OpenRIT 6G

Detailed Programme

9:00 – 11:00 Opening Session 1

Welcome to OpenRIT

Joyce Mwangama, UCT, South Africa and Thomas Magedanz, TU Berlin, Germany

Keynote 1: Title TBA

Tsabi Molapo, Telkom SA, South Africa

Paper Session: Connectivity Enablement and Private Networks 

Chair: Abhimnayu Gosain, NE University, USA

• Designing 5G PHY Layer Compliant Cell-Free Massive MIMO Simulator using Sounding Signal, India (Mr. Santosh Singh, IIT Roorkee; Mr. Lokesh Patidar, IIT Roorkee; Dr. Abhay Sah, IIT Roorkee; Mr. Shekar Nethi, MathWorks; Mr. Himanshu Sindhwal, MathWorks; and Mr. Vamshi Krishna Kadiyala, MathWorks)
• Enabling LEO Satellite Mobile Direct NB-IoT Communication With Exisiting Unmodified UEs, Japan (Prof. Akihiro Nakao, The University of Tokyo)
• Empirical Evaluation of Bit Rate and Latency in a Private 5G Cell for Slow-Speed Vehicles in an Urban Environment, Germany (Mr. Mohammad Razzaghpour, University of Bremen; Dr. Carsten Bockelmann, University of Bremen; Prof. Armin Dekorsy, University of Bremen; Jan Hensel, OTARIS Interactive Services GmbH; Wilhelm Jochim, OTARIS Interactive Services GmbH; and Mehmet Kus, OTARIS Interactive Services GmbH)
• A Multi-path Approach to Deterministic Backhaul for Geographically Distributed 5G Campus Networks, Germany (Mr. Nicolas Zunker, Fraunhofer FOKUS; Mr. Marius Corici, Fraunhofer FOKUS; Mr. Hauke Buhr, Fraunhofer FOKUS; and Prof. Thomas Magedanz, Fraunhofer Institute FOKUS / TU Berlin)

Coffee Break

11:30 – 13.00 Session 2

Chair: Aki Nakao, Tokyo University, Japan

Keynote 2: Title TBA

Takehiro Nakamura, NTT Docomo, Japan

Paper Session: OpenRAN and Network automation

Chair: Joyce Mwangama, UCT, South Africa

• INA-Infra: An Open and Extensible Infrastructure for Intent-driven Network Automation Research, Singapore (Mr. Nguyen Bao Long Tran, Singapore University of Technology and Design; Mr. Tuan Ngo Singapore, University of Technology and Design; Dr. Mao Ngo, Singapore University of Technology and Design; Prof. Binbin Chen, Singapore University of Technology and Design; Dr. Jihong Park, Singapore University of Technology and Design; and Prof. Tony Q. S. Quek, Singapore University of Technology and Design)
• Reinforcement Learning Based Dynamic Adaptive Frequency Scaling for O-RAN Energy Saving, China (Mr. Yixuan Huang China, Mobile Research Institute; Dr. Qi Sun China, Mobile Research Institute; Ms. Yiwei Yan China, Mobile Research Institute; Mrs. Ting Li, China Mobile Research Institution; Mrs. Xiaohua Zhang, China Mobile Research Institute; Mr. Nan Li China, Mobile Communications Corporation & China Mobile Research Institute; Jun Qiao, China Mobile Group Anhui Co., Ltd.; and Dr. Chih-Lin I, China Mobile Research Institute)
• CONVERGE: A Multi-Agent Vision-Radio Architecture for xApps, Portugal (Mr. Filipe Teixeira, INESC TEC anc Universidade Do Porto; Ms. Carolina Simões, INESC