Upcoming Events:

June 2022

Post-pandemic telecommunications

If the Covid-19 pandemic had occurred in 2002 instead of SARS we would have been in much greater trouble. Fewer than 16% of Australian households had broadband in 2002 (today it is up to 91%). Videoconferencing solutions were limited to expensive (and user-unfriendly) corporate systems and were certainly not available to households. IP/Cloud contact centres were available but had virtually no adoption. Streaming video was beyond our wildest dreams.

Fortunately in 2020 these solutions were available and affordable but, until the pandemic, not really exploited by consumers and businesses to any great degree (in the first 8 weeks of the pandemic e-commerce sales – as a percentage of retail sales – increased more than the previous decade).

The pandemic has changed our expectations of telecommunications. It is now an essential part of daily life and businesses cannot operate without it. However, as the recent Hartsuyker Regional Telecommunications Independent Review Committee has found, the availability of telecommunications is not uniformly spread across the country. Some 30% of the population live outside capital cities and often face major challenges with their telecommunication services. In this talk, I shall discuss some of those challenges and also the technology considerations that must go into addressing them. For example, will Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Satellite constellations solve all the major issues and will they make NBN geostationary satellites obsolete?

Another major frustration for users across the country, but particularly in regional areas, is the massive rise of spam and scam calls and texts. Is the ACMA doing enough to combat this? For example, why are carriers not mandated to implement the STIR/SHAKEN protocols? Why are Australian phone numbers so widely available? Again, this will be another point of discussion in my talk.

Speaker: 

Hugh S. Bradlow is President of the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering. He is also Chair of the Board of ASX-listed company Rocketboots and an independent Non-Executive Director of Silicon Quantum Computing Pty Ltd. He also served on the Regional Telecommunications Independent Review Committee for 2021.

He was previously Chief Technology Officer and Head of Innovation at Telstra, responsible for the R&D of new technologies and their introduction into Telstra’s business.

Before joining Telstra in September 1995, Professor Bradlow was Professor of Computer Engineering at the University of Wollongong in Australia and Professor of Electrical Engineering (Digital Systems) at the University of Cape Town.

Professor Bradlow is a graduate in electrical engineering from the University of Cape Town in 1973 and received the D.Phil. degree for research in experimental nuclear physics from the University of Oxford.

He is globally recognised as a thought leader in telecommunications and was elected as the joint 2009 Australian Telecommunications Ambassador of the Year, named by Global Telecom Business as one of the most 100 most influential telecommunications executives in the world and Smart Company designated him as one of the 12 most influential people in Australian ICT.

Past Events:

March 2022

Channel Code Design for Beyond 5G: Primitive Rateless Codes  

Designing and optimizing short block length codes have been recently attracted for being implemented on memory or power-constrained devices, mainly in the context of the Internet of Things applications and services.  This talk will introduce primitive rateless (PR) codes, which are mainly characterized by a primitive polynomial of degree k over GF(2) which are rate-compatible and have a very simple encoding structure, unlike most rate-compatible codes designed based on puncturing a low-rate mother code, with a sub-optimal performance at various rates. 

Speaker: Mahyar Shirvanimoghaddam

Mahyar Shirvanimoghaddam is a Teaching Fellow at Centre for IoT and Telecommunications, The University of Sydney. Prior to this role, he was with The School of Electrical Engineering and Computing, The University of Newcastle as a Research Fellow in Error Control Coding, where he currently holds a conjoint position. He received his PhD in Electrical Engineering (Telecommunications) from The University of Sydney in 2015 with The University of Sydney Postgraduate Award and Norman I Prize. He received MSc and BSc both in Electrical Engineering with 1st Class Honor in 2010 and 2008, respectively from Sharif University of Technology and University of Tehran. Dr Shirvanimoghaddam was selected asone of the Top 50 Young Scientists in the World by the World Economic Forumin 2018 for his contribution to the 4th Industrial Revolution. His research interests include Coding and Information Theory, Rateless coding, Communication strategies for the Internet of Things, and Information-theoretic approaches to Machine Learning. Dr Shirvanimoghaddam is an enthusiastic teacher and believes in “innovation through collaboration”. In 2017, he initiated a multidisciplinary teaching innovation project with Sydney Business School, called “The Idea Factory.” He received the2019 Vice-Chancellor Excellence Award for Outstanding Early Career Teachingat The University of Sydney. He is currently an IEEE Senior Member.

