W1: 2nd Workshop on Real-Time Communications toward 6G (WRTC)

Co-Organizer: Tianhao Liang, Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen, China
Co-Organizer: Jie Cao, Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen, China
Co-Organizer: Nikolaos Pappas, Linköping University, Sweden
Co-Organizer: Zhongxiang Wei, Tongji University, China

Abstract: The Internet of Things (IoT) and pervasive fifth-generation (5G) and beyond communications, linked with significant computational capabilities, are posed to revolutionize almost every aspect of our daily life, including products such as smartphones and intelligent vehicles and crucial tasks such as precision agriculture and environmental monitoring. As a new paradigm shift towards sixth generation (6G) communication systems, Real-time communications (RTC) will enable systems to be designed to generate, process and transmit only a small fraction of the most important information, thereby consuming less energy and channel resources without compromising system efficiency. In this context, the Age of Information (AoI) is now present in several 3GPP standardization proposals as a KPI for 6G systems, and the focus on machine-to-machine communications will only increase its relevance. However, most of the research on AoI and its variants has been purely theoretical: For the concept to be fully integrated into the emerging IoT, research needs to consider practical aspects tied to energy consumption, short packet decoding, and protocol design.

The research community has shown interest in these challenges. However, they have lacked a venue, as more theoretical papers have often been preferred: our workshop aims at bridging the gap between the more theoretical research of the past few years and actual implementation by fostering discussion and welcoming case studies and practical measurements as well as analytical work, attracting the AoI, real-time communication and IoT communities and, hopefully, a large number of attendees from both academia and the industry.

Co-Organizer Bios:

Tianhao Liang

Tianhao Liang (Member, IEEE) received the Ph.D. degree in information and communication engineering from the Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen, China, in 2024. From March 2023.03 to July 2023, he was a visiting Ph.D in the Department of Electronic Engineering and Beijing National Research Center for Information Science and Technology, Tsinghua University. He is currently a Research Fellow of the Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen, China. His main research interests include communication and control co-design, integration of localization and communications, resource optimization. As a team leader, Mr. Liang received the Honorary Mention in the 2022 IEEE ComSoc Student Competition. He serves as a reviewer and TPC member of several conferences, such as Globecom, ICC, WCNC, VTC, ACC and PIMRC.

 

Jie Cao

Jie Cao (Member, IEEE) received the Ph.D. degree from the Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen, China, in 2022. He was a Research Assistant and subsequently a Research Scientist of the Institute for Infocomm Research, Agency for Science, Technology, and Research (A*STAR), Singapore from 2021-2023. He is currently an Assistant Professor of the Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen, China. He has authored more than 20 peer-reviewed publications and served as a Co-chair for IEEE ICC Workshop and IEEE VTC Spring Workshop. His research interests include URLLC, short packet communication, age of information and task-oriented communication.

 

Nikolaos Pappas

Nikolaos Pappas (Senior Member, IEEE) is an Associate Professor with the Department of Computer and Information Science, Linköping University, Sweden. He received the Ph.D. degree in
computer science from the University of Crete, Greece, in 2012. He was a Visiting Scholar with the Institute of Systems Research, University of Maryland at College Park, College Park, MD, USA. His
main research interests include the field of wireless communication networks with emphasis on the semantics-aware communications, energy harvesting networks, network-level cooperation, age of
information, and stochastic geometry. From 2013 to 2018, he was an Editor of the IEEE Communications Letters. He was a guest editor for the IEEE Internet of Things Journal on ‘‘Age of Information and Data Semantics for Sensing, Communication and Control Co-Design in IoT”. He is currently an Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Communications, the IEEE/KICS Journal of Communication and Networks, the IEEE Open Journal of Communications Society, and Expert editor for invited papers of the IEEE Communications Letters. He has served as the Symposium Co-Chair of the IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC) and the IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC) in 2022.

 

Zhongxiang Wei

Zhongxiang Wei (Member, IEEE) received the Ph.D. degree in electrical and electronics engineering from the University of Liverpool, Liverpool, U.K., in 2017. From March 2016 to March 2017, he was with the Institution for Infocomm Research, Agency for Science, Technology and Research, Singapore, as a Research Assistant. From March 2018 to March 2021, he was with the Department of Electrical and electronics Engineering, University College London, as a research associate. He is currently an associate professor at Tongji University, China. He has authored and co-authored more than 50 papers published on top-tier journals and international conferences. His research interests include anonymous communications, constructive interference design, and millimeter-wave communications. He has acted as a TPC member or the Session Chair of various international conferences. He was a recipient of an Exemplary Reviewer of the IEEE TWC in 2016, the Outstanding Self-Financed Students Abroad in 2018, and the A*STAR Research Attachment Programme (ARAP) in 2016.