SPECIAL SESSIONS

SCOPE

Fifth Generation (5G) wireless systems will be radically different from previous generations as it will provide ultra-reliable and low latency communications, support massive machine type communications, and introduce enhanced mobile broadband. These three goals stem from the diverse use cases and application domains envisioned for 5G, which include the smart grids, the Internet of Things (IoT), and connected vehicles, just to name a few.

To meet these goals, 5G should deliver significantly high peak data rates, spectrum efficiency, area traffic capacity, connection density, network energy efficiency, as well as improved user experience and significantly reduced latency. Making these deliverables will need 5G to leverage big data analytics to proactively allocate network resources. More specifically, the aggregated data by the different 5G devices and systems can be utilized, using elegant big data analytics techniques, in order to provide descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive functionalities. The main challenge of big data analytics for 5G is to come with algorithms to make these functionalities aligned together to maximize the 5G system performance, enable the consideration of other important objectives such as 5G Infrastructure planning, QoS, and operational management which provides insights for future improved design.

SPECIAL-SESSION ORGANIZERS AND CO-CHAIRS

DATE, TIME, AND MEETING ROOM

SP-01: Big Data-Enabled 5G Systems

SCOPE

Driven by several interdependent trends, like sustainable development, mobility and higher quality of life, smart city applications are enabled by the miniaturization of devices, the Internet of Things (IoT), big data, and artificial intelligent (AI). Edge computing (EC) or similarly fog computing (FC), and software-defined networking (SDN) are two key pillars that boost the scalability and flexibility of smart city infrastructures, thereby enabling unprecedented capabilities of smart city applications and, hence, meeting sustainable development goals.

SPECIAL-SESSION ORGANIZERS AND CO-CHAIRS

DATE, TIME, AND MEETING ROOM

SP-02 Software-Defined Edge Computing in Smart Cities

SCOPE

Recently, there has been increasing interest and rapid growth in the use of millimeter-wave (mm-wave) antennas and devices for future mm-wave mobile communications in fifth generation (5G) cellular networks. Using 5G technologies, we will achieve superior performances over today’s wireless systems both in terms of bandwidth and data-transfer rates.

Despite the benefits, the designers and researchers in the antenna and propagation fields have many challenges in order to make mm-wave practically feasible. At high frequencies, the design of the radiated elements needs to provide characteristics such as: low cost, intelligent and universally applicable and compatible with various mobile terminals and platforms. These challenges need to be addressed adequately. To meet these challenges, antennas for 5G wireless communication networks require to exhibit the following performances: (a) wide pass-band (b) low insertion loss, (c) high gain, (d) beam forming capability and (d) re-configurability to enhance the capabilities of data transport, transmission, and reception between end users and the core network. A promising way to provide these characteristics is to use: mm-wave beamforming antenna arrays, meta-materials based antennas, mm-Wave massive MIMO systems, advanced antennas using electromagnetic periodic structures (FSS, EBG, and AMC). These methodologies provide a basis for developing, designing, analysis, dimensioning, and optimization of transmitting and receiving antennas for 5G wireless networks. We expect to explore these key technologies along with the prospects and challenges of future 5G communication networks.

The aim of this special issue is to explore new ideas and developments to address these challenging problems and to encourage researchers to present original and recent work on advanced antennas for 5G wireless communication systems.

SPECIAL-SESSION ORGANIZERS AND CO-CHAIRS

DATE, TIME, AND MEETING ROOM

SP3/S01: Advanced Antennas for 5G Wireless Communications Networks I

SP3/S02: Advanced Antennas for 5G Wireless Communications Networks II

SCOPE

The emerging Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm aims to bring people, data, processes, and things together to fulfill the needs of our everyday lives. The market place for IoT is expected to grow rapidly due to significant increase in the number of smart devices, M2M connections, and smart wearables, and it has a wide range of application areas including eHealthcare, smart grids, smart home, smart cities, connected car and industrial automation. It is expected that the upcoming 5G technologies will be the backbone of IoT and will support IoT systems by expanding the coverage, by reducing the closed-loop latency and by enhancing the data rate. However, there are several challenges to be addressed to provide reliable and secure connections to the massive number of resource-constrained IoT devices.