February 2022

  • Date: Thursday, February 24,  2022
  • Time: 5pm to 6pm (AEST)
  • Location: Virtual
  • Registration: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/304060

Scheduling links in mm-wave IAB Networks 

Scheduling in wireless networks is known to be a hard problem. In this talk, we formulate the scheduling problem for IAB networks and present some distributed scheduling algorithms – one based on back-pressure and a more distributed approach that we call local max-weight. In these, we exploit the tree structure to obtain capacity-achieving algorithms where the complexity does not grow exponentially in the size of the network. 

Speaker: Prof. Stephen Hanly

Stephen V. Hanly (Fellow, IEEE) received the B.Sc. (Hons.) and M.Sc. degrees from The University of Western Australia and the Ph.D. degree in mathematics from Cambridge University, U.K., in 1994. From 1993 to 1995, he was a Post-Doctoral Researcher and a member of Technical Staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ, USA. From 1996 to 2009, he was a Research and Teaching Staff at the University of Melbourne. From 2010 to 2011, he was an Associate Professor with the National University of Singapore. Since 2012, he has been a Professor with Macquarie University. He has won a number of best paper awards, including the 1998 INFOCOM Best Paper Award, the IEEE Information Theory Society and the IEEE Communication Society Joint Best Paper Award in 2001, and the IEEE Communications Society Tutorial Paper Award in 2015. He was the Technical Co-Chair of a number of IEEE conferences and workshops, including the IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory and Its Applications in 2014 and the IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory in 2005, 2017, and 2021. He was the General Chair of the Australian Communication Theory Workshop in 2014 and the IEEE Communications Workshop in 2017. He has previously been an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications and a Guest Editor of the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications Special Issue on Cooperative Communications in MIMO Cellular Networks and 5G Wireless Communication Systems.

 

November 2021

5G Heads Up Helmet

Every year approx. 40 cyclists die on roads in Australia. This presentation will cover the behind the scenes work (and pitfalls) developing a prototype smart bike helmet to demonstrate the power of 5G mobile connectivity combined with AI/ML based cloud compute and a low latency V2X messaging platform. You will find out the various applications that Telstra Labs developed in partnership with Arenberg and how we even had a little help from cycling champion Anna Meares. Lastly, we will give a glimpse into the future applications and solutions 5G will enable. (https://exchange.telstra.com.au/5g-is-giving-cyclists-the-ability-to-see-around-corners/

Speaker: Mr Todd Essery (Telstra Technology Leader for Future IoT)

Todd has over 18 years’ experience in the wireless telecommunications industry, beginning his career at Telstra Research Laboratories (TRL) before immigrating to Canada where he worked on handset requirements and mobile network design with TELUS Mobility. In 2009 Todd returned to Telstra and lead work on machine-to-machine technologies which has since exploded into Internet-of-Things (IoT). Recently Todd has been helping drive 5G and V2X trials in Telstra Labs to enable cooperative intelligent transport. In his free time Todd enjoys building robots and getting back to basics with old fashioned woodworking.

This event is organised by IEEE ComSoc Victorian

September 2021

Start Thinking About 6G

With 5G cellular technologies now beginning to be deployed around the world, the research community has embarked on the pathway to define the sixth generation (6G) wireless system to be deployed in the year 2030. The market demands of 2030 and beyond will likely introduce new applications, with more stringent requirements (in terms of ultra-high reliability, capacity, energy efficiency, and low latency). In this talk, we will share about the current 5G systems and our views about 6G and some of our preliminary works in this area.

 

Speaker: 

Tony Q.S. Quek is a tenured Full Professor with the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), leading the Wireless Networks and Decision Systems (WNDS) Group. He is also the Director of Future Communications R&D Programme, ISTD Pillar Head, Sector Lead of SUTD AI Program,  and Deputy Director of the SUTD-ZJU IDEA. He received the B.E. and M.E. degrees in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Tokyo Institute of Technology, respectively. At MIT, he earned the Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He is a member in the Signal Processing for Communications and Networking Technical Committee, a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Communications Society, and a Fellow of IEEE.

His current research interests include wireless communications and networks, network intelligence, big data processing, URLLC, and IoT.

