Symposia

The IEEE Communications Society invites the world's leading researchers and engineers from academia, industry and government to exchange their ideas at the IEEE ICC 2009 conference in Dresden, Germany in June 2009. At IEEE ICC 2009 original papers on the most recent results and technology trends in the field of communications are presented. The technical program is divided in 11 symposia:

1. Symposium on Selected Areas in Communications
Co-Chairs: Yacine Ghamri-Doudane, Gabriel Jakobson, K.P. Subbalakshmi, Madjid Merabti, Sedat Oelcer

2. Communication Theory Symposium
Co-Chairs: Lutz Lampe, Aylin Yener, Angela Yingjun Zhang

3. Signal Processing for Communications Symposium
Co-Chairs: Luc Deneire, Tomohiko Taniguchi, Wai Pang Ng

4. Wireless Communications Symposium
Co-Chairs: Sonia Aissa, Nallanathan Arumugam, Erik Perrins, Yi Qian, Matthew Valenti, Takayo Yamazato

5. Wireless Networking Symposium
Co-Chairs: Yu Cheng, Hossam Hassanein, Mario Marchese, Abdelhamid Mellouk

6. Optical Networks and Systems Symposium
Co-Chairs: Dominic Schupke, Kyriakos Vlachos, Jun Zheng

7. Next Generation Networking Symposium
Co-Chairs: Mohammed Atiquzzaman, Marcus Brunner, Latif Latid, Ivica Rimac

8. Communications QoS, Reliability and Modelling Symposium
Co-Chairs: Nelson Fonseca, Ralf Lehnert, Hiromi Ueda

9. Adhoc and Sensor Networking Symposium
Co-Chairs: Tommaso Melodia, Hongchi Shi, Larry Xue, Mohamed Younis

10. Communications Software and Services Symposium
Co-Chairs: Wolfgang Kellerer, Pascal Lorenz, Giovanni Pau, Lars Wolf

11. Communication and Information Systems Security Symposium
Co-Chairs: Raouf Boutaba, Stefanos Gritzalis, Jiankun Hu, Peter Müller

The IEEE ICC 2009 Symposium in Selected Areas in Communications (SSAC) concentrates on new and emerging communication technology areas, including the ones that are not directly addressed in any of the ten named symposia. It offers a open forum for academic and industrial researchers to exchange the latest technical information and research findings on novel communication concepts, technologies, systems, and applications.

Topics of Particular Interest

• Vehicular Communications
  • MAC and PHY Layers for In-Vehicle Communications
  • MAC and PHY Layers for Inter-Vehicle Communications (DSRC, 802.11p)
  • Applications
  • Inter-Vehicle Applications
  • In-Vehicle Applications
  • Vehicle to Roadside Applications
  • Vehicular Networks
  • Architectures and protocols (e.g., WAVE, C2CC)
  • Mobility and vehicle traffic models
  • Market introduction and penetration
  • Security, privacy and liability
  • Real-world testbeds and field trials
• Situation Management in Communications
  • Situation Modelling, Awareness and Decision Support
  • Situation monitoring, reasoning and decision support
  • Predictive situation modeling
  • Situation ontology and semantics incl. semantic web
  • Formal methods and situation calculus
  • Learning and situation discovery
  • Information Fusion and Event Correlation
  • Multi-source, multi-resolution and hierarchical information fusion
  • Information fusion and situation awareness
  • Event correlation algorithms
  • Situation Management Architectures and Platforms
  • Multi-agent systems and distributed situation management
  • Collaborative models of situation management
  • Peer-to-peer architectures for situation awareness
  • Situation Management Applications and Experiences
  • Asymmetric, net-centric and tactical battlespace operations
  • Earth observations, disaster response and crisis management
  • Intelligent transportation, health care, and enterprise management networks
• Cognitive Networks
  • Policies and Economics
  • Spectrum policies and regulatory issues
  • Economic/Game theoretic analysis of spectrum markets
  • Network Protocols and Theoretical Foundations
  • Fundamental performance results of cognitive networks
  • Coding for QoS support (e.g., erasure coding)
  • Cognitive MAC, routing and application layer protocols
  • Spectrum sensing and etiquette
  • Cognitive networks security issues
  • Experiences
  • Test-beds and experimental results
  • Platforms to implement cognitive networks (e.g., software defined radios)
  • Applications of cognitive networks (e.g., public safety networks)
• Networked Medical Devices
• Enabling Technologies for Future Medical Devices
• Distributed Control and Sensing of Networked Medical Devices
• Medical Device Plug-n-Play Ecosystem
• Wearable, Ambient and Home-based Health and wellness Measurement and Monitoring
• Networking Support for Pervasive healthcare
• Home Networking and Services
• Home networks protocols and architectures
• Wireless and wireline broadband multimedia access
• TV-centric home networks, DTV, and home networked entertainment and games
• Residential gateways
• Home Networked Appliances and applications
• Data Storage
  • Information theory and coding for data storage systems and networks
  • Data detection and turbo processing techniques for storage channels
  • Storage channel and noise characterization
  • Synchronization, gain recovery, and equalization for storage
  • Circuit designs for read/write channel electronics and coding
  • Signal processing techniques for servoing and tracking
• Any other topic related to communications but not mentioned in any other symposium

