• Monday, 29 June 2015, 09:00-12:30, Rooms 6-7

Speakers

• Adrian Kliks (Poznan University of Technology, Poland)
• Jordi Perez-Romero (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain)

Description

The rapid and continuous traffic growth observed all over the world is for many years one of the main motivators for intensive development of new wireless transmission solutions that will lead for capacity and coverage improvements as well as reduction of energy consumption. These aspects are the foundation of the challenging requirements identified for the next generation (5G) networks. One of the promising and widely investigated solutions is the intelligent deployment of the so-called small-cells as the additional tiers to the regularly mounted base-station (macrocells). It is worth mentioning that although initially mostly femto and picocells have been considered for deployment in 3G/4G network, the tight coexistence and cooperation between various types of networks (like WiFi and cellular ones) is treated as technical enabler, often referred to the small-cell solution.

The importance of this concept has been already indirectly proved by several tutorials offered on significant conferences in the recent years. Following that direction in this tutorial we would like to concentrate on the specific aspects related to the small-cell networks in the context of future wireless communications systems. Particularly the problems of efficient backhauling, traffic offloading and application of support tools for coexistence improvement, such as the Radio Environmental Maps will be discussed.

The tutorial will consist of two main parts: in the first one the introductory illustration of the small-cell networks will be presented, focusing on the architectural aspects, key problem and challenges related to the practical deployment of the small cells. The role of that part is to overview and to organise the fundamental information in the field and to highlight the potential of the application of small cells in 5G networks. In the second part, which constitutes the main contribution of this tutorial, the three selected areas related to small cells deployment will be analysed in details. The talk will concentrate on the backhauling issues, where the pros and cons of the possible exiting solutions will be presented. This will be followed by the detailed discussion on the possible traffic offloading schemes as the example of direct coexistence between cellular and WiFi networks. Finally, the authors’ vision on the possible deployment of dedicated databases (or rather Radio Environment Maps) for efficient enabling of coexistence between various network types in the context of small cells will be analysed.

Programme

PART 1 – INTRODUCTION AND REVIEW (approx. duration 45 mins)

• Introduction  (approx. duration 15 mins)

• Key concepts in the small-cell application

In this introductory part the fundamental aspects of the application of small-cells will be presented, such as the concept itself, typical problems such as interference and resource managements, security, privacy, deployment strategies etc.

• Role of small cell networks in the 5G network

Small cell networks are envisaged by many researchers as one of the technical enablers that will allow the efficient management of the increased traffic in next-generation cellular networks; in this short part we will examine how the small cells could be applied for these purposes

• Development of small-cell networks (approx. duration 30 mins)

• Evolutionary roadmap in the framework of cellular networks

As a continuation of the introductory part, the roadmap of the small cells evolution in the recent cellular networks standards will be presented, showing the solutions available on the market for 3G and 4G networks; the architecture evolution will be briefly analyzed

• Het-Nets in the context of WiFi Alliance

The term small cell contains also the WiFi Access Points, thus it is necessary to provide the listeners with the concise summary of the evolution of the standards from the 802.11 family, focusing on the connection between WiFi and cellular networks.

• Key problems in HetNets deployment

As the summary of this part, the key problems in HetNets deployment will be briefly identified, including not only technological problems but also legal issues

PART 2 – INTRODUCTION AND REVIEW (approx. duration 3h)

After presentation of the basics, the second and main part will be devoted for presentation of the three dedicated areas related to the small cell networks, i.e. backhauling, coexistence of various networks and context-aware networking.

• Backhauling design for the small cells (1 h 10 min)

• Introduction to the backhauling

In order to discuss later the detail on the specific aspects of backhauling, some fundamental problems will be discussed here.

• Key aspects of the backhaul design (delay, latency, coverage, throughput, synchronisation)

Following the generic introduction to that subject, now the key problems will be analyzed in details. In particular it is envisaged that the issues related to latency and delay of the backhaul will be discussed, followed by the coverage and capacity problem, finishing on synchronisation aspects and legal issues.

• Existing technologies (e.g., microwave links, sub-6 GHz, TV White Spaces, fiber or coaxial networks, etc.)

The problem of backhaul connection between the small cell base station and the core network can be solved in various ways. In that part the pros and cons of the possible technological solutions will be presented.

• Multiple technologies small-cells (1h 10 min)

• Coexistence of 3GPP and non-3GPP networks

The concept of 3GPP and non-3GPP networks coexistence has been studied for many years. However, from the perspective of 5G networks it seems that very efficient solutions are at our fingertips. The key aspects related to this subject will be presented.

