PhD symposium

PhD Symposium on Next-Generation Networks: AI, Architectures, Interfaces and Implementations

The symposium will be held on 13 June 2023 in the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya premises in Barcelona (building Vertex) and it is jointly organized by the projects:

Scope of the symposium

The scope of this symposium is to encourage PhD students to share their work and facilitate peer-to-peer knowledge sharing. The symposium will provide a unique opportunity for PhD students to showcase their research, receive feedback, and interact with other researchers in their field.

The sessions will be held in floor -2 of the Vertex building in UPC Campus Nord: room VS-218 for the plenary, and room VS-217 for poster sessions.

The one-day programme of the symposium will be:

9:00-9:10 Presentation of the co-chairs.
9:10-10:15 Keynote speeches
- Xavier Costa-Pérez, “Emerging Technologies for Future 6G Systems”, NEC Labs Europe
- Maria Concepción Santos, “Best of two worlds: smartly combining photonic and wireless technologies for converged fiber-radio networks”, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
10:15-10:45 Coffee break
10:45-11:30 Summary of the main objectives of the ITNs organizing the symposium
- Zoran Vujicic, EWOC/EXPLOR
- Paolo Dini, GreenEdge
- Xavier Mestre, WindMill
- Josep Vidal, 5GSmartFact
11:30-13:00 Technical session I. Poster and networking session by PhD students with accepted extended abstracts
13:00-14:15 Lunch break
14:15-16:00 Technical session II. Poster and networking session by PhD students with accepted extended abstracts

Keynote speeches

Xavier Costa-Pérez, “Emerging Technologies for Future 6G Systems”

Xavier Costa-Pérez is ICREA Research Professor, Scientific Director at the i2cat Research Center and Head of 5G/6G Networks R&D at NEC Laboratories Europe. His team generates research results which are regularly published at top scientific venues, produces innovations which have received several awards for successful technology transfers, participates in major European Commission R&D projects and contributes to standardization bodies. He has served on the Organizing Committees of several conferences (including ACM MOBICOM, IEEE INFOCOM, WCNC and Greencom), published papers of high impact and holds tens of granted patents. Currently, he is serving as Editor at IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing (TMC) and Elsevier Computer Communications journals (COMCOM). Xavier received both his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Telecommunications from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) in Barcelona and was the recipient of a national award for his Ph.D. thesis.

Maria Concepción Santos, “Best of two worlds: smartly combining photonic and wireless technologies for converged fiber-radio networks”

María Santos received a Telecommunications Engineering degree and PhD from Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, UPC-BarcelonaTECH in 1993 and 1998, respectively. She is an associate professor at the Signal Theory and Communications Department of UPC where she has been teaching graduate and undergraduate courses in a broad variety of disciplines ranging from microwave engineering to basic electromagnetism, fiber optics, nonlinear optics and microwave photonics since 1993. She is with the CommSensLab research group which has been recognized with the María de Maeztu Excellence award (2016) and the Premi Nacional de Comunicacions (2003). Her research interests include Converged Fiber-Wireless Access Networks, microwave photonics for communications, radar and space applications, and Terahertz communications and imaging.

Posters program

Topics of interest

The topics to be covered in the symposium are given by, but not limited to, the following list:

Channel models for mmWave bands
Network planning in 6G networks
High-reliability and low-latency communications
Artificial intelligence in network design
Intelligent radio environments
Massive, distributed MIMO communication
Visible light communications
NOMA waveforms
Joint communication and sensing
Digital twins for network control and automation
Virtualized network architectures and interfaces
Advances in optical data transmission
Converged optical wireless network solution
Network orchestration for communication and computing
End-to-end MEC/RAN to support IoT deployments
5G localization in smart indoor spaces
Semantic communications
Energy efficiency in 6G networks
Cybersecurity
Vertical applications of 5G/6G networks

Important dates

Submission of extended abstracts: ~~16 May 2023~~ 23 May 2023
Notification of acceptance: ~~18 May 2023~~ 25 May 2023
Symposium date: 13 June 2023

Abstract submission

Submitted abstracts should be written in English by following the IEEE conference format (double-column, 10pt font), with a maximum length limit of 1 (one) printed page, including all figures, references, and appendices. The template to be used can be found in the following link. Authors of accepted abstracts will not be asked to submit a final full paper.

Abstracts should be submitted online through the following form: https://networking.ifip.org/2023/index.php/phd-symposium-form

The accepted abstracts will be collected in the conference proceedings but will not be submitted for inclusion into IEEE Xplore.

All PhD students, and not only those participating in the organizing ITNs, are invited to submit an abstract to the symposium.

Registration and poster presentation

All authors attending must register for the conference by June 5, 2023. For the poster to be featured, at least one author must register. Non-refundable registration fees must be paid by that date on this url: https://networking.ifip.org/2023/index.php/registration. There will not be onsite registration.

The registration fee is 100 €. It includes the lunch and the coffee breaks during the day of the symposium, and the welcome reception. The welcome reception will take place on June 12 at 6 p.m. in the garden of the vertex building.

The size of the poster should be A1 (841×594 mm or 33.1×23.4 inches). Please use vertical layout.

Symposium co-chairs

Josep Vidal, 5GSmartFact/Predict-6G, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain
Zoran Vujicic, EWOC, Instituto de Telecomunicacoes, Portugal

TPC Members

Davide Careglio, TIMING/Predict-6G, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain
Luis Velasco, Predict-6G/TIMING, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain
Paolo Dini, GreenEdge, Centre Tecnològic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya, Spain
Xavier Mestre, WindMill, Centre Tecnològic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya, Spain
Antonio Pascual, 5GSmartFact, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain
Montse Nájar, 5GSmartFact, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain