Honorary Conference Chair

Ibrahim Gedeon (TELUS, Canada)

International Advisory Committee

Abdallah Shami (University of Western Ontario, Canada)
Khaled Ben Letaif (HKUST, China)
Lajos Hanzo (University of Southampton, UK)
Hussein Mouftah (University of Ottawa, Canada)
Albert Zomaya (University of Sidney, Australia)

General Chairs

Zaher Dawy (American University of Beirut, Lebanon)
Hassan Artail (American University of Beirut, Lebanon)

Honorary Technical Program Chair

Peter Mueller (IBM, Switzerland)

Technical Program Chairs

Youssef Nasser (American University of Beirut, Lebanon)
Abdallah Shami (University of Western Ontario , Canada)
Ronald Raulefs (German Aerospace Center, Germany)

Wireless Communications and Signal Processing →

Nizar Zorba (QMIC, Qatar)
Tarek Al Naffouri (KAUST, KSA)
Oussama Bazzi (Lebanese University, Lebanon)

Mobile & Cloud Computing →

Ali Chehab (AUB, Lebanon)
Marco Di Felice (University of Bologna, Italy)
Majd Sakr (Carnigie Mellon, Qatar)

Networks & Internet Technologies →

Ayman Kayssi (AUB, Lebanon)
Ala Al-Fuqaha (Western Michigan University, USA)
Jamal Zemerly (Khalifa University, UAE)

Digital Information Management & Security →

Hazem Hajj (AUB, Lebanon)
Khalil El-Khatib (UOIT, Canada)
Hamid Mcheick (Uni du Québec à Chicoutimi, Canada )

Tutorial Chairs

Emilio Calvanese Strinati (CEA-Leti, France)
Sherif Aly (American University of Cairo, Egypt)

Regional Publicity Chair

Berk Canberk (Istanbul Technical University, Turkey)
Hamid Menouar (QMIC, Qatar)
Stavros Stavrou (Open University of Cyprus, Cyprus)

International Publicity Chairs

Chadi Assi (Concordia University, Canada)
Merouane Debbah (SUPELEC, France)
Jaime Lloret Mauri (Univ. Politécnica de Valencia, Spain)
Walid Saad (University of Miami, USA)

Special Sessions Chairs

Yves Louet (Supelec, Rennes, France)
Haidar Safa (American University of Beirut, Lebanon)

Publication Committee Chairs

Wassim Hajj (American University of Beirut, Lebanon)
Elias Yaacoub (QMIC, Qatar)
Khalil Mershad (American University of Beirut, Lebanon)

Registration and Finance Chair

Nidal Nasser (Alfaisal University, KSA)

Local Organization Chairs

Ahmad El-Hajj (American University of Beirut, Lebanon)
Lise Safatly (American University of Beirut, Lebanon)

ICCIT Asia Representative

Jalal Karam (Nazarbayev University, Republic of Kazakhstan)

Prof. Ian Akyildiz

I. F. AKYILDIZ received his BS, MS, and PhD degrees in Computer Engineering from the University of Erlangen-Nuernberg, Germany, in 1978, 1981 and 1984, respectively. Currently, he is the Ken Byers Chair Professor with the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Director of the Broadband Wireless Networking Laboratory and Chair of the Telecommunications Group. He is an Honorary Professor with School of Electrical Engineering at the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, and Director of N3Cat (NaNoNetworking Center in Catalunya) in Barcelona, Spain, since June 2008. Dr. Akyildiz is also the Finnish Distinguished Professor with Tampere University of Technology, Tampere, Finland since January 2013.

He is the Editor-in-Chief of Computer Networks (Elsevier) Journal since 2000, the founding Editor-in-Chiefs of the Ad Hoc Networks Journal (2003), Physical Communication (PHYCOM) Journal (2008), and Nano Communication Networks (NANOCOMNET) Journal (2010) all published by Elsevier.

Dr. Akyildiz is an IEEE FELLOW (1996) and an ACM FELLOW (1997). He received the 1997 IEEE Leonard G. Abraham Prize award and the 2003 Best Tutorial Paper Award and the Best Paper Awards at IEEE ICC, June 2009 and IEEE Globecom 2010 conferences (all IEEE Communications Society).

He received the “Don Federico Santa Maria Medal” for his services to the Universidad of Federico Santa Maria in Chile in 1986. He served as a National Lecturer for ACM from 1989 until 1998 and received the ACM Outstanding Distinguished Lecturer Award for 1994. Dr. Akyildiz received the 2002 IEEE Harry M. Goode Memorial award (IEEE Computer Society) and the 2003 ACM SIGMOBILE Outstanding Contribution Award for his “pioneering contributions in the area of mobility and resource management for wireless communication networks”.

