THE 11TH INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS
ON ULTRA MODERN TELECOMMUNICATIONS
AND CONTROL SYSTEMS
OCTOBER 28 - 30, 2019, DUBLIN, IRELAND
OCTOBER 28 - 30, 2019, DUBLIN, IRELAND
Abstract
Bitcoin, Ether, Ripple, Litecoin, darkweb, blockchain, hyperledger. Some keywords that appeared lately in our lives. Disruptive technologies or fraud? Enablers for the society or hidden tools of the villains? Revolution or a scam?
Blockchain Technologies or Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) are based on a distributed database that maintains a continuously growing list of ordered records called blocks. Each block contains data, a timestamp, and a link to the previous block, which makes it inherently resistant to modification. Once recorded, the data cannot be altered retroactively. The whole concept is based on the well-established cryptographic hash functions. With a peer-to-peer network and a distributed time-stamping server, the blockchain is managed autonomously. Blockchains are secure by design and provide a high level of trust. It makes them suitable for storing events and other records, while proving the data provenance. The two most popular blockchains are the digital currency Bitcoin and the smart-contract platform Ethereum. Besides the use for cryptocurrency, the blockchain offers all the communications among machines, sensors and persons, and will improve the customized records to track the whole production, supply and maintenance chain.
In this keynote speech, we will present the basics of the blockchain technologies and their disruptive potential. At the same time we will try to answer some of the questions that many of you were hesitating to ask elsewhere. I will also list some of the advantages that the blockchain and DLT offer in various applied and business models.
Keynote's Bio
Prof. Ninoslav Marina is Rector of the University of Information Science and Technology (UIST) in Ohrid since 2012. He was President of the Rector’s Conference of the public universities in the Republic of Macedonia (2015-2018). Dr. Marina obtained his Ph.D. degree at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in 2004. In partnership with Nokia Research Centre in Helsinki, his thesis was in the information theory with application to wireless communications. Ninoslav Marina was Director of R&D at Sowoon Technologies (2005 – 2007), visiting scholar at University of Hawaii at Manoa (2007 – 2008), postdoctoral researcher at University of Oslo (2008 – 2009) and postdoctoral Marie Curie Fellow at Princeton University (2009 – 2012). Prof. Marina co-authored more than 100 scientific papers, books and popular texts and has been a guest professor at more than twenty universities in countries including United States, Japan, United Kingdom, Italy, Israel, Russia, Brazil, China, Hong Kong, Norway, Finland, Malaysia, Morocco, Portugal, Azerbaijan and the Czech Republic. Dr. Marina is a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and is one of the co-founders of the Macedonian Chapter of the IEEE Information Theory Society. He was also Technical Program Committee Chair of the International Congress on Ultra Modern Telecommunications and Control Systems (ICUMT) and a panel member at the United Nations General Assembly informal interactive consultations on World Summit on the Information Society.
Abstract
Numerous technologies have been developed over the years for implantable devices that can be used for brain stimulation. The current solutions, however, are based on implanting electrodes that target a large area of the brain. The field of optogenetics, which was recently introduced, proposes to improve the accuracy of stimulation by genetically engineering neurons that are sensitive to light at a specific wavelength. While wireless optogenetic solutions have been developed, they are not practical enough to be embedded into the brain long-term. The focus of this presentation is to present the Wireless Optogenetics Nano Device (WiOptND), which is a micrometer scale device constructed from nano-scale components. The miniaturization of the device to the micrometer scale will enable it to be implanted into various parts of the brain, and to stimulate small population of neurons. The seminar will first cover the types of nano-scale components required to construct the WiOptND device, and how the properties of each components will provide new approaches for control signaling as well as wireless charging. The miniaturization of the WiOptND will also enable multiple devices to be placed in the brain, whereby a nanonetwork can be formed to target distributed stimulations. Variations of different charging protocols will also be presented to demonstrate how the coordinated charging process can enable the WiOptND nanonetworks to stimulate different neurons. A channel model that captures the peculiarities of light propagation in the neurons will also be presented, to analyze the light propagation behavior based on the photon transport through the nervous tissue. This includes analyzing the scattering light diffraction and diffusive reflection that results from the absorption of neural cell chromophores. Lastly, the seminar will touch on a number of applications as well as future directions for the wireless optogenetic nanonetworks.