The Communication Theory Symposium aims to provide the audience of ICC with the state of the art research towards understanding the fundamentals of communication systems including that of wireless, mobile and wire-line communication systems. The symposium welcomes original research in the general areas of wireless and wire-line communication theory, with focus on physical-layer as well as certain higher-layer issues including source coding, modulation, channel coding, detection and estimation, joint source-channel coding, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, optical communication, cooperative communications, signal processing as applied to ad-hoc and sensor networks, information theory for mobile ad hoc networks, networked cognitive radios, advanced multiple access strategies, network information theory, and network coding. Research results on communication theory that impact other disciplines such as networking, genetics, bioinformatics, and quantum information processing are also encouraged.

Topics of Particular Interest

• Adaptive Antenna Arrays
• Adaptive Modulation and Coding
• CDMA and Spread Spectrum
• Channel Capacity
• Channel Estimation
• Coded Modulation
• Coding Theory and Practice
• Communication Theory in Sensor and Ad-Hoc Networks
• Communication Theory of Cognitive Radios
• Cooperative Communications
• Cross Layer Design
• Detection and Estimation
• Distributed Techniques and Multiuser diversity
• Diversity and Fading Countermeasures
• Dynamic Spectrum Management
• Information Theory
• Interference Management, Cancellation, Avoidance
• Iterative Techniques, Detection and Decoding
• Joint Source/Channel Coding
• Multi-carrier Systems and OFDM
• Multiple Access Techniques
• Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) Systems Design and Analysis
• Multiuser Detection
• Network Information Theory and Coding
• Power Control
• Radio Resource Management
• Source Coding and Data Compression
• Space-time Coding and Processing
• Synchronization
• Turbo and LDPC Codes
• Ultra-Wideband Communications

The Signal Processing for Communications Symposium hosts papers dealing with the algorithmic and implementation aspects within the topics listed below. Among others, in the focus are the design of new algorithms for communication systems, as well as performance analysis and implementation of algorithms.

Topics of Particular Interest

• Adaptive Antennas
• Channel Estimation, Modeling and Equalization
• Multi-user Systems
• MIMO Systems
• OFDM and Multi-carrier Systems
• CDMA
• Space-Time Processing and decoding
• Signal Detection and Synchronization
• SP for Software Defined Radio
• Speech, Image and Video Signal Processing
• Transmitter and Receiver Techniques
• Demonstrator concepts
• Hardware and Implementation

To promote the advances in wireless communications technologies, the ICC’09 Wireless Communications Symposium will include topics related to all aspects of Physical layer (PHY), MAC layer, Cross-layer analysis and design, and Physical layer-related network analysis and design. To ensure complete coverage of the advances in wireless communications technologies for current and future systems, the Wireless Communications Symposium presents original contributions in, but not limited to, the following topical areas:

Topics of Particular Interest

• Wireless Air Interface and Link Control
• Cognitive Radio and Software Defined Radio
• Cooperative Communications
• MIMO and Multi-antenna Communications
• Space-Time Coding and Processing
• Ultra-wideband Communications
• OFDM and Multi-Carrier Systems
• Smart Antennas
• Detection and Estimation
• Modulation and Coding
• Adaptive Modulation
• Fading Channels
• Propagation, Antennas and Channel Characterization
• Diversity Techniques and Equalization
• Synchronization
• Multi-user Detection, Signal Separation and Interference Rejection
• Joint Source-channel Coding for Wireless Communications
• Power Control
• Satellite Communications
• Cross-Layer Design and Adaptation
• Radio Resource Management
• Resource Allocation and Interference Management
• Opportunistic Scheduling
• Wireless Multicasting
• Wireless Service Discovery
• Mobility and Localization Techniques
• Hybrid Wireless Communication Systems
• Cellular and broadcast Communications
• Coexistence in Unlicensed Spectra
• Short range communications
• Fixed Wireless Broadband Data Systems
• Spectrum Efficiency and Issues
• Wireless Multiple Access techniques (CDMA, TDMA, FDMA, …)