Dr. Akyildiz received the 2004 Georgia Tech Faculty Research Author Award for his “outstanding record of publications of papers between 1999-2003”. He also received the 2005 Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award from School of ECE, Georgia Tech, and the Georgia Tech Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Advisor Award for his 20+ years service and dedication to Georgia Tech and producing outstanding PhD students. He also received the 2009 ECE Distinguished Mentor Award by the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Honors Committee.

Dr. Akyildiz received the 2010 IEEE Communications Society Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks Technical Committee (AHSN TC) Technical Recognition Award with the citation: “For pioneering contributions to wireless sensor networks and wireless mesh networks”, in December 2010. He received the 2011 IEEE Computer Society W. Wallace McDowell Award for pioneering contributions to wireless sensor network architectures and communication protocols and the 2011 TUBITAK (Turkish National Science Foundation) Exclusive Award for outstanding contributions to the advancement of scholarship/research at international level.

He is the author of two textbooks on “Wireless Sensor Networks” and on “Wireless Mesh Networks” published by John Wiley & Sons in 2010 and 2007, respectively.

His current research interests are in Next Generation Cellular Systems, Nanonetworks, Cognitive Radio Networks and Wireless Sensor Networks.

Abstract:

Roadmap to 4G and Beyond: LTE-A and Small Cells

In order to meet the ever-growing need for wireless data and services, LTE Advanced and beyond 4G (B4G) cellular systems are advocating fundamental advances in both utilizing the radio access spectrum efficiently and providing efficient data and service delivery through new system architectures. A wide spectrum of advanced communication techniques comprising, among others, carrier aggregation, advanced MIMO, cooperative communication, or self-organizing networks, are currently being investigated and standardized. However, historic data regarding capacity improvements in wireless networks show that the largest gains ever obtained come mainly from the use of smaller cells. These can provide more than three orders of magnitude increase in network capacity. For this reason, the paradigm of Heterogeneous Cellular Networks (HetNet), comprised of a macrocell network underlaid by one or several tiers of small cells, has become a key element in the envisioned future cellular system of every wireless carrier across the world. A tremendous activity on small cells has been conducted in recent years by standardization bodies including 3GPP, 3GPP2 and the WiMAX forum. Similarly, world-wide academic research and industry efforts, which include leading service providers and equipment manufacturers, have embraced small-cell technology as a key element for future wireless cellular systems. Although in order to fully exploit the potential of this technology, a number of technical challenges still need to be solved, a varied range of small cell solutions for cellular systems have already been adopted and deployed.

Prof. Merouane Debbah

Mérouane Debbah entered the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan (France) in 1996 where he received his M.Sc and Ph.D. degrees respectively. He worked for Motorola Labs (Saclay, France) from 1999-2002 and the Vienna Research Center for Telecommunications (Vienna, Austria) until 2003. He then joined the Mobile Communications department of the Institut Eurecom (Sophia Antipolis, France) as an Assistant Professor until 2007. He is now a Full Professor at Supelec (Gif-sur-Yvette, France), holder of the Alcatel-Lucent Chair on Flexible Radio and a recipient of the ERC starting grant MORE (Advanced Mathematical Tools for Complex Network Engineering). His research interests are in information theory, signal processing and wireless communications. He is a senior area editor for IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing. Mérouane Debbah is the recipient of the “Mario Boella” award in 2005, the 2007 General Symposium IEEE GLOBECOM best paper award, the Wi-Opt 2009 best paper award, the 2010 Newcom++ best paper award as well as the Valuetools 2007, Valuetools 2008, Valuetools 2012 and CrownCom2009 best student paper awards. He is a WWRF fellow. In 2011, he received the IEEE Glavieux Prize Award.

Abstract:

How To Densify: Massive (MIMO) or Small (Cells)

Wireless networks are inherently limited by their own interference. Therefore, a lot of research focuses on interference reduction techniques, such as mutiuser MIMO, interference alignment, interference coordination or multi-cell processing. Although these techniques might lead to considerable performance gains, it is unlikely that they will be able to meet the demand for wireless data traffic in the future. Therefore, a significant network densification, i.e., increasing the number of antennas per unit area, is inevitable. One way of densifying the network consists in cell-size shrinking, such as the deployment of femto or small cells, which comes at the cost of additional equipments and increased interference. Another much simpler, but also less efficient, option is the use of massively more antennas at each base station (BS). In this talk, we will discuss the challenges of small cell versus massive MIMO networks and show how Random Matrices provides the ideal framework to model, design and optimize beyond LTE (Long Term Evolution) networks.

Prof. Brian Evans

Prof. Evans holds the Engineering Foundation Professorship at The University of Texas at Austin. He researches embedded real-time digital signal processing for communication and image processing systems. His research group develops theory, algorithms, design methods and full-system testbeds. He has published 200+ peer-reviewed journal/conference papers, and graduated 20 PhD and 9 MS students. He was elevated to IEEE Fellow “for contributions in multicarrier communications and image display”. He received a US National Science Foundation CAREER Award.

Abstract:

Smart Grid Communications

Smart Grid systems intelligently monitor and control energy flows in order to improve efficiency and reliability of power delivery. A local utility would receive customer load profiles from smart meters, and adjust power generation and energy distribution accordingly. Smart meters could transmit usage data over powerline or wireless links once per minute.
Smart Grid communication over outdoor power lines is attractive because it uses existing infrastructure. However, it is limited by the strong impulsive noise, esp. from power electronics and wireless signals, within the 3-500 kHz transmission band.

In improving reliability of outdoor powerline communication (PLC), we derive impulsive noise models using field measurements, develop receiver methods to mitigate the noise, and implement those methods in our real-time testbed. One of our impulsive noise models has been adopted by the IEEE 1901.2 PLC standard.

This research is supported by National Instruments, as well as SRC GRC ICSS Task 1836.063 with sponsors Freescale Semiconductor, IBM and Texas Instruments.

Mr. Ziad Zorkot

With over 16 years of experience in Networks’ Engineering, Ziad joined touch in June 2012 as Quality Manager leading the end-to-end network quality team, RAN performance (2G/3G/LTE), Transmission and IP performance, Core performance CS/PS and customer quality of experience and suppliers’ escalation management. Prior to this position and before running the operations of NSN, he worked in Motorola for 7 years and grew from Engineering Manager to Program & Services Manager where he was responsible for performing project and resource planning and execution, managing customer relations and leading all services’ delivery among many other tasks.

Ziad earned his Bachelor of Engineering degree in Communication and Electronics from Beirut Arab University and pursued his education further to receive a Master’s certificate in project management from George Washington University.

Ziad backed up his technical experience by developing and managing technical courses sand workshops.

He also has strong interpersonal and management skills as he was responsible for leading section managers and chief engineers and worked on team building and development to ensure synergy among the members working in the various departments in which he was involved.

Outline:

Challenges in Mobile Broadband Evolution

• Mobile data growth and its impact on existing 2G/3G technologies
• The need for more capacity in mobile networks
• Capacity enhancing techniques
• Evolution to LTE and 4G technology
• LTE Advanced – Beyond 4G
• Touch mobile data traffic increase and network evolution
• Touch 4G Network deployment status

Tutorial 1

Energy Efficiency in Wireless Communication Networks

Abstract:

The environmental and energy efficiency issues became more obvious to a larger audience in the last. Recently, increasing maturity of mobile technology in combination with the growing amount of equipment deployed each year has woken up the need of innovating in the field of energy efficient communications.

In the last decade telecommunication has experienced a tremendous success causing proliferation and demand for ubiquitous heterogeneous broadband mobile wireless communications. Up to now, innovation has mainly targeted to improve wireless networks coverage and capacity while meeting the QoS for users admitted in the system. Nowadays, the number of mobile subscribers equals more than half the global population. Forecast on telecommunication market assume an increase in subscribers, per subscriber’s data rate and, the roll out of additional base stations for next generation mobile networks.

The undesired consequence is the growth of wireless network’s energy consumption which will cause an increase of the global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and, impose more and more challenging operational cost for operators. Communication energy efficiency represents indeed an alarming bottleneck in the telecommunication growth paradigm.

The ‘A Survey on Energy Efficiency in Wireless Communication Networks’ tutorial presents and analyzes the most significant technical proposals in the field of green communications for wireless networks. A key objective of our tutorial is to go beyond the current state of the art and provide a view into a potential holistic analysis that combines and extends the current set of energy saving techniques. With this tutorial, we first present the specific challenges for green communications. Then, after presenting the current proposed solutions, approaches and trends, we set the technical framework introducing currently investigated metrics, topologies and architectures for wireless networks’ energy efficiency. In a second part of the tutorial we present limitations and costs of hardware devices. In the thirds part of the tutorial we discuss on energy efficient protocol and network management solutions, ranging from coding and modulation scaling to interference management, resource allocation, multi-RAT, cognitive radio and discontinuous transmission techniques. In the end, this tutorial will present some future visionary network design, their possible backward capability with current standards and summarize some open problems on critical energy-efficient design issues.

Targeted audiences for the ‘A Survey on Energy Efficiency in Wireless Communication Networks’ tutorial are academia, industry, research institutes, PhD students and project managers.