Keynote's Bio
Sasitharan Balasubramaniam (Sasi) received his Bachelors of Engineering (Electrical and Electronic) and PhD degrees from the University of Queensland, Australia, in 1998 and 2005, respectively, and Masters of Engineering Science (Computer and Communication Engineering) degree in 1999 from the Queensland University of Technology, Australia. After completion of his PhD, Sasi joined the Telecommunication Software & Systems Group (TSSG), Waterford Institute of Technology, Ireland where his research focused on bio-inspired communication networks. In 2009, he successfully received the Science Foundation Ireland Starter Investigator Research Grant, which allowed him to create a Bio-Inspired Research Unit. In 2013, Sasi joined the Department of Electronic and Communication Engineering, Tampere University of Technology, Finland, where in 2014 he received the Academy of Finland Research Fellow grant. As of 2019, Sasi is the Director of Research for the TSSG, and is the PI for the recently funded Science Foundation Ireland VistaMilk research centre. Sasi has published over 100 journal and conference papers, and actively participates in various conference committees. He was the TPC co-chair for ACM NanoCom 2014, and in 2015 he was the General co-chair. He is currently an editor for the IEEE Letters of the Computer Society, Elsevier Nano Communication Networks, as well as Elsevier Digital Communication Networks journals. He was a past Associate Editor for the IEEE Internet of Things Journal. In 2018, Sasi was also the IEEE Nanotechnology Council Distinguished Lecturer. His current research interests include molecular and nano communications as well as the Internet of Nano Things. Sasi is currently an IEEE Senior Member.
Abstract
Fixed wireline networks are still the dominant access technology for high bandwidth applications in the home and at work because the copper infrastructure is extensively deployed and can offer a better service at a lower price than its cellular competition. Consumers are also becoming increasingly dependent on their personal mobile device for entertainment, work and general communications at any time of day, anywhere in the world. Concepts such as “Fixed Mobile Convergence” and “Universal Service Provision” have been addressed many times by researchers and some concepts have been deployed by the telecoms industry. Although some progress has been made in these areas, the advent of the 5G cellular system with a “Service Based Architecture” at its core offers a real possibility to make significant advancements in these areas at an economically viable price-point.
In this talk I will outline how the fixed and cellular networks can be more closely integrated and explore some of the enabling technologies and outstanding challenges that arise.
Keynote's Bio
Philip Perry is with the BT Ireland Innovation Centre (BTIIC) at Ulster University, Jordanstown, Northern Ireland. He has held a number of positions both in academia and in industry, mostly in the broad field of radio communications, from circuit design, systems design and software applications. His current areas of investigation focus on 5G cellular networks, Internet of Things, Data Centre Networks and the convergence of radio and optical communications systems.
Abstract
Making sure networks work at an optimal operating point is normally obtaind by strict control of the radio resources. Separating Control and Data channels has been a very powerful and proven stragey in cellular communication, and have ushered the way for softwarised networking. Low-power IoT networks, on the other hand relay on opportunistic channels and generally uncontrolled environments. Applying Software Defined Networking to IoT would introduce Quality of Service (QoS) on per-flow basis and traffic differentiation in networks with constrained resources. However, given the shared nature of the wireless medium, classical SDN solutions cannot be immediately ported to IIoT as the control and data links will suffer from the same impediments. Therefore, a Wireless Control Plane is necessary to enable SDN-IoT. In this talk, we'll discuss some of the most common Low-power IoT solutions and the challeges in providing reliable behaviour under constrained communication with a look at current and future solutions.
Keynote's Bio
Alessandro is a Research Fellow at CONNECT in Trinity College Dublin. He received his PhD in cellular network management from Imec, Leuven, Belgium, in 2015. He subsequently worked as a postdoctoral researcher at KU Leuven (Belgium) on massive machine-to-machine communication, channel prediction, very dense networks, and the application of machine learning to theoretical problems in telecommunication and information management. He is currently an MSCA EDGE fellow in CONNECT and is working on the project “Internet of Complex Things”, which aims to develop a formal framework for causality in distributed wireless networks and to provide adaptive run-time control methods for vast and dense IoT sensor networks.
© ICUMT 2019