Due to several unique features and diverse requirements of IoT systems such as low latency, low cost, low energy consumption, high failure rate and data transiency, the conventional communication protocols may not be suitable for these systems. In this regard, it is crucial to design resource-efficient, reliable and secure wireless communication technologies by considering various constraints imposed by heterogeneous IoT systems. Moreover, how to handle the massive unstructured/semi-structured data generated by resource-constrained devices through the resource-limited infrastructure is another important issue to be addressed. In this context, the recent trend is to utilize the emerging cloud computing platform to support IoT systems due to its enormous storage and processing capabilities. However, this convergence of IoT and cloud computing requires the need of designing efficient wireless communication technologies, and various aspects such as latency, energy efficiency, computational efficiency, system reliability and security need to be investigated.

SPECIAL-SESSION ORGANIZERS AND CO-CHAIRS

DATE, TIME, AND MEETING ROOM

SP4/S01: Resource-Efficient, Reliable, and Secure IoT in the 5G Era I

SP4/S02: Resource-Efficient, Reliable, and Secure IoT in the 5G Era II

SCOPE

The automotive industries, which have been undergoing dramatic technological transformations, are the potential use cases of the 5G networks. More and more vehicles will be connected to the Internet and with each other using wireless technologies. Toward this end, many standardization activities to support these use cases are underway including the fifth-generation automotive association (5GAA) where its objective is to address the society’s connected mobility needs and applications, such as autonomous driving, ubiquitous access to services, and integration into the smart city and intelligent transportation system. Wireless technologies to support the connected vehicles must deal with the extremely dynamic propagation environment. Furthermore, as connected vehicles are likely utilized for emergency and mission critical applications, they require extremely low latency. For these reasons, several challenges must be addressed to realize the well-integrated, secured and cost-effective vehicular communication systems. The situation is even be more challenging for V2X systems, which embraces V2V, V2I, VANET etc., as the nodes of these systems require tight collaboration with one another and they can be highly mobile.

Future 5G wireless systems, which utilize both microwave and millimeter wave (mmWave), are anticipated to achieve a 1000X capacity gain compared to current wireless radios. And it is expected that 5G wireless technologies will enable cost-effective V2X systems. The goal of this special session is to gather researchers, academia, industry and regulators to present and discuss their research findings highlighting the opportunities, challenges, and potentials of 5G wireless systems for enabling future connected vehicles.

SPECIAL-SESSION ORGANIZERS AND CO-CHAIRS

DATE, TIME, AND MEETING ROOM

SP5/S01: 5G Wireless Technologies for V2X I

SP5/S02: 5G Wireless Technologies for V2X II

SCOPE

Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness (PSEP) agencies are responsible for creating safe and stable environments, and for executing Mission-Critical (MC) operations, where life may be at risk, such as responding to disastrous situations that are caused by nature or by human activities or keeping peace in war-zones. The PSEP services include law enforcement, police operations, firefighting, emergency medical response, military activities, border security, and disaster recovery.

One of the key elements for successful PSEP operations is to have efficient communication channels and data exchange between the units dealing with the situations. Telecommunication networks used for PSEP operations are usually referred to as Mission-Critical Networks (MCNs).

Despite witnessing big advancements in wireless communication technologies, current MCNs are still using less sophisticated legacy communication systems. This is due to the rigorous and strict requirements for MCNs in terms of security, throughput, reliability and latency.

This special session would highlight the requirements of MCNs, discuss the current research efforts in this field and offer an opportunity for synergy and collaboration between academia, industry and government agencies to discuss and develop feasible solutions that are tailored to fit MCNs needs.

SPECIAL-SESSION ORGANIZERS AND CO-CHAIRS

DATE, TIME, AND MEETING ROOM

SP6/S01: Mission-Critical Communications I

SP6/S02: Mission-Critical Communications II