Bio of Lecturer:

Dr. Emilio Calvanese Strinati obtained his Engineering Masters degree in 2001 from the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’ and his Ph.D in Engineering Science in 2005 on Radio link control for improving the QoS of wireless packet transmission. He then started working at Motorola Labs in Paris in 2002. Then in 2006 he joint CEA/LETI as a research engineer. From 2007, he becomes a PhD supervisor. Since 2011 he is the Smart Devices & Telecommunications European collaborative strategic programs Director. E. Calvanese Strinati has published around 50 papers in international conferences and books chapters, and is the main inventor or co-inventor of more than 30 patents. He has organized more than 10 international workshops and special sessions on green communications and heterogeneous networks hosted in international conferences as IEEE GLOBCOM, IEEE PIMRC, IEEE WCNC, IFIP, and European Wireless. Dr. Calvanese Strinati he is the project manager in CEA of the Green Communication EARTH IP-FP7 project and he has been the co-chair of the wireless working group in GreenTouch from April 2010 to January 2012.

Tutorial 2

Mobile Cloud Computing

Abstract:

Together with an explosive growth of the mobile applications and the usefulness of the cloud computing concepts, mobile cloud computing has emerged as a potential enabling technology for future generation mobile services and applications. Mobile cloud computing integrates the cloud computing concepts into the mobile environment and overcomes obstacles related to the performance improvement of mobile computing systems (e.g., battery life, bandwidth, and capacity), networking environment (e.g., heterogeneity, scalability, and availability), and mobile system security (e.g., reliability and privacy).

In this tutorial, an exposition to mobile cloud computing will be provided. Starting with the motivations of mobile cloud computing, the basics of the relevant technologies including mobile and wireless services, grid and utility computing, and cloud computing will be discussed. Then, the details of a mobile computing architecture and its components will be described. In particular, an overview of the concepts such as data center, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS) will be given. Next, a variety of applications which use mobile cloud computing will be discussed. Then, the research issues and challenges in mobile cloud services, and different approaches proposed in the literature to solve these challenges will be discussed. In this context, two optimization models developed for mobility-aware offloading and admission control of mobile cloud users in mobile cloud computing environment will be presented. To this end, we will outline several major research directions in mobile cloud computing which include power management and quality-of-service support for mobile devices, standard interface for data exchange, service pricing and revenue management for service providers, and service convergence for application developers.

Bio of Lecturer:

Dusit Niyato is currently an Assistant Professor in the Division of Computer Communications, School of Computer Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His current research interests include design, analysis, and optimization of wireless communication and networks, mobile cloud computing, smart grid systems, and green radio communications. He is co-author of the books Dynamic Spectrum Access and Management in Cognitive Radio Networks and Game Theory in Wireless and Communication Networks: Theory, Models, and Applications. He has published more than 80 papers in leading Journal and Conferences related to protocol design and radio resource management in mobile communication systems. Dr. Niyato serves as an Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing (WCMC) Journal, and Journal of Communications and Networks (JCN). He served as a co-chair for the Next Generation Mobile Networks Symposium held in conjunction with International Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Conference (IWCMC) in 2009 and 2010.

Tutorial 3

Wireless Small Cell Networks

Abstract:

Small cell networks (SCNs) are seen as a promising solution for boosting the capacity of wireless networks, while efficiently offloading data and expanding coverage in a cost-effective manner. In this tutorial, we provide a comprehensive overview on SCNs while highlighting the key challenges, associated techniques, and the future landscape. First, we provide an overview on advanced analytical techniques, such as stochastic geometry, suitable for modeling and analyzing SCNs. We show how these new spatial and random statistical models provide tractable and powerful tools for computing network performance metrics, such as coverage probability and spectral efficiency. Second, we delve into the details of advanced interference management techniques tailored for the unique features of SCNs. In particular, we introduce key concepts such as cell range expansion, cell selection, and adaptive resource partitioning that lie at the heart of next-generation LTE-Advanced systems. Then, we discuss in detail the concept of self-organizing networks (SONs) as it applies to small cell deployment. Here, we focus on novel game-theoretic and reinforcement learning techniques that are seen as a key enabler for deploying self-optimizing and self-configuring heterogeneous and small-cell networks. We conclude the tutorial by providing an in-depth overview of the current and future challenges facing the large-scale deployment of SCNs.

Bio of Lecturer:

Walid Saad received his B.E. degree in Computer and Communications Engineering from the Lebanese University in 2004, his M.E. in Computer and Communications Engineering from the American University of Beirut (AUB) in 2007, and his Ph.D degree from the University of Oslo in 2010. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Miami. Prior to joining UM, he has held several research positions at institutions such as Princeton University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research interests include wireless and small cell networks, game theory, network science, cognitive radio, wireless security, and smart grids. He has over 60 international conference and journal publications in these areas. Dr. Saad is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award in 2013. He was the author/co-author of the papers that received the Best Paper Award at the 7th International Symposium on Modeling and Optimization in Mobile, Ad Hoc and Wireless Networks (WiOpt), in June 2009, at the 5th International Conference on Internet Monitoring and Protection (ICIMP) in May 2010, and at IEEE WCNC in 2012.