 

August 2021

6G Fundamentals: Vision and Enabling Technologies – From 5G to 6G Trustworthy and Resilient Systems

About: This talk will cover the 6G global landscape and the most relevant private and public initiatives, 3GPP technology roadmap towards 6G and 5G New Radio (NR) releases. This is followed by an introduction to the new societal challenges, opportunities, and the latest shift in paradigm “from Internet of Things (IoT) to Internet of Intelligence (IoI)”, which paves the way towards 6G wireless. Beyond that, the talk discusses the new carrier frequency bands, above 110 GHz; and innovative fundamental enabling technologies and portrays a network vision for 6G wireless, looking at the horizon 2030, and beyond.

Speaker: 

David Soldani has been active in the information and communication technology (ICT) field for more than 25 years and holding senior management and executive positions across global organizations for more than 20 years, contributing both as a key industry player and as a distinguished academic. For example, he has served Nokia for 15+ years and Huawei for 10+ years, in various roles: from Scientific Director and Global Head of Technology to Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and Chief Cyber Security Officer (CSO), within Oceania, ASIA Pacific Region and beyond. In 2014, 2016 and 2018 he was appointed Visiting Professor, Industry Professor, and Adjunct Professor at University of Surrey, UK, University of Technology Sydney (UTS), and University of New South Wales (UNSW), Australia, respectively. He has been the owner of noteworthy business, reporting directly to senior management in Europe, China, Oceania, ASIA Pacific Region, and dealing with many stakeholders, in private and public sectors, at various organizational levels. During this period, he has been wholly responsible for recognizing/implementing the technology and business strategy across his entire group, in alignment with the business directions and objectives set by the Board of Directors of his organization. He has been successfully leading and working on 500+ research, innovation and sales projects for ICT systems and services, contributing to 1000+ quality deliverables – from strategic research and innovation strategy to business and work plans, books, papers, patents, specifications, standards, simulations, emulations, and proof of concepts of innovative solutions, products and services with partners and customers – leading to US$ billions of revenues. He has been responsible for planning, negotiating, and implementing decisions related to new offerings, mergers, and acquisitions; as well as for designing, developing, and implementing financial budgets (€150+ million / year) to achieve and exceed the agreed business goals. He has a sound and broad international experience in structuring and running large multinational organizations (500+ staff), and in delegating responsibility to direct and indirect reports, in a multicultural working environment, globally. He is one of the fathers of 5G and considered as one of the top experts in multi-disciplinary, transformative frontier research and innovation, globally. Areas of his responsibility and expertise include, but not be limited to, the following: 6G, 5.5G, 5G, 4G, ICT systems and services, artificial intelligence (AI), multi-access edge computing (MEC), cybersecurity controls & assurance, IoT, big data, and multimedia (Cloud X) technologies. He has been a role model and built strong followership within the organizations he has served. As a result, he has been selected many times to receive special awards in recognition of his authentic and exemplary role, commitment, professionalism, and outstanding contribution in the ICT industry; and, in 2016, he was granted a Distinguished Talent (DT) visa for his profession by the Australian Government. He has proven ability to learn quickly, adapt, and master new concepts and technologies – he is passionate about – to drive their adoption and usage, and excellent verbal and written communication skills, along with equally good listening skills. He has published or presented many international papers, contributed to standards and publication of many books, and holds several international patents. Since 2009, he has been serving as Associate Editor in Chief (AEiC) of IEEE Network Magazine, and Guest Editor of IEEE Communications Magazine and IEEE MMTC E-Letters. He has been taking part in many IEEE Technical Program Committees (TPCs) for international conferences, journals, magazines, and workshops, especially in areas of future wireless, network, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, computing, IoT and media technologies. 

David can be reached online at https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-david-soldani/ 

 

July 2021

  • Date: Thursday 29th July 2021 
  • Time: 5pm to 6pm
  • Location: Virtual
  • Registration: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/276619

When does chip design become the right choice for your IoT device implementation?

About: IoT and wearables have important challenges such as limited or no access to continuous power and size/weight limitation. Edge computing in IoT devices can reduce the amount of data communication. It also offers other benefits such as increased response time​, and reduced number of interfaces with the cloud​. However, it puts more pressure on the IoT devices from power consumption and size/weight perspective which play important roles in designing IoT devices, even though microampere microcontrollers have emerged. One solution is to design customised chips to perform specific tasks at ultra-low power consumption. But chip design is extremely expensive. This talk presents the pros and cons of chip designing for IoT solutions.

Speaker: Dr Mohsen Radfar

Dr. Radfar received a PhD in Electronic Engineering in June 2014, a Master’s of Computer Engineering (Computer Architecture) in 2007 and a Bachelor’s majored in Applied Mathematics and minored in Computer Engineering (Hardware) in 2004. He has also completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Purdue University, IN, USA, on the design of neuromorphic circuits using spintronic/nano-magnet devices.

His research has been focused on the design and implementation of ultra-low power digital and analogue electronic and spintronic systems and his results have been published in several prestigious journals. He has been leading AISC R&D and PhD student projects in the Centre for Technology Infusion, La Trobe University since 2012 and is currently with CSIRO as a research scientist in ASIC design. His research interests include RF, analog and digital microelectronic design for IoT applications, neuromorphic spintronic design (spiking neural networks), Hardware accelerated Artificial Intelligence (ML), and computer architecture.

Dr. Radfar has also received the Endeavour Scholarships and Fellowships Award from the Australian Government and various grants, including the Research Focus Area (RFA) Grant from La Trobe University to pursue his interests. He is also a peer reviewer for various journals such as IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems and IEEE Access.

 

June 2021

Optimizing computer vision

  • Date: Thursday 24th June 2021 
  • Time: 5pm to 6pm
  • Location: Virtual
  • Registration: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/273130

Abstract:

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a single static view is seldom adequate. When faced with a complex visual scene, we employ a range of voluntary and involuntary movements to assess and scan the scene. These include binocular eye movements, such as saccade and vergence, and may also include movements of head and torso to improve the viewing of occluded parts. In effect, we select a set of visual poses to gradually build up our knowledge of the scene.

Similarly in computer vision, acquisition of the most relevant information from a scene is a critical basis for a range of applications, including robotics, surveillance and 3D reconstruction. While there is a wealth of research on algorithms that use the acquired information, little research exists on how to optimize the acquisition phase, that is, how to best arrange the cameras to obtain the most informative viewpoints from the scene.

We have proposed the concept of Correspondence Field (CF), which is a conservative vector field in front of cameras, to quantify the ability of cameras in obtaining information from every point of the scene. In this talk, I will demonstrate the utility of CF in optimizing the position and orientation of cameras to obtain the best viewpoint. As an example, I will focus on improving the estimate of object depth, which is foundational for most computer vision applications. Our experiments show that CF optimization results in significant improvement in accuracy of depth estimation and this enhancement is independent of, and additional to, any algorithmic refinements for correspondence matching.

Speaker:

Farzad Safaei graduated from the University of Western Australia with the degree of Bachelor of Engineering (Electronics) and obtained his PhD in Telecommunications Engineering from Monash University in 1998. Currently, he is the Chair of Telecommunications Engineering at the University of Wollongong. Before joining the University of Wollongong, he was the Manager of Internetworking Architecture and Services Section in Telstra Research Laboratories. Farzad was the Managing Director of ICT Research Institute, 2008 – 2013 and the Program Director of the Smart Services Cooperative Research Centre, Australia during 2007 – 2014.  His main research interests include multimedia signal processing and communications technology. Farzad is the winner of a number of awards, including the top Australian and Asia Pacific Awards for ICT R&D in 2012.

April 2021

Amateur Radio: The original social media 

This talk will cover the contemporary context of the amateur service, the international regulatory and national legislative background of the amateur service and the role of national and international amateur radio societies in operational, regulatory and governance activities related to the amateur service. Also, this talk will give a brief overview of the Australian preparatory process for each ITU World Radiocommunication Conference. Our speaker will then briefly describe voice and data communications, amateur satellites, amateur TV, emergency, and disaster relief communications and ‘citizen science’. 

