Panel: June 7, 2023, Wednesday, 14:15-15:00

The Trends towards Communication in the 2030s and Beyond

Participants: Prof. Ness Shroff, Prof. Emina Soljanin, and Prof. Aydın Sezgin

Organizers: Prof. Liljana Gavrilovska and Prof. Wolfgang Gerstacker

Abstract

In the panel, a vision for communications and networking in the 2030s and beyond will be developed considering the following key trends. 5G and Beyond: By 2030, 5G is expected to be widely deployed and adopted globally. Beyond 5G, technologies such as 6G will emerge, offering even greater connectivity, massive data transfer rates, and seamless integration with various devices, based on novel technologies such as THz and free-space optical communications. Internet of Things (IoT): The IoT with expected billions of interconnected devices communicating with each other will facilitate smart homes, wearable devices, autonomous vehicles, and industrial automation, finally resulting in the Internet of Everything. Artificial Intelligence (AI) Integration: AI will be employed to automatically optimize network performance (zero-touch networks), automate tasks, enhance security, and personalize user experiences. AI-powered voice assistants and chatbots will become more advanced and integrated into various communication platforms. Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR): AR and VR technologies including hologram communications and mulsemedia will enable immersive virtual meetings, remote collaboration, enhanced gaming experiences, and eventually the metaverse. Enhanced Data Privacy and Security: Innovations such as blockchain and secure encryption protocols including physical layer security will protect sensitive information and ensure secure communication. Edge Computing: The need for real-time data processing among connected devices will drive the growth of edge computing, bringing computational power closer to the users and reducing latency. Green and Sustainable Networking: Energy efficiency and environmentally friendly practices will be emphasized, involving enewable energy sources, energy harvesting and wireless power transfer.

Participants

Ness B. Shroff

Ness B. Shroff


Ohio Eminent Scholar in Networking and Communications
Chaired Professor of ECE and CSE
The Ohio State University
Columbus, Ohio, USA

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Ness B. Shroff received his Ph.D. degree from Columbia University, NY in 1994 and joined Purdue university immediately thereafter as an Assistant Professor. At Purdue, he became Professor of the school of Electrical and Computer Engineering and director of CWSA in 2004, a university-wide center on wireless systems and applications. In July 2007, he joined the ECE and CSE departments at The Ohio State University, where he holds the Ohio Eminent Scholar Chaired Professorship of Networking and Communications. From 2009-2012, he also served as a Guest Chaired professor of Wireless Communications at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, and an Honorary Guest Professor at Shanghai Jiatong University. He currently holds a visiting position at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. He currently serves as the Principal Investigator and Institute Director of the NSF AI Institute on Future Edge Networks and Distributed Intelligence (ai-edge.osu.edu).

Dr. Shroff’s research focuses on fundamental problems in machine learning, network optimization, stochastic control, and algorithmic design. His work contributes to the design, control, performance, pricing, and security of complex systems such as communication networks, computing, storage and cloud based systems, social networks, and recommendation systems.

He served as the Editor in Chief of the IEEE/ACM Trans. on Networking, and currently serves as the Steering Committee Chair of ACM Mobihoc. He has also been the technical program chair of a number of IEEE and ACM conferences. He has given several keynote addresses at major conferences and has also organized a number of workshops for the National Science Foundation.

Dr. Shroff is a Fellow of the IEEE, and a National Science Foundation CAREER awardee. His papers have received numerous awards at top-tier venues. For example, he received the best paper award at IEEE INFOCOM 2006, IEEE INFOCOM 2008, and IEEE INFOCOM 2016, the best paper of the year in the journal of Communication and Networking (2005) and in Computer Networks (2003). He also received runner-up awards at IEEE INFOCOM 2005 and IEEE INFOCOM 2013. In addition, his papers have received the best student paper award (from all papers whose first author is a student) at ACM Sigmetrics 2017, IEEE WiOPT 2013, IEEE WiOPT 2012, and IEEE IWQoS 2006. Dr. Shroff is on the list of highly cited researchers from Thomson Reuters ISI (previously ISI web of Science) in 2014 and 2015, and in Thomson Reuters Book on The World's Most Influential Scientific Minds in 2014. He received the IEEE INFOCOM achievement award for seminal contributions to scheduling and resource allocation in wireless networks, in 2014.

Emina Soljanin

Emina Soljanin


Professor
Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Piscataway, New Jersey, USA

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Emina Soljanin is a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rutgers. Before moving to Rutgers in January 2016, she was a (Distinguished) Member of Technical Staff for 21 years in various incarnations of the Mathematical Sciences Research Center of Bell Labs. Her interests and expertise are broad and currently range from distributed computing to quantum information science. She is an IEEE Fellow, an outstanding alumnus of the Texas A&M School of Engineering, the 2011 Padovani Lecturer, a 2016/17 Distinguished Lecturer, and the 2019 President of the IEEE Information Theory Society.

Aydın Sezgin

Aydın Sezgin


Professor
Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology
Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany

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Aydin Sezgin (S'01-M'05--SM'13) received the Dipl.Ing. (M.S.) degree in communications engineering from Technische Fachhochschule Berlin (TFH), Berlin, in 2000, and the Dr. Ing. (Ph.D.) degree in electrical engineering from TU Berlin, in 2005.

From 2001 to 2006, he was with the Heinrich-Hertz-Institut, Berlin. From 2006 to 2008, he held a postdoctoral position, and was also a lecturer with the Information Systems Laboratory, Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA. From 2008 to 2009, he held a postdoctoral position with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA. From 2009 to 2011, he was the Head of the Emmy-Noether- Research Group on Wireless Networks, Ulm University. In 2011, he joined TU Darmstadt, Germany, as a professor. He is currently a professor of information systems and sciences with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany.

He is interested in signal processing, communication, and information theory, with a focus on wireless networks. He has published several book chapters more than 60 journals and 180 conference papers in these topics. He has coauthored a book on multi-way communications. Aydin is a winner of the ITG-Sponsorship Award, in 2006. He was a first recipient of the prestigious Emmy-Noether Grant by the German Research Foundation in communication engineering, in 2009. He has coauthored papers that received the Best Poster Award at the IEEE Communication Theory Workshop, in 2011, the Best Paper Award at ICCSPA, in 2015, and the Best Paper Award at ICC, in 2019.

He has served as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications (2009-2014), and as an area editor for the Elsevier Journal of Electronics and Communications (2010-2011). He was also the General Co-chair of the 2018 International ITG Workshop on Smart Antennas, the program co-chair of the 2019 Crowncom Conference, and the workshop co-chair of the 2022 WCNC workshop on rate-splitting and next generation multiple access.