Advances in radio technologies and low power electronics have fueled developments in wireless networks and systems. Such advances are widely being viewed as changing the way we interact, do business and manage our daily life. Examples of civil wireless applications include smart homes, remote medical care, mobile commerce, disaster management, etc. It is even envisioned that most future business solutions will involve, if not become totally based on, wireless technologies. In addition, many defense and combat systems are becoming wireless or providing a wireless interface. Moreover, wireless and satellite networking is essential to scientific exploration both in space and in remote areas. Along with the expanding set of applications comes a growing list challenges. Wireless networks may be based on stand alone infrastructure or formed on demand in an ad-hoc manner, may involve a diverse set of data rates, may be expected to meet a variety of data delivery latency requirements, etc. In addition, nodes can be stationary or mobile causing communication links to be unstable and forcing frequent changes in the network topology. Also, nodes are often constrained in on-board energy, computation and storage resources necessitating lightweight communication protocols. Moreover, the shared medium and the variable signal propagation conditions may disrupt the network connectivity and further complicate the network management. Last, but not least, wireless networks are susceptible to myriad of security attacks ranging from eavesdropping to radio jamming and non-cooperative (selfish or compromised) communications. Such non-conventional challenges have motivated lots of research by the scientific and engineering communities.

Topics of Particular Interest

• Wireless wide area networks
• Satellite systems, proxy and gateways
• Deep space communications
• Cellular systems (2G/2.5G/3G/4G and beyond)
• WMAN, and other broadband wireless access technologies
• WLAN, WPAN, and other home/personal network technologies
• Body-area wireless networks
• Pervasive and wearable computing
• Wireless networks for vehicle, underwater, UAVs communications
• Delay/Disruption tolerant wireless networks
• Wireless mesh networks
• Inter-networking of wireless heterogeneous and multi-tier networks
• Multimode wireless networks
• Architectural design and operation models
• Service-centric and overlay networks
• End-to-end protocol, flow and congestion control
• Wireless Internet
• Mobile Routing/Switching and multicasting protocols
• Resource management, mobility management, and admission control
• MAC schemes
• Power management and control, and energy conservation techniques
• User cooperation and incentive schemes
• Cross-layer design and optimization
• Wireless Network Performance
• Network planning, capacity analysis, and topology control
• Wireless network monitoring
• Security in wireless networks
• Fault-tolerance and traffic reliability issues
• Validation and verification schemes
• Testbeds and deployment
• Handoff Protocols and Management (incl. mobile IP)

Research on optical systems has been gathering pace and researchers have been working to produce faster and faster transmission and switching technologies. With rapid advances in optical enabling devices and systems over the past decade, multi-terabit transport networks have now become a reality. In particular, long-haul domains have seen significant induction of advanced dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) technology. More lately, DWDM and coarse WDM (CWDM) technologies have steadily permeated into the more focused metro/regional and edge domains. A complementary development has also been the rapid maturation of next-generation electronic SONET/SDH grooming technologies. As these paradigm shifts take hold, related standards activities to develop unified provisioning and control-plane architectures for optical and electronic layers have seen much impetus as well. This symposium seeks to showcase the latest developments in key open areas of optical networks and systems, emergent network infrastructures and new optical service paradigms. One of the major themes will be on vertical and horizontal integration. For example, the former entails issues such as Ethernet-optical internetworking, SONET/SDH-WDM multi-granularity grooming, traffic engineering, physical-layer aware networking, as well as the routing, grooming, wavelength assignment and protection/restoration of unicast, multicast or anycast optical connections.