Speakers:  

Dale Hughes originally trained in Biomedical Engineering at a major Sydney hospital group before obtaining a physics degree at Wollongong University. Following several years working with the condensed matter and astronomy groups at UOW, Dale was employed as an expedition physicist for the 1994 Australian Antarctic Expedition to Davis Station in Antarctica. After this exposure to atmospheric physics, Dale joined the CSIRO and worked in micrometeorology, wind energy, wind measurement instrument calibration, carbon flux measurements and remote sensing. Since 2016 Dale has worked in the Centre for Water and Landscape Dynamics within the ANU Fenner School and is responsible for designing and building hyperspectral optical and thermal remote sensing systems used for environmental research.

Dale holds an advanced amateur licence with the call sign VK1DSH and has been an active amateur operator since 1981. Since 2010 Dale has been involved in the regulatory aspects of the amateur service, in 2012 Dale was appointed chair of the ITU-R ‘Amateur and Amateur Satellite services working group’ within ITU-R Working Party 5A. Dale has played an active role in international spectrum negotiations and is a frequent member of Australian delegations to meetings covering spectrum management issues. At the last two World Radio communication Conferences (WRC-15 and WRC-19) Dale chaired the treaty level negotiations for WRC agenda items covering the amateur service. Dale has also published approximately fifty technical articles in the amateur radio press covering transceiver designs, satellite tracking systems, amateur TV systems, antennas and other technical topics. Dale has also authored several book chapters for a number of amateur radio publications.

This event is organised by IEEE ComSoc Victorian  

Meeting Recording:
Access Passcode: YB@Q7^L^

Slides: Dale_Hughes_IEEE_Com_Soc Prezzee_Invoice_AU8334E420_5pn6p

 

March 2021

VISIBLE LIGHT POSITIONING – THE ‘INDOOR GPS’ OF THE FUTURE!

GPS has become an invaluable and ubiquitous aspect of daily life. But GPS doesn’t work reliably indoors and despite decades of research on RF wireless solutions no ideal indoor system has emerged. This talk will show how visible light positioning (VLP) using lighting LEDs can become the all-purpose indoor positioning system of the future and how the patented QADA-Plus system can estimate your position within a few centimetres and is also small enough to be incorporated within future mobile phones.

Speakers:

  1. Professor Jean Armstrong received the B.Sc. (First Class Honours) in Electrical Engineering from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland in 1974, the M.Sc. in Digital Techniques from Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland in 1980, and the Ph.D. in Digital Communications from Monash University, Melbourne, Australia in 1993. From 1974-1977 she worked as a Design Engineer at Hewlett-Packard Ltd., Scotland. In 1977 she was appointed Lecturer in Electrical Engineering at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Since 1977 she has held a range of academic positions at the University of Melbourne, Monash University and La Trobe University. She is currently a Professor at Monash University. Her research interests include digital communications, engineering education, and women in engineering. She has published numerous papers on wireless and optical communications papers including over seventy on aspects of OFDM. Her work on OFDM has also led to a number of commercialized patents. Professor Armstrong has been the recipient of numerous awards including induction into the Victorian Honour Roll of Women, 2014 IEEE Communications Society Best Tutorial Paper Award. Peter Doherty Prize for the best commercialization opportunity in Australia in 2006 (joint winner), Institution of Engineers, Australia, Engineering 2000 Award, Zonta International Amelia Earhart Fellowship and Caroline Haslett Memorial Scholarship. She served on the ARC College of Experts from 2012 to 2014 and the ARC ERA Research Evaluation Committee in 2015. She has served on numerous technical program committee. She is currently an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Communications and was previously an Associate Editor for IEEE Communications Letters. She is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (FIEEE) and also a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers Australia (FIEAust).
  2. Dr Stef Cincotta received the B.E. degree (Hons.) and Ph.D. in electrical and computer systems engineering from Monash University, Australia, in 2015 and 2020, where she is currently the research fellow with the department of electrical and computer systems engineering. Her main research interest includes visible light positioning (VLP).

November 2020

ORBITAL ANGULAR MOMENTUM FOR COMMUNICATIONS

It is well known that coherent light beams have an angular momentum associated with them. This is the well-known phenomenon of polarization and  is the direction of oscillation of the electric field of the electromagnetic wave.  In the quantum mechanical view of light, it  is associated with the intrinsic spin of the photons. From a communications engineering viewpoint, this enables two orthogonal channels in, for instance satellite television, thus doubling the channel capacity of a given frequency.