• Existing solutions for cellular networks (e.g., Access Network Discovery and Selection Function, LIPA, SIPTO, IFOM, MAPCON, non-seamless Wi-Fi offloads etc.)

Generic discussion will be followed by the detailed description of the techniques already considered or foreseen to be applied in the future standards.

• The concept of Hotspot2.0 (including  ANQP and other techniques)

The coexistence of various network types will be possible only if the appropriate solutions will be prepared in parallel for these networks. As previously the discussion concentrated on the cellular networks, now the main focus will be put on the WiFi network and the solutions proposed there.

• Handover procedures

As an example of coexistence, the problem of vertical handover will be presented followed by the traffic offloading schemes.

• Security aspects

As the summary of that part short discussion on the security aspects will be provided.

• Context aware networking  (40 min)

• Application of REMs for Small Cells

As it will be highlighted in the previous part for multi technology small cells, the coexistence is possible if the context information can be easily accessed and exchanged. Thus in this part the visionary concept of the application of Radio Environment Maps for the better coexistence of various types of network will be presented.

• Interference management and radio resource management

The concept of REMs application for Small Cells will be analysed in the context of interference and radio resource management

• Conclusions

Speakers CVs

Adrian Kliks received his M.Sc. and PhD degree in Telecommunication from Poznań University of Technology in 2005 and 2011, respectively. Starting from October 2011 is employed in the position of assistant professor at Chair of Wireless Communications at Poznan University of Technology. His research interests cover the wide spectrum of wireless communications, multicarrier (both orthogonal and non-orthogonal) systems, software defined, adaptive and cognitive radios, in hardware implementation and in small-cell networks. Adrian Kliks is currently an IEEE senior member, and acts as the Membership Development/Web Visibility Chair within IEEE Communications Society in EMEA Region. He was/is involved in industrial and international projects (e.g., ICT-URANUS, NoE NEWCOM++, COGEU, ACROPOLIS, COST Action IC-0902, COST-Terra, NEWCOM#), where he also acts/acted as the task or Special Interest Group leader. Within these projects he was awarded with international exchange grants (realised in University of Pisa and CTTC in Barcelona). He acts/acted also as a reviewer for various journals (e.g., IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, Wireless Personal Communications, EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking) and conference papers (e.g., submitted at IEEE ICC, Globecom, PIMRC, CrownCom, WCNC, VTC, Chinacom, ISWCS, European Wireless etc.). He organised various special sessions at international conferences (like CrownCom, WSA, Eusipco), workshops (at IEEE PIMRC 2013, IEEE WCNC 2014, Chinacom 2014) and was involved in organisation of the European Wireless 2012 conference and originator of the InterTech event. He is the guest editor of the Special Issue in EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking on “Technical advances in the design and deployment of future heterogeneous networks”. Currently, he participates actively (with voting member status) in working groups established for definition of IEEE 1900.x standards on cognitive radio, holding i.e. the Secretary position for IEEE 1900.1. He is an author or coauthor of almost 100 journal papers and conference presentations.

Jordi Pérez-Romero is associate professor at the Dept. of Signal Theory and Communications of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) in Barcelona, Spain. He received the Telecommunications Engineering degree and the Ph.D. from the same university in 1997 and 2001, respectively. Since then he has been actively working in the field of mobile and wireless communication systems, with particular focus on packet radio techniques, radio resource and QoS management, heterogeneous wireless networks, cognitive radio networks, self-organised networks and network optimisation. He has been involved in different European Projects such as WINEGLASS, ARROWS, EVEREST, E2R,NEWCOM, E2R2, AROMA, E3, NEWCOM++, FARAMIR, OneFIT, NEWCOM#, with different responsibilities as researcher, WP leader and UPC project responsible. He has also participated in different projects for private companies. He has published more than 200 papers in international journals and conferences and has co-authored three books and contributed to 7 book chapters. He holds two international patents and has contributed to 3GPP and ETSI standardisation bodies.

He is associate editor of two international journals (IEEE Vehicular Technology Magazine and EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications Networks) and has been TPC in different international conferences. Besides, he participated in the organization of IEEE VTC in Spring 2009 and IEEE PIMRC 2004 international conferences, hold in Barcelona. He has also been TPC Co-chair of EuCNC conference 2014 and is currently TPC Co-Chair of VTC Spring 2015. Moreover, he has organized several workshops special sessions and special issues in international conferences and journals.