The Wireless World Research Forum - IEEE Xplore

Jari Porras, Nigel Jefferies, and Rajesh Gadiyar

FROM THE GUEST EDITORS

The Wireless World Research Forum

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or ten years, the Wireless World Research Forum (WWRF) has been developing its visions of the future, working with its members, both academic and industrial, to create a road map for the research and development of the technologies required to build this future. Currently, there are members from five continents and a range of sectors. The forum was founded as a result of a study funded by the European Commission that concluded that the development of a future research agenda for wireless should be opened up to all players. Currently, the WWRF has the purpose of developing visions of the future wireless world, enabling and facilitating the transition of the vision into reality and bringing a wide range of parties together to identify and overcome significant roadblocks to that vision. In addition, it provides information and education on key trends and developments in mobile and wireless communications. WWRF is a global forum, open to all to join as members or participate in the meetings. It is not a conventional standards development organization as it does not produce normative specifications. It is not a research-funding body as membership fees are used to support the meetings and administration only.

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MVT.2011.2179347 Date of publication: 28 February 2012

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However, many successful research projects have been initiated from contacts and discussions held during WWRF meetings. Unlike typical research conferences, the contributions received are used to develop white papers on specific subjects, which are edited and published in the WWRF Outlook series or in a book form. A carefully reviewed limited number of best papers of each event will be published here. There are currently nine working groups, each led by a chair and a vice chair who are elected by the participants every two years. Between them, they cover the whole range of research activities in the wireless world, from the behavior of users to the development of physical-layer techniques for improved spectrum efficiency. Further information on WWRF, including current publications, details about the next meetings, and information on how to join, is available at www.wireless-world-research.org.

Highlights of WWRF 27 The most recent WWRF meeting was held in Du ¨ sseldorf on 16–18 October 2011, hosted by Huawei Technologies. The theme of the meeting was “The New Convergence Framework: Cloud, Pipe, and Device over Mobile Broadband.” This theme represents the identification of key challenges in the converging information technology and communications infrastructures

with the emergence of the cloud as a means for efficient management of services and resources and pipe to provide transmission of data at high efficiency and speed and low cost, while new generations of devices provide new levels of interactions with the users. This theme was outlined by Edward Zhou (Huawei vice president for Western Europe) who opened the meeting. He identified the key drivers: the increase in mobile data usage, increased consumption of broadcast content online, the Internet of things and the evolution from app stores to cloudbased services. Afterward, a number of specific themes emerged in the program of plenary session speakers and invited and contributed working group contributions. Prominent among these were some of the first attempts we have seen to identify the key characteristics of fifth-generation (5G) or next-generation networks. For example, Dr. Taoka Hidekazu of DoCoMo Eurolabs discussed the issue of whether 5G really requires the revolution of a new radio interface in newly assigned spectrum or a more evolutionary approach might be more appropriate, using a number of techniques to increase the performance of the mobile network. Nokia Siemens Networks also presented their view of the requirements and research challenges of a 5G network.

IEEE VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY MAGAZINE | MARCH 2012

One application of the cloud approach that attracted a lot of interest was the cloud-based radio access network (RAN). A number of speakers addressed this subject. This is in some manner a natural progression of the flattening of RAN architectures. An approach to increasing the capacity of future network is to make greater use of smaller cells at hotspots or to provide content offloading. We were privileged to be addressed by Prof. Simon Saunders of the Femto Forum on the current status and future directions of femto cell research, and this was followed by a special discussion session to identify further areas for attention. As is now usual in WWRF, developing markets were highlighted, and we were addressed by the head of Intel’s Middle East Mobile Innovation Center on targeting research on the requirements of these markets and by Dr. Guevara of Cambridge University who gave a fascinating overview of the Latin American market. Another special session led by Mario Hoffmann of Fraunhofer AISEC looked at the current European Union (EU) Framework Programme 7 Call, and participants brainstormed areas of interest and potential proposals. Other talks of interest included one from Hewlett-Packard about how to develop apps for different platforms and a presentation from CISCO that suggested that more than 50% of wireless traffic will come from wireless local area network (WLAN)-type networks. At the end of the meeting, participants were invited to the 2012 meetings to be held at Athens on 23–25 April with the theme “Technologies and Visions for a Sustainable Wireless Internet” in Berlin on 23–25 October.

Selected Papers This special issue contains a selection of papers from the 27th WWRF meeting. Out of the papers presented in WWRF 27, guest editors have selected the three best. These papers

represent the broad scope of WWRF activities. In “Future Mobile Communication Networks” by Marsch et al., features needed for future mobile networks are analyzed for design and operation challenges. First, a clear view of the future systems is created through requirements and available technologies and then, key challenges, network infrastructure, and interference and mobility management are addressed. Interference and mobility management are further analyzed for design tradeoffs. “Digital Broadcasting” by Bezabih et al. presents through simulations how the reserved spectrum for DVBT can be used efficiently for cognitive radio purposes. The use of white and gray spaces is shown by simulations to increase the available spectrum for cognitive radios by as much as 120 MHz. The article “Estimating Social Graphs in an Education Environment” by Banford and Irvine uses metadata from smartphone usage for estimating social ties among people. Estimated social ties are verified by conducting interviews. The initial results indicate that social ties can be estimated with generally good accuracy.

Author Information Jari Porras received his D.Sc. (Tech.) degree from the Lappeenranta University of Technology, Finland, in 1998 in modeling and simulation of communication networks in the distributed computing environment. He is a professor of distributed systems and wireless communications at the Lappeenranta University of Technology, Lappeenranta, Finland. He is a Member of the IEEE and ACM. He has been a vice chair of the WWRF Working Group 2 (Services and Service Architectures) since 2008. Currently, he runs two EU FP7 research projects, UMSIC and MOBISERV, in his laboratory and participates actively in various international activities. His interests include wired and

MARCH 2012 | IEEE VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY MAGAZINE

wireless networks, ad hoc and peerto-peer networking, aspects of grid and cloud computing, as well as cyber foraging. He has published more than 150 scientific articles in his expertise areas. Nigel Jefferies received his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in mathematics from Queen’s College, Oxford, and Goldsmiths College, London, respectively. He joined Racal Research where he became a principal mathematician working on cryptography, communications security, and applications of mathematics to telecommunications. Then, he worked for many years at Vodafone, predominantly as a research project manager. He is currently a senior standards manager at the Huawei Technologies in the Industry Standards Department, a chair of WWRF, and a visiting professor at Kingston University. He led a number of European Framework Programme projects focusing on security for third-generation networks. He acted as an industrial chair of several programs for the Mobile VCE Research Consortium on networks, services, software-based systems, and instant knowledge. He’s a member of the Strategy Board for the FP7 project Effectsþ that is developing a road map for ICT security research. Rajesh Gadiyar received his B.S. degree in telecommunications engineering. In addition, he received his M.B.A. degree from UCLA Anderson School of Management. He is the director of architecture in Intel’s Communication Infrastructure Division, Phoenix. Before joining Intel, he had led various engineering teams at Trillium Digital Systems and Wipro Ltd. After joining Intel in 2000, he held several positions in engineering, professional services, strategic planning, and architecture. He has several years of experience in networking products, architecture, protocols, standards and software for Voice over Internet Protocol, cellular, broadband, mobile telephony, and data networks.

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