Topics of Particular Interest

• Architectures and technologies for metropolitan, core and local networks
• Optical (WDM/OCDM/OTDM) network and switch architectures
• Optical access networks (PON, EPON, WDM-PON, …)
• Optical packet, burst and label switching
• Hybrid wireless-optical network architectures
• Routing, wavelength assignment and traffic grooming (multicast, broadcast, anycast, etc.)
• Constraint-based routing
• Horizontal integration: multi-domain optical communications and path computing
• Planning and optimization of optical networks
• Carrier Ethernet
• Next-generation SONET/SDH
• Application-aware optical networking for grid, storage and multimedia services
• Optical and multi-layer network protection and restoration
• Optical virtual private networks
• Control and management for optical networks
• Optical network test beds and field trials
• Optical transmission and system experiments
• System modeling and performance evaluation

Next Generation Networks and the future Internet face challenges from scaling to trillions of nodes and zillions of information elements. At the same time, convergence over several underlying network technologies is required to achieve the best integration architecture, services and operations management, and service provisioning in both wired and wireless domains. The aim of this symposium is to provide a forum for discussions on challenging research topics concerning networks, operation of networks, and network services in future fixed, mobile, and wireless networks.

Topics of Particular Interest

• Architecture
  • Internet architecture and design
  • Autonomic and self-organized networking
  • Integration of mobile and fixed networks
  • Network composition
  • Addressing and naming
  • Internet survivability and network resilience
  • IPv6 and IPv6 Transition
• Protocols
  • Internet signalling and service enabling protocols
  • Traffic engineering
  • IP over satellite and space networks
  • Internet roaming management and support
  • VoIP protocols and management
  • Unicast, multicast, broadcast routing protocols
  • Overlay and peer-to-peer networks
  • Flow management: packet classification and congestion control
• Technologies
  • Group communication for controlling networks and services
  • Self-protecting networking
  • Support for streaming and real-time media
  • Mobile code and network programmability
  • Converged networks, including NGN for VoIP and IPTV
  • Content networking: caching, content distribution, load balancing, etc.
• Provisioning, monitoring, and management
  • Techniques and tools for Internet traffic measurements
  • Plug and play networking components
  • Network resource management
  • Control and management in dynamic/mobile network environments

Communication networks are designed to provide services to their users and do that while offering an acceptable quality level. For this purpose, network traffic should be understood and properly controlled so that the desired Quality of Service requirements of applications and Services are achieved. The diversity in the characteristics of emerging applications and current network technologies demand the design and employment of specialized control mechanisms. Moreover, to understand how well these mechanisms contribute to service provisioning calls for the use of different approaches such as analytical modeling, simulation, measurement and monitoring. The aim of the Communications QoS, Reliability and Performance Modeling Symposium is to provide a venue for the discussion of communications service provisioning, the quality of such provisioning as well as the techniques to understand the performance of networks designed to provide such services.

Topics of Particular Interest

• QoS and Performance Analysis Techniques
  • Quanitative Evaluation of Communication Systems
  • Performance Evaluation Techniques
  • Traffic Engineering and Traffic Theory
  • Traffic and Workload Modeling and Characterization
  • QoS Metrics
  • Network Measurement and Monitoring Techniques
  • QoS Modelling and Simulation Techniques and Tools
  • Network Simulation Techniques
• Applications of QoS Modelling and Analysis Techniques
  • QoS for VoIP and IPTV
  • QoS and Performance in the Internet
  • QoS and Performance in Wireless and Mobile Networks
  • QoS and Performance in Optical Networks
  • QoS and Performance in Grid Computing
  • QoS and Performance in Peer-to-Peer Networks
• Network and Service Design for Performance and Reliability
  • Scalability, Robustness and Resilience
  • Resource Allocation for Networks and their services
  • Cross-layer Design and Optimization
  • Traffic and Workload Control
  • Traffic Economics

Ad-hoc and sensor networks (AHSNET) are self-organizing systems formed by co-operating nodes that create a temporary network infrastructure. The key advantages of these networks include allowing anywhere, anytime network connectivity with lack of centralized control, ownership, and regulatory influence; their ability to operate unattended in harsh environments in which contemporary human-in-the-loop monitoring schemes are risky, inefficient and sometimes infeasible; and ease of reconfiguration to fit specific application needs. However, the resource-constrained nature of the employed devices and the self-organization of the network, coupled with an often unattended deployment of a large population of nodes, pose non-conventional challenges and motivate the need for special techniques for dependable design and management of AHSNET. The last few years have witnessed a growing interest in the application of AHSNET in fields such as emergency search-and-rescue operations, decision making during combat, data acquisition operations in inhospitable terrains, dangerous battlefields, outer space, or deep oceans, among others. Such interest has fueled a wealth of research ideas that are moving rapidly into commercialization and standardization. The ICC Symposium on AHSNET opts to bring together researcher and practitioners from academia and industry and foster a forum for discussing and presenting recent research results. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

