Dr. Carlos J. Bernardos received a Telecommunication Engineering degree in 2003, and a Ph.D. in Telematics in 2006, both from the University Carlos III of Madrid, where he worked as a research and teaching assistant from 2003 to 2008 and since then, has worked as an associate professor. He is teaching different undergraduate and master degree courses, including the Master and Specialist in NFV and SDN. His research interests include IP mobility management, network virtualization, cloud computing, vehicular communications and the experimental evaluation of mobile wireless networks. He has published over 100 scientific papers in international journals and conferences. He is an active contributor to IETF since 2005, e.g., to AUTOCONF, MEXT, NETEXT, DMM, MULTIMOB, SDNRG, NFVRG, SFC, DHC and COIN working/research groups, being the co-author of more than 30 contributions, several standards (RFC 6276, RFC 7028, RFC 7148, RFC 7161, RFC 7333, RFC 7429, RFC 7778, RFC 7864, RFC 8432), several active working group documents, and has co-chaired the IETF P2PSIP WG, and currently co-chairs the IPWAVE WG and the Internet Area Directorate (INTDIR).

He visited the Computer Laboratory of University of Cambridge in 2004 and the University of Coimbra in 2005. He has worked in several EU funded projects, been the technical manager of the FP7 MEDIEVAL and the 5GPPP 5G Exchange (5GEx) projects; the Project Coordinator of the 5GPPP 5G-TRANSFORMER project; and the Deputy Project Coordinator of the FP7 iJOIN project. He is the Technical Manager of the 5GPPP (5Growth) project.

He has served as a guest editor for IEEE Network and Elsevier Computer Standards and Interfaces, served as a local arrangement co-chair of ACM CoNEXT 2008, and has served on the TPC of a number of conferences and workshops including IEEE VTC and IEEE Globecom.

Dr. Ömer Bulakci is currently a senior research engineer at Nokia Bell Labs, Munich, Germany, and vice-chairman of the 5GPPP Architecture Working Group (WG). He received the degrees of B.Sc. (METU, Turkey, 2006), M.Sc. (TUM, Germany, 2008), and doctorate (Aalto University, Finland, 2013). He worked at Nokia Siemens Networks, Germany, on LTE-A relaying (2009-2012), in support of his doctorate studies. From 2012 until February 2020, he conducted research toward the 5G system, contributed to EU flagship projects METIS, METIS-II (leading work package on RAN synchronous control plane design), and 5G-MoNArch (leading work package on overall architecture and E2E network slicing), and contributed to the 5G standardization (3GPP Releases 15, 16, and 17) at Huawei GRC, Germany. He is the author or co-author of 75+ technical publications (including 5G book chapters and editorship) and is an inventor of 50+ patents/patent applications. His research interests comprise network slicing, industrial IoT, RRM, dynamic network topology, and system design and performance analysis of mobile networks.

Alain Mourad has 18+ years of experience in wireless communications industrial R&D. He is currently a director of engineering R&D at InterDigital Labs in London (UK) leading research and innovation for 5G and beyond radio access networks. Prior to joining InterDigital, from 2007 to 2014, Alain was a principal engineer at Samsung Electronics R&D (London, UK) where he led a research and standardization effort with focus on ATSC 3.0, DVB-T2 and DVB-NGH, and WiMAX IEEE 802.16m. From 2002 to 2007, he was a senior engineer at Mitsubishi Electric R&D Centre Europe (Rennes, France) where he contributed technology development towards HSPA+ and 3GPP LTE/LTE-Advanced (4G). Alain is a prolific inventor with over 50 issued patents and several additional pending applications. He is a thought leader with numerous talks, panels and publications. Alain received several awards, notably the Inventor of the Year Award from Samsung Electronics R&D in 2012 and 2013, InterDigital Innovation Awards in 2016 and 2018, and the 2018 Global Telecoms Awards “Highly Commended” in the category “Advancing the road to 5G”.

Josep Mangues-Bafalluy is a senior researcher and the head of the communication networks division of the Telecommunications Technological Center of Catalunya (CTTC) since 2013, currently composed of 30 researchers. He has a degree (1996) and a Ph.D. (2003) in Telecommunications Engineering from the Technical University of Catalunya (UPC) and over 20 years of experience in the networking field (incl. mobile networks, application of machine learning to network optimization, testbed design and deployment, network function virtualization). Josep held various roles (incl. leadership) in several public funded and industrial research projects (e.g., 5GPPP 5Growth, 5G-Transformer, or Spanish 5G-REFINE) with recent emphasis on adapting network infrastructures to the needs of vertical industries (e.g., automotive/transportation, industry 4.0, media, eHealth) and automated network management. He has published 120+ international journals and conference papers. He was the vice-chair of IEEE WCNC 2018 (Barcelona). He was also a researcher and assistant professor at UPC from 1996 to 2003.

“Role of 5GPPP Architecture WG toward B5G/6G System”

The Architecture Working Group (WG), as part of the 5GPPP Initiative, has been capturing novel trends and key technological enablers for the realization of the 5G architecture. In addition, it has been presenting the architectural concepts developed in various projects and initiatives (not limited to 5GPPP projects only) in a harmonized way, so as to provide a consolidated view on the technical directions for architecture design in the 5G era. To this end, Architecture WG brings 5GPPP projects together to attain the European View on the Overall Architecture of Mobile and Wireless Communications Networks and the Network Domains, which is then published in the form of white papers. Various recently initiated projects within the framework of 5G Long Term Evolution (ICT-20-2019) and the projects to be kicked off in 2021 within the framework of Smart Connectivity Beyond 5G (ICT-52-2020) are/will be doing research toward the B5G/6G system. In this talk, we will be presenting the scope of Architecture WG along with the future plans for providing the consolidated European View on the B5G/6G system.

"On the path to 6G: Target Capabilities and Technology Trends"

This talk will present capability and technology trends on the path towards 6G based on the latest B5G roadmap from the H2020 EMPOWER project. The evolution of target capabilities in the radio interface as well as in the network will be discussed along with the enabling technologies to support these target capabilities.

"Network architectures for 5G and beyond"

When talking about the following generations of communications, the initial thoughts are in general devoted to wireless technologies and their achievable speeds. Yet, as 5G is proving, the evolution on the network architecture front is being as radical as that of the wireless access, and the same trend is expected to continue in the following generations. The combination of ubiquitous computing capabilities (in centralized datacenters or at the edge) with a wealth of underlying transport technologies to connect dispersed computing spots provide a highly heterogeneous substrate on top of which virtualized services are dynamically deployed. If demanding vertical-oriented end-to-end slices/services must be served in this context, the right management and orchestration blocks must be set up and embedded with the intelligence required to tame such complexity and dynamicity whilst fulfilling SLAs. Network programmability and virtualization come to the rescue towards this end. The 5Growth project is currently tackling some of these challenges and setting the design foundations for the essential building blocks required for solving them. This talk will introduce the main functionality of the 5Growth network and its main building blocks and provide practical examples of some of the use cases under consideration to solve key operational issues, hence offering a taste of what is yet to come in more advanced flavors in the next generations of network architectures.

Beyond 5G - Introduction