Keynote Speakers

Shannonian Lessons for Wireless, the 'World-Wide Wait' and 'Green' Radios...

Speaker: Lajos Hanzo, School of ECS, Univ. of Southampton

Abstract:
The Myth: Channel capacity is arbitrarily approached - zero error and cost-effective, flawless 'telepresence' for anyone, anywhere, anytime!
The Reality: The moment we leave the office, our ability to access multimedia services becomes desperately limited - if not unfeasible - especially on the move!
The Challenge: Averting the "World Wide Wait" - but how, Dr Shannon?
Since Marconi demonstrated the feasibility of radio transmissions, researchers have endeavoured to fulfill the dream of flawless wireless multimedia telecommunications, creating the impression of tele-presence - at the touch of a dialling key and with the aid of the future wireless solutions to be discussed in the lecture.
Commencing with a brief historical perspective on the generations of wireless systems, Shannon's lessons are contrasted with the practical constraints imposed on state-ofthe- art multimedia communicators. In the face of adverse wireless channel conditions it is unrealistic to expect that any fixed-mode wireless system remains capable of maintaining a constant quality-of-service. Thismotivates the design of cutting-edge near-instantaneously adaptivemodulation and coding aidedmulti-media transceivers, which offer capabilities beyond those of conventional systems. Indeed, they facilitated in excess of a 1000-fold bit-rate increase since the conception of GSM...
However, at what price? Is this 1000-fold bit-rate increase sufficient anyway to support the impression of flawless tele-presence with its sense of joy, wonder and ambiance? Or are we about to be further frustrated by the 'World-Wide Wait' (WWW) experienced at places of high tele-traffic density?
A glimpse of the recent advances reveals that they are capable of circumventing the 'worldwide wait' in the emerging wireless Internet, while facilitating sustainable, 'green' communications...

Biography:
Lajos Hanzo received his degree in electronics from the Technical University of Budapest in 1976, his doctorate in 1983, defended his DSC Candidate thesis in 1992 and his Doctor of Sciences (DSc) degree in 2004. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng).
During his career in telecommunications he has held various research and academic posts in Hungary, Germany and the UK. Since 1986 he has been with the School of ECS, University of Southampton, UK, where holds the Chair in Telecommunications. He co-authored 20 Wiley - IEEE Press books totalling 10 000 pages on mobile radio communications, published in excess of 1200 research contributions at IEEE Xplore and acted as General Chair/TPC Chair as well as keynote speaker of major IEEE Conferences, such as WCNC'2009, WCNC'2006, Mobimedia'2008, Mobimedia'2009, CNSR'2009, WiAd'10, WiAd'11, VTC'10S, Globecom'10, WCNC'11, VTC'11S, etc. He has also been awarded a number of distinctions, such as the IEEE Wireless Technical Committee Achievement Award and the IET's Sir Monti Finniston Award across all disciplines. He received Best Paper Awards for example at WCNC'2007, ICC'2009 and ICC'2010. He heads an academic research team, working on a range of research projects in the field of wireless multimedia communications sponsored by industry, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) UK, the European Commission and the Mobile Virtual Centre of Excellence (VCE), UK. He is an enthusiastic supporter of industrial and academic liaison and he offers a range of industrial courses. Lajos is an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer as well as Governor of the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society and a Fellow of both the IET and the IEEE. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Press. For further information on research in progress and associated publications please refer to https://www-mobile.ecs.soton.ac.uk

Revisiting Interoperability: The Case for Emergent Middleware

Speaker: Gordon Blair, Lancaster University

Abstract:
Interoperability is a fundamental property in distributed systems, referring to the ability for two or more systems, potentially developed by different manufacturers, to work together, including the ability to exchange and interpret action requests and associated data sets. Over the history of distributed systems, a number of interoperability solutions have emerged both in terms of proposed standards for interoperability and solutions to bridging between standards. Distributed systems have, however continued to evolve and we particularly note two important trends: the dramatically increasing level of heterogeneity coupled by the increasing dynamism in contemporary distributed systems. The emergence of mobile computing has been a major factor behind these trends (as has other areas such as ubiquitous computing cloud computing). The end result is that it is very difficult to achieve interoperability in any systematic way. Indeed, we can say that distributed systems are in crisis with no principled solutions to interoperability for such complex and dynamic distributed systems structures. This talk discusses the problems of achieving interoperability in the complex distributed systems of today, and highlights the role of emergent middleware as a possible solution to this problem.
Emergent middleware is an interoperability solution whereby the required connectivity is generated at run-time to match the current context and requirements. This represents significant research challenges related to, for example, discovering and learning protocols and services at run-time, at various levels of the systems architecture, the dynamic synthesis of appropriate solutions, and the monitoring of the resultant infrastructure to ensure it achieves the desired effect. The talk also considers the potential role of ontologies in supporting meaning and reasoning in the above processes. The talk will conclude with considerations of how this approach can be extended to achieve other properties including key non-functional requirements of an interconnection.

Note that this talk is based on research carried out in the Connect project, a European collaboration funded under the Framework 7 Future and Emerging Technologies Programme (Proactive Theme on ICT Forever Yours): https://www.connect-forever.eu.


Biography:
Gordon Blair is a Professor of Distributed Systems in the Computing Department at Lancaster University and is also an Adjunct Professor at the University of Tromsø in Norway. He has published over 280 papers in his field and is on the PCs of many major international conferences in middleware and distributed systems. He is also chair of the steering committee of the ACM/ IFIP/ Usenix Middleware series of conferences. His current research interests include distributed systems architecture, middleware (including reflective and adaptive middleware), model-driven engineering techniques applied to adaptive distributed systems, and the applicability of contemporary distributed systems technologies (including cloud computing) to environmental science. He has recently taken on the role of being co-author of the highly successful book Distributed Systems: Concepts and Design by Coulouris, Dollimore and Kindberg with the 5th edition due out in May 2011. He is also Director of the HighWire Centre for Doctoral Training, a PhD programe taking a cross-disciplinary perspective on innovation as it relates to the digital economy.