In recent years it has been recognized that there is another angular momentum associated with a coherent light beam. This is called orbital angular momentum (OAM) and is also associated with a quantum mechanical parameter. It corresponds to solutions to Maxwell’s equations with helical wavefronts and, unlike polarization, can, in principle, take infinitely many orthogonal states. The OAM of a coherent beam can be any integer. Creation of low integer OAM states is not very difficult with both metamaterials and computer generated holograms being used. Similar devices can be used to filter light beams to detect such states.

 The ability to reliably create and detect such states holds great potential for communications using electromagnetic waves, both in free space and in optic fibres. Effectively, it is possible to create a number of orthogonal communication channels at a given frequency in an optical fibre.

Our speaker will talk about the theoretical ideas behind this new technology, as well as a few practical aspects and uses in communications.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dFuxTCZfXgX0bf9JyYBQRig0ZfbhMlfQ/view?usp=sharing

Speaker:

Bill Moran currently serves, since 2017, as Professor of Defence Technology in the University of Melbourne. From 2014 to 2017, he was Director of the Signal Processing and Sensor Control Group in the School of Engineering at RMIT University,  from 2001 to 2014,  a  Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Melbourne, Director of Defence Science Institute  in University of Melbourne (2011-14), Professor of Mathematics (1976–1991), Head of the Department of Pure Mathematics (1977–79, 1984–86), Dean of Mathematical and Computer Sciences (1981, 1982, 1989) at the University of Adelaide, and Head of the Mathematics Discipline at the Flinders University of South Australia (1991–95). He was Head of the Medical Signal Processing Program (1995–99) in the Cooperative Research Centre for Sensor Signal and information Processing. He was a member of the Australian Research Council College of Experts from 2007 to 2009.  He was elected to the Fellowship of the Australian Academy of Science in 1984. He holds a Ph.D. in Pure Mathematics from the University of Sheffield, UK (1968), and a First Class Honours B.Sc. in Mathematics from the University of Birmingham (1965). He has been a Principal Investigator on numerous research grants and contracts, in areas spanning pure mathematics to radar development, from both Australian and US Research Funding Agencies, including DARPA, AFOSR, AFRL, Australian Research Council (ARC), Australian Department of Education, Science and Training, and Defence Science and Technology, Australia.  His main areas of research interest are in signal processing both theoretically and in applications to radar, waveform design and radar theory, sensor networks, and sensor management. He also works in various areas of mathematics including harmonic analysis, representation theory, and number theory.

October 2020

RECENT SPECTRUM DEVELOPMENTS IN THE UNITED STATES

Recently, there have been several important regulatory actions in the United States in response to industry developments of the next generation of mobile technologies. Following the release of several GHz of spectrum in the mmwave and sub-mmwave ranges a few years ago, the US FCC embarked upon releasing additional spectrum in the mid-ranges to accelerate the expansion of 5G. These efforts, aside from being exceptionally expeditious, have used novel approaches to arrive at suitable regulatory solutions. From financial incentives to FSS operators in C-band to devising an Automated Frequency Coordination (AFC) vehicle in 6 GHz, these bold solutions are leading to several “first of its kind” solutions, paving the way towards taking full advantage of recent technological developments such as 5G and Wi-Fi 6E.

In this presentation, we look at background and outcome of the FCC’s proceedings related to these bands.

US Spectrum 28 October 2020

Speaker:

Reza Arefi leads Emerging Spectrum Strategies and Planning at Intel. In his role, he develops market-driven spectrum and regulatory strategies that support Intel’s existing and future wireless products. Reza has been actively contributing to standards and various industry and international regulatory groups since 1998, often in leadership roles. These included chairing various activities in ITU-R leading to development of several ITU-R Reports and Recommendations. Reza is currently Vice President of Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA). Reza has made significant contributions to the development of 5G standards and technologies. He holds several patents in the areas of mm-wave technologies and spectrum sharing. He is a Senior Member of IEEE and has been an IEEE-SA member for more than ten years. He holds an EE bachelor’s degree from Sharif University of Technology and a master’s degree from West Virginia University.

September 2020

WHEN VIDEO STREAMING AND ACTIVE QUEUE MANAGEMENT COLLIDES

With video traffic accounting for more than 60% of the global downstream Internet traffic in 2019, video streaming represents a significant portion of inbound traffic to the home environment. Recently, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has standardised three Active Queue Management (AQM) schemes – PIE (RFC8033), CoDel (RFC8289) and FQ-CoDel (RFC8290). These schemes are being progressively deployed at the last-mile Internet Service Providers’ (ISP) end-points and home gateways to counteract bufferbloat and will likely impact consumer video streams. This talk presents the benefits of the emerging AQM schemes in broadband networks and their impact on video streaming traffic and an experimentally validated technique that has been proposed for improving streaming performance in typical consumer home broadband environments.

Speaker:

Jonathan Kua received the B.Eng. (First Class Hons.) degree in telecommunications and network engineering and the Ph.D. degree in telecommunications engineering from Swinburne University of Technology, in 2014 and 2019, respectively. He is currently Lecturer in Internet of Things within the School of Information Technology at Deakin University. His research interests are in the broad areas of computer systems and data networking, including network measurements, adaptive multimedia streaming, data transport protocols and bottleneck queue management techniques. He is also interested in emerging communication technologies for the Internet of Things, distributed computing and networked systems.

THE FUTURE OF HYBRID FIBRE COAXIAL CABLE NETWORK TECHNOLOGY

  • Date: 2 Sept 2020
  • Time: 12:30 PM to 01:45 PM
  • Registration: https://telsoc.org/event/future-hybrid-fibre-coaxial-cable-network-technology

The future of Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC) is very important for Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN), with HFC passing more than 3 million premises. In this presentation the speaker will discuss a potential future for the HFC, driven by the CableLabs’ “10G project”, leading to DOCSIS 4.0. The stages in an NBN upgrade and some of the likely barriers to implementation will be outlined. All this will be set in a context of changing end-user requirements and evolving network capabilities.

https://telsoc.org/event/future-hybrid-fibre-coaxial-cable-network-technology

Speaker:

John Goddard  is a Managing Director at C-COR Broadband Australia Pty Ltd. John has over 45 years experience in the Radio, IT and Telecommunications, and HFC CATV industries, with more than fifteen years in direct engineering/support roles in Radio, Voice, Data and HFC networks including both Hardware and Software solutions, and more than thirty years in Senior Management/Executive and Executive Director roles. This experience has included both local and multinational experience with the RAAF, Wandel & Golterman, Dataplex, Philips Public Telecommunications Systems, and C-COR Inc., C-COR Broadband Australia Pty Ltd, where he has worked in Australia and AsiaPacific as Managing Director and Regional Director. C-COR Broadband now operates and has registered subsidiary offices in Singapore, Taiwan and Pakistan, and has a Sales Office in India. Following the management buy-out of C-COR Broadband Australia in 2006, John accepted the CEO role offered, becoming the head of his own company. He provides management and operational control, defining and mapping the strategic direction of the company. John holds a Diploma of Engineering (Telecommunications); a Diploma in Technical Teaching; a Bachelor of Education Studies; a Diploma in Business Administration; is a Member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors; a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Management (now IML), and is a member of TelSoc. Previously a member of The Society of Cable Telecommunication Engineers (SCTE Australia).

August 2020

NBN – “NEW BROADBAND NORMAL”

The world and broadband now evolve to a new normal.  A centennial pandemic suddenly intensifies our broadband dependency and mandates more ubiquitous and reliable communication everywhere, including Australia’s NBN.   What does this mean for broadband evolution plans?  What must change?  What can change? Fiber to everyone’s wristwatch was never an economically viable solution, but there are paths that address need and viably advance into the new altered future.  Existing facilities’ combined intelligent leverage, and best use of advanced, powerful, and distributing computing can indeed provide viable solutions.  This talk investigates such paths, how to measure their advance, and suggests paths that transcend well into tomorrow’s New Broadband Normal.

