Dialogue with Industry Leaders
Wednesday, 7 June 2023, 17:30-18:30, Congress Hall
Organizer
- Bernard Barani (former Deputy Head of Unit, Future Connectivity Systems, DG CONNECT, at European Commission, BE)
Motivation and Background
There are currently many issues around the development of 6G, not only from the technological viewpoint but also addressing other dimensions, such use cases and societal impact. The development of 6G in all its dimensions has been a theme for discussion in many fora, which includes the positioning of many industries and the so-called verticals, the sustainability of networks, the way that communications systems relate to climate change, among many other aspects. This panel is intended to be a lively discussion among industry leaders, exploring all these dimensions of 6G and looking at the future of the development of 6G.
Questions
- What are the panel views on the most promising application domains of 6G, how do they differentiate from 5G capabilities and are there verticals we should work with as a priority?
- What are the panel views on the best approach to realise significant energy savings with 6G? At network level, are there critical technologies to consider and should we define, in addition to the FCAPS network management model an additional “E” set of parameters used to manage energy consumption in networks? If the focus has to be in the application use cases, do we need to develop specific network exposure capabilities beyond what 5G provides?
- What are the panel views on new radio interfaces for 6G, the role of AI and the possibility to fully unify technology between NTN and terrestrial nets?
- What are the views of the panel for 6G? what will be the role of virtualisation/softwarisation/disaggregation for 6G, will all open issues have been solved and will so called “open architecture” be the default implementation model? What microelectronics capabilities are needed to be compatible with future requirements?
- What are the panel views on AI and its role for 6G, what is an AI native architecture and what can be expected beyond what 5G AI developments already plan? Does an AI native architecture require to revisit the SBA architecture developed for 6G?
Participants
The panel is composed of (see CVs below):
- Chair: Bernard Barani (Moderator) (EC, BE)
- Magnus Frodigh (Ericsson, SE)
- Peter Vetter (Nokia, US)
- Wen Tong (Huawei, CA)
- Micaela Giuhat (Microsoft, US )
- Eric Hardouin (Orange, FR)
Bernard Barani
Bernard Barani joined the European Commission in 1994 after 11 years as Communication engineer in industry and with ESA. He is Deputy head of unit in the European Commission DG CONNECT where he has been steering EU wireless R&I for more than 20 years. He currently leads the definition and implementation with industry of the European R&I programme “Smart Networks and Services (6G)” covering the 2021-2027 time frame. Main responsibilities cover strategic R&D planning and implementation for beyond 5G/6G systems, standardisation, international cooperation, demonstration and pilot programmes. He is vice chairman of the Steering committee of the EUCNC conference, and has an engineering degree from the “Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications de Bretagne”. He is also a Fellow of WWRF (Wireless World Research Forum).
Magnus Frodigh
Dr. Magnus Frodigh is Vice President and Head of Ericsson Research. In this role he leads Ericsson’s long-term technology research organization, its close collaboration with academia and industry, and its contributions to the Ericsson business and product development. He holds a Master of Science degree from Linköping University of Technology, Sweden, and a Ph.D. in Radio Communication Systems from the Royal Institute of Technology, where he is also adjunct Professor in Wireless Infrastructures. He is a Fellow of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences (IVA). Frodigh joined Ericsson in 1994 and has over the past three decades held various key senior positions within Research & Development and Product Management, throughout the generations of mobile technology, from 2G all the way to current research on 6G technologies. He holds 29 patents.
Peter Vetter
Peter Vetter is President of Bell Labs Core Research and Bell Labs Fellow. He leads an eminent global research organization with the mission to create game changing innovations that define the future of networks and insure portfolio leadership for Nokia’s core business. During an international career of thirty years in research leadership mostly in fixed and mobile networks, he and his teams have realized several world-first system demonstrations and successfully transferred industry leading concepts to the business groups. He received a PhD at Ghent University (Belgium) in 1991 and was a post-doctoral fellow at Tohoku University (Japan) until 1993. He then joined the research center of Alcatel (now Nokia) in Antwerp and has worked at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey since 2009. He is IEEE Fellow and Honorary Professor of KU Leuven.
Wen Tong
Dr. Wen Tong is the CTO, Huawei Wireless and a Huawei Fellow. He is the head of Huawei wireless research, and the Huawei 5G chief scientist and led Huawei’s 10-year-long 5G wireless technologies research and development.
Dr. Tong is the industry recognized leader in invention of advanced wireless technologies, for the past three decades, he had pioneered fundamental technologies from 1G to 6G wireless. Dr. Tong was elected as an IEEE Fellow. He was the recipient of IEEE Communications Society Industry Innovation Award and IEEE Communications Society Distinguished Industry Leader Award for “pioneering technical contributions and leadership in the mobile communications industry and innovation in 5G mobile communications technology”. He is also the recipient of R.A. Fessenden Medal.
Prior to joining Huawei in 2009, Dr. Tong was the Nortel Fellow and head of the Network Technology Labs at Nortel. He joined the Wireless Technology Labs at Bell Northern Research in 1995 in Canada. Dr. Tong is a Fellow of Canadian Academy of Engineering.
Micaela Giuhat
Micaela Giuhat joined the Microsoft’s 5G Policy team in August 2020. Prior to that, she hold executive roles in several telecom companies, most recently she served as a Vice President of Market Strategy for Metaswitch Networks. Micaela brings along more than 30 years of industry experience, with previous executive positions in leading Cloud Communications, and IP Networking companies in the U.S as well as abroad. She has extensive telecom background, and experience, contributions and leadership in different standards and industry bodies, such as ITU, Softswitch Consortium, and has been on the Board of Directors of the i3Forum until 2020. In 2021 she was nominated Vice-Chair of the Green G working group and Chair of the Policy Committee of the Next G Alliance, as well as Co-Chair of the FCC CSRIC working group 3. Her experience spans wireline and wireless communications, with focus on virtualization, cloudification and 5G, in different roles, such as Product Management, Product Marketing, and M&A. Giuhat holds a master in EE from the Romanian Polytechnic Institute, and a MBA from Ottawa University.
Eric Hardouin
Eric Hardouin leads the Orange research on Networks and Infrastructures, which investigates future access and core networks, infrastructures and their information systems, to provide ambient connectivity and distributed computing power that are cost effective, inclusive, sustainable and source of value for the society. Eric received his Ph.D. degree in signal processing and telecommunications from Telecom Bretagne and the University of Rennes 1, France, in 2004. Since 2004, he has been with Orange, where he conducted research on interference mitigation for mobile networks. Between 2008 and 2013 he represented Orange in the physical layer standardization group of 3GPP (RAN WG1) for HSPA, LTE and LTE-Advanced. From 2012 to 2015, Eric coordinated the research on wireless networks in Orange. From 2016 to 2022, Eric led the Orange research on future access and transport networks and technologies, as well as related business models. Eric had a leading role in the NGMN 5G White Paper, as co-lead of the work on 5G requirements. Eric is the author of the book “LTE et les réseaux 4G” (in French).