Topics of Particular Interest

• Architecures and Applications
  • Application of ad hoc and sensor networks
  • Underwater and underground sensor networks
  • Sensor networks for biomedical applications
  • RFID networking
• Physical Layer Design and Technology
  • Radio for ad-hoc and sensor networks
  • Wireless sensor and actor networks
  • Wireless, ad hoc, and sensor devices
  • Ultra wide band technology for ad hoc and sensor networks
• Protocol Design
  • MAC, routing, and transport layer protocols for ad hoc and sensor networks
  • Energy saving and power control protocols
  • Frequency and channel allocation algorithms
• Planning and Services
  • Deployment strategies and coverage analysis of sensor networks
  • Service discovery in ad-hoc and sensor networks
  • Localization algorithms and ranging technologies
  • Sensor based context aware services
• Quality of Service Provisioning and Optimization Techniques
  • In-network processing and data storage
  • Data aggregation and query processing techniques
  • Wireless multimedia sensor networks
  • Multimedia processing in sensor networks
  • Cross-layer design and optimization
  • Synchronization and coordination techniques in ad hoc and sensor networks
  • Scheduling and resource management algorithms
  • Mobility management and modeling for sensors
  • Topology control and management
• Performance Analysis and Design Dependability
  • Formal models and validation techniques
  • Lightweight and non-intrusive network monitoring algorithms
  • Security, privacy, vulnerabilities, attacks and countermeasures
  • Survivability, Fault-tolerance and reliability
• Prototypes, Tools and Design Environments
  • Integrated simulation and measurement based evaluation
  • Experimental prototypes and testbeds
  • Energy scavenging technologies
  • New simulation languages, methodologies, and tools

The Communications Software and Services Symposium covers challenges and advances for service support and delivery in fixed and mobile communication networks. These topics are particularly relevant for researchers, developers and industries in the areas of networking and services covered by many Technical Committees.

Topics of Particular Interest

• Fixed and mobile service platforms
  • Mobile Services and Service Platforms including IMS
  • Fixed Mobile Convergence
  • Home Network Service Platform
  • Triple-Play and Quadruple-Play
• Multimedia applications and services including VoIP, IPTV, Gaming
  • Multimedia delivery over wired and wireless networks
  • Cross-layer optimization for multimedia service support
  • Multicast, Broadcast and IPTV
  • Media streaming
  • Peer-to-Peer services
• Software and Protocol Technologies for advanced service support
  • Web Services and distributed SW technology
  • Distributed systems and applications, including Grid Services
  • Peer-to-Peer technologies for communication services
  • Service overlay networks
  • Context Awareness and Personalization
• Network and Service Management and Provisioning
  • Multimedia QoS provisioning
  • Quality of Experience for End-to-End Communications
  • End-to-end Quality of Service Routing algorithms
  • Service Creation, Delivery, Management
  • Network Management
  • Virtual home environment
  • Charging, pricing, business models

With the advent of pervasive computer applications and due to the proliferation of heterogeneous wired and wireless computer and communication networks, security and privacy issues have become paramount. This Symposium will address all aspects of the modeling, design, implementation, deployment, and management of security algorithms, protocols, architectures, and systems. Furthermore, papers devoted to the evaluation, optimization, or enhancement of security and privacy mechanisms for current technologies, as well as devising efficient security and privacy solutions for emerging technologies, are presented.

Topics of Particular Interest

• Authentication protocols and message authentication
• Biometric security: technologies, risks, vulnerabilities, bio-cryptography, mobile template protection
• Computer and network forensics
• Cryptography: Conventional public-key crypto, symmetric-key crypto, advanced crypto, and quantum crypto
• DDOS attacks, DNS spoofing, and countermeasures
• Formal trust models
• Information hiding and watermarking
• Information systems security
• Intrusion detection, localization, and countermeasures
• Mobile and Wireless networks security, excluding Ad-hoc networks
• Network security metrics and performance
• Network traffic analysis techniques
• Operating systems security and log analysis tools
• Optical network security
• Privacy and privacy enhancing technologies
• Security modeling and protocol design
• Virtual private networks
• VoIP Security
• Vulnerability, exploitation tools and virus analysis
• Web, eBusiness, eCommerce, eGovernment security
• Identity management