Cioffi-Slides-26Aug2020-NBN 3.2

Speaker:

Dr. John M. Cioffi – (M76-SM94-F96): BSEE, 1978,  Illinois; PhDEE,  1984, Stanford;  Bell Laboratories, 1978-1984; IBM Research, 1984-1986; EE Prof., Stanford, 1986-present, now called emeritus.  Cioffi founded Amati Com. Corp in 1991 (purchased by TI in 1997) and was officer/director from 1991-1997.  He currently also is on the Board of Directors of ASSIA (Chairman and CEO), Alto Beam, Tinoq, and the Marconi Foundation. Cioffi’s specific interests are in high-performance digital transmission.      Cioffi’s recognition includes: IEEE AG Bell, Kirchmayer Graduate Teaching, and Millenium Medals (2010, 2014, and 2000); Internet (2014) and Consumer Electronics (2018) Halls of Fame; Economist Magazine 2010 Innovations Award (joint with S. Jobs); International Marconi Fellow (2006); Member, US National and UK Royal Academies of Engineering (2001, 2009); IEEE Kobayashi and Armstrong Awards (2001 and 2013); BBWF Lifetime Achievement (2014), IEEE Fellow (1996); IEE JJ Tomson Medal (2000); 1991 and 2007 IEEE Comm. Mag. best paper; and numerous Conference Best-Paper awards.  Cioffi has published over 800 papers and holds over 200 patents, of which many are heavily licensed including key necessary patents for the international standards in ADSL, VDSL, vectored VDSL, G.fast, DSM, Cellular 3GPP, Multi-user and Massive-MIMO wireless, and various Wi-Fi methodologies.

July 2020

 

ENERGY-EFFICIENT SCHEDULING FOR WIRELESS NETWORK SLICING

In 5G networks, mobile service providers will support vertical slices of mobile applications to meet diverse service quality requirements, such as ultra-low latency, densely distributed users and high reliability. Meanwhile, wireless traffic is explosively growing, driven by widespread mobile communication devices and increasing popularity of mobile applications. The wireless network slicing technique, which is built on network function virtualization and software defined network schemes, will support wireless applications on substrate physical facilities with higher flexibility and lower cost.

A scheduling policy for wireless network slicing should maximize the energy efficiency of the network. (Here, we define energy efficiency as the ratio of long-run average throughput of user requests to the long-run average power consumption.) This is a problem of extremely high computational complexity, which prevents direct application of conventional optimization techniques. We have developed a policy called Most Energy-Efficient Resource First (MEERF), which is scalable and priority-based. MEERF is asymptotically optimal in a local wireless environment with highly dense user population and exponentially distributed service times. Our extensive simulations show the robustness of MEERF to different service time distributions. We also show the effectiveness of MEERF compared to benchmark policies in a more general network with potentially geographically distributed users and infrastructures.

Speaker:

Dr Jing Fu received the B.Eng. degree in computer science from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China, in 2011, and the Ph.D. degree in electronic engineering from the City University of Hong Kong in 2016. She has been with the School of Mathematics and Statistics, the University of Melbourne, as a Post-Doctoral Research Associate from 2016 to 2019. She has been a lecturer in the discipline of Electronic & Telecommunications Engineering, RMIT University, since 2020. Her research interests now include energy-efficient networking/scheduling, resource allocation in large-scale networks, semi-Markov/Markov decision processes, restless multi-armed bandit problems, and stochastic optimization.

June 2020

 

5G ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELDS: EXPOSURE LEVELS AND SAFETY STANDARDS

The presentation will provide a brief introduction to 5G and what it means for electromagnetic (EMF) exposure based on the results of assessments of 5G networks (commercial and pilot) conducted in Australia and overseas.  The international EMF exposure guidelines were updated in March 2020 and one of the major changes was to provide more detailed guidance for frequencies above 6 GHz. Independent public health agencies say that no health risks are expected for 5G but myths and misinformation continue to be spread on social media, including suggestions of a link between wireless technologies and COVID-19. Pointers will be provided to reliable sources of information.

jrowley_2020_06_gsma_IEEE_ComSoc_web

Speaker: 

Dr Jack Rowley works in the Advocacy Programme of the GSMA where he is Senior Director, Research & Sustainability. He is responsible for activities related to the safety of mobile communications and responsible environmental practices. He manages relationships with major stakeholders, contributes to government consultations, develops technical advice for members, delivers specialist training and coordinates GSMA scientific and communications activities related to radiofrequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMFs). Jack has more than 25 years of experience in the telecommunications industry and joined the GSMA in 2000. Previously, he worked for Telstra (Australia), primarily in the Research Laboratories. He holds a B. Eng. degree with first class honours from the University of Limerick (Ireland) and a Ph.D. from the RMIT University (Australia). He is a Senior Member of the IEEE and a member of the Bioelectromagnetics Society.