The IEEE Communications Society History committee organized a special panel at IEEE GLOBECOM 2022 to celebrate the 70th anniversary of ComSoc. The panel featured well known individuals in communications technology as speakers who recognized communications leaders who had been instrumental in advancing communications and also ComSoc, but who had died in 2022. Looking at their lives and careers made communications technology come alive.

The central topic of the course is the study of architectures and protocols to enable virtualization in future communication networks, with a specific focus on mobile networks (5G and beyond). Softwarization and virtualization are considered vital in the next generation of communication networks, as seen in the current framework of 5G as standardization moves from New Radio to the infrastructure and management aspects. This course presents a holistic understanding of such technologies, and it proposes both theoretical as well as practical concepts. An extensive hands-on component is included in this course, where participants will learn how to use the discussed technologies.

The technical issues addressed by the course will include:

Introductory session: Presenting the reasoning on the need for computing in communication networks, this introduction will provide a picture of the evolution of networks up to present day. Instructors will discuss 5G basics, requirements, evolution from 4G and current standardization status and beyond. The hands-on practice environment and its concepts will be also introduced during this part of the course.
Key theoretical concepts: The first part of this session will address Software Defined Networking (SDN) and will describe conceptual issues and design opportunities deriving from the detachment of the control plane from the data plane, network programmability, and existing solutions in the SDN eco-system (mainly OpenFlow, but with an overview of ONOS and P4). Next the instructors will cover Network Function Virtualization (NFV), discussing conceptual issues and design opportunities deriving from the abstraction of network functionalities from dedicated hardware, performance issues, and existing solutions for NFV (docker, OpenStack).
Hands-on sessions on SDN and NFV: This portion of the course will provide participants with an opportunity to review the concepts presented earlier in the course in a practical environment.
Concepts and hands-on on advanced network services: The instructors will discuss Mobile Edge Cloud, Network Coding, as well as Machine Learning and Compressed Sensing applications. Pre-defined examples in the distributed Virtual Machine will be used to illustrate the practical implementation of such concepts and enable the participants to “play” with such technologies themselves.
Advanced topics will be reviewed at the end of the course, allowing time for a question and answer session with the participants.
The course is the first of its kind that tries to build up a holistic understanding of the technologies supporting the development of the next generation of communication networks (e.g. 5G), and proposes both theoretical as well as practical concepts – including extensive hands-on where the attendees will learn how to use the presented technologies.

In fact, besides the theoretical subjects above, the course will also address the issues about actual deployment and implementation of such concepts, by introducing to the participants the proper open-source software tools to use for experimentation. Details regarding the software to download and install will be shared with participants in advance of the course, so that they will are ready to participate in real-time during the hands-on experience. Practical sessions will be explored step-by-step by the instructors as well as in supplemental materials.

The course is based on a book written by the instructors on “Computing in Communication Networks,” which was recently published by Elsevier in May 2020. The virtual machine referenced in the course can be accessed at https://git.comnets.net/public-repo/comnetsemu

6G and beyond systems will continue to rely heavily on ubiquitous wireless connectivity. Different than the generations that came before, next generation systems will need to cater to applications that demand more than just faster rates. The increasingly capable wireless edge consisting of multifunctional devices will aid in the paradigm shift where networked communication occurs to realize, support or improve a functionality other than (or in addition to) reliably communicating digital messages. Catalyzed by the AI revolution, the next wireless revolution thus promises to bring to life integrated designs fueled by the edge. This talk will delve into the new paradigm of connecting with purpose, where the wireless edge devices communicate (collectively) to support a goal such as designing a learning model, realizing a learning system, computing, and sensing.  The talk will provide a summary of our recent contributions in this paradigm in several directions. The talk will demonstrate, with relevant theory and applications to use cases, the design of semantic networks and task-oriented communications, joint communication and sensing systems, and wireless edge networks that improve distributed AI. We will conclude with future directions.

With the rise of the Agentic-AI and Embodiment-AI, the state-of-the-art of AI has four powerful capabilities: (1) infinity-long token generative-AI (2) infinity-step of logic-reasoning (3) direct natural-language-to-X (4) novel Agent-native language. These unprecedent intelligent capabilities open a new opportunity for novel communications paradigm, instead of transmission of bits, we focus on two types of communications objects, the AI Model and Tokens, their traffic properties and security/privacy aspect of such two types communications. We present new architecture for AI communications, with respect to AI device, access network, core network and the AI computing-cluster cloud. We also raise the research topic for further study: (1) the token capacity of a model (2) the Turing-complete AI-Agent machine, (3) the language of Agent-Automata.

Immersive communication has been identified as one of the new usage scenario of IMT-2030 (6G). As we move toward a hyper-connected future, the demand for highly interactive and immersive experiences that blur the lines between the physical and virtual worlds is rapidly increasing. To realize these experiences, a profound synergy between network capabilities and media technologies is essential. This keynote explores how advanced network architectures and media processing techniques can be co-designed to meet the stringent requirements of immersive services, and thus to enable vertical applications across various sector. We will discuss the evolution of network technologies towards 6G, and also delve into media technology advancements that optimize content generation and delivery over 6G, with highlighting the need for standardized frameworks and collaboration between academia and industry stakeholders.

A Keynote on The Power of Submarine Cables: Transforming Africa into a Global Digital Hub.

Today, the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry consumes about 5% of the world’s energy resources. Yet, with the explosion in channel bandwidths, network densification/buildout, and power-hungry Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) applications for 5G and tomorrow’s 6G wireless networks, our industry will soon consume about 1/5 of the planet’s energy resources.  This keynote demonstrates the evolution of energy consumption across the globe, and illustrates how the industrial and information revolutions have caused different parts of the globe to manage their energy production and resources in highly localized, disparate manners. Remarkably,  however, all wireless deployments tend to follow similar energy demand patterns, and our industry has created standards for energy efficiency (EE) to allow operators and manufacturers to deploy and provision networks for sustainability.  This talk illustrates the difficulty and complexity of trying to quantify the energy consumption of a mobile radio network, and reveals how all of the existing energy efficiency (EE) standards have significant flaws in capturing true energy efficiency. These flaws have likely slowed the adoption and utilization of 5G while clouding the understanding of power consumption in networks today.    Fortunately, a new theory, called the Waste Factor theory, lays bare all of the energy consumption aspects of any communication or computer network, and offers the ability for the ICT industry to accurately design, compare, and optimize energy efficiency in any multi-user network that has a source and a sink (or sinks) of information. This talk demonstrates how Waste Factor was inspired by the popular Noise Factor theory developed at Bell Labs 80 years ago, and shows how to use the Waste Factor theory for determining energy consumption in a real world radio access network (RAN) or even a  data center. The talk concludes by comparing Waste Factor with the global standards being used today in the ICT industry, highlighting the generality and utility of the Waste Factor to quantify and expose energy consumption sources that are currently being missed in today’s standards, allowing better network provisioning, optimization and substantially more energy efficient designs which are vital for our industry and planet.

As the countdown to the 6G era accelerates, it’s time to take a closer look at the likely path of this new generation that, since 2018, has received the broadest and the longest period of global explorative R&D attention in history. What distinguishes the evolutionary revolution towards 6G from previous generations? Is it really about digital twins for everything or metaverse for all? Will 6G and beyond be defined following traditional closed-loop design patterns of standardization-test-deployment in which standardization plays the key, and almost the only role? We believe this may not be the case. The evolution of 5G towards 6G is a continuation of the true ICDT convergence in the Information era. It’s a result of a "perfect storm" formed by multiple new tenets integrated together, from AI and big data to softwarization, open source movements, and so on. In this keynote, we will explore these key drivers. We will also re-think the potential role changes of SDOs and correspondingly, that of open source software and open reference design hardware in the new era. We will also shed some light on two fundamental pillars: sustainability and security, which have been recognized as among the most crucial needs of our industry and gained unprecedented attention in the 6G design space, as they should. By examining these trends and their implications for the industry, we may gain a deeper understanding of the future of telecommunications and be better focused on the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead.

Over the past 40 years we have witnessed a phenomenal success of wireless networks from 1G to 5G. Starting on serving mobile telephony, then the mobile Internet, we can now control the motion of real and virtual objects (Tactile Internet). So far, we have thrived on a moderate 10-year interval between generations, relying on networks to keep our bits and bytes safe. However, despite experiencing a multi-year slowdown in innovation due to COVID-19, there is now mounting pressure to accelerate generational change towards 6G. The challenge lies in how operators can invest in the rollout of 6G while facing increasing difficulties in generating sufficient profits for future advancements. And, we have major challenges ahead: how to drastically cut the operational expenditures (OPEX), revisit the coverage challenge, adding needed new features, and last not least focusing on the trustworthiness of our networks. The talk will address technical challenges and amazing opportunities ahead, but also should wakeup the responsibility within every one of us to create a path for a great wireless future. Or are we possibly pushing the needle to a breakpoint?