networks: Mission Critical Push-To-Talk (MCPTT), Mission Critical Data (MCData), and Mission Critical Video (MCVideo) services.

The first global MCPTT standard was published in 2016 (Rel-13) and has continued to evolve with 3GPP, through service enhancements in Releases 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18. The success of these 3GPP-based MCX services standards have formed the basis for global commercial rollouts of nationwide broadband critical communication deployments in leading markets such as Korea, the United States and UK.

Despite the fact that the adoption of MCX 3GPP standards presents an incredible opportunity for PS users numerous challenges must be carefully considered to realize the full potential of this technology: complexity of the technology requires extensive planning and testing across systems and agencies; significant investment in infrastructure are required to ensure adequate service quality and availability, even when leveraging on existing Mobile network operators’ systems; ensuring the integrity, authentication and confidentiality of communication within the MCX network requires significant attention, and the adoption of MCX 3GPP standards must meet stringent security standards to provide PSCs with reliable tools to support their missions.

Notwithstanding the challenges, the adoption of MCX 3GPP standards presents numerous opportunities that can transform public safety networks. For these reasons most countries across EU and the world are now planning to migrate their nationwide critical communication deployments to broadband MCX. MCX supports faster, more-responsive communication with emergency personnel, aiding their situational awareness and ability to deescalate a situation. The computerized system can also aggregate and analyze data to monitor traffic patterns and project potential trouble spots proactively. Mobile first responders equipped with smartphones or tablets can easily access critical information such as routing and tracking data, vital signs, and video feeds. The adoption of MCX 3GPP standards also provides more significant opportunities for integrated collaboration between emergency response agencies to ensure the most effective and efficient response to emergencies.

About the speaker

Federico Frosali (male) – Broadband Product Manager at Leonardo – Cyber & Security Solutions Division. With a degree in Electronic Engineering (University of Florence) and a Master of Business Administration (SDA Bocconi). Formerly researcher at Telecom Italian Laboratories (CSELT) in the field of Cyber security; later joined Leonardo covering different positions as System Engineer in the field of tactical networks and PPDR communications with the role of Head of System Specifications. His current position is Product Manager for professional Broadband Communication solutions, with specific focus on Leonardo MCX solution. He is co-author of 6 patents in the field of ICT, Security and Sensor Networks, and a number of publications in the field of communications.

 

Keynote 2: LOCALIZATION-OF-THINGS: FROM FOUNDATION TO OPERATION TOWARD 6G ECOSYSTEM (by Prof. Moe Win, MIT, USA)

Abstract

The availability of real-time and high-accuracy location awareness is essential for current and future wireless applications, particularly those involving Internet-of-Things and 5G networks toward 6G wireless ecosystems. The coming years will see the emergence of network localization and navigation in challenging environments with sub-meter accuracy, low latency, and minimal infrastructure requirements as the wireless ecosystem evolves beyond 5G networks. This will call for the Localization-of-Things (LoT), a new paradigm referring to locating, tracking, and navigating collaborative and non-collaborative nodes (e.g., sensors, vehicles, and objects). Our work relying on statistical inference, network optimization, and communication theory approaches LoT from different perspectives. This talk will give an overview of LoT, examining our recent research results in this exciting new field, from the perspectives of theoretical framework, cooperative algorithms, network operations, and network experimentation. We will also present LoT enablers, including 5G New Radio and reconfigurable intelligent surfaces, which promise to provide dramatic gains in terms of localization accuracy and system robustness in next generation wireless ecosystems.

About the Speaker

Moe Win (MIT) — Moe Win is a Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the founding director of the Wireless Information and Network Sciences Laboratory. Prior to joining MIT, he was with AT&T Research Laboratories and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. His research encompasses theoretical foundation, algorithm design, and network experimentation for a broad range of real-world problems. His current research topics include network localization and navigation, network interference exploitation, and quantum information science. Professor Win has served the IEEE Communications Society as an elected Member-at-Large on the Board of Governors, as elected Chair of the Radio Communications Committee, and as an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer. He was honored with two IEEE Technical Field Awards: the IEEE Kiyo Tomiyasu Award and the IEEE Eric E. Sumner Award. His publications, co-authored with students and colleagues, have received several awards. Other recognitions include the MIT Everett Moore Baker Award, the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society James Evans Avant Garde Award, the IEEE Communications Society Edwin H. Armstrong Achievement Award, the Cristoforo Colombo International Prize for Communications, the Copernicus Fellowship and the Laurea Honoris Causa from the Università degli Studi di Ferrara, and the U.S. Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. Professor Win is elected Fellow of the AAAS, the EURASIP, the IEEE, and the IET. He is an ISI Highly Cited Researcher.

Co-chair Bios:

Hichan Moon:

Hichan Moon is a professor in the Department of Electronic Engineering, Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in electronics engineering from Seoul National University (Summa Cum Laude), Seoul, Korea and his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA. Before joining Hanyang University, he worked at Samsung Electronics Co., Korea. In Samsung, he designed mobile station modems for cdma2000, W-CDMA, and LTE. He also worked for 3GPP standardization. He is the project initiative of HELPS and a founder of Infoseize Systems. His research interests include accurate positioning, physical layer security, random access and next generation wireless systems. He is the chair of Ad Hoc Committee on Mission Critical Communications, IEEE Vehicular Technology Society.

Dania Marabissi:

Dania Marabissi (IEEE SM’13) is Associated Professor at the University of Florence.
She received her M.S. degree in Telecommunication Engineering and her Ph.D. in Computer Engineering and Telecommunications, from the University of Florence. Since 2000 she works at the Department of Information Engineering, University of Florence. Her research activity concerns mainly with new generation wireless communication systems, particularly with reference to physical and access layers issues.

She participated to several national and international funded projects and is responsible of the scientific activities of the TICom (Technologies for Information and Communication) consortium, born between the University of Florence and Leonardo Company S.p.A., with the aim to promote collaboration and technological transfer among University and Industry. She is author of more than 120 publications on peer-reviewed journals, international conference proceedings and book chapters and owner of two European Patents. She is/was Associated Editor for several journals among which IEEE Trans. on Vehicular Technology and IEEE Trans. on Communications, moreover she has been involved in the organization of several international conferences as symposium/workshop chair.

Zak Kassas:

 

Deadlines:
Workshop paper submissions due Extended: 9 March 2023
Acceptance notification: 16 April 2023
Final paper submission due: 30 April 2023

To submit a paper to this workshop, please visit: https://vtc2023s-rr-wks.trackchair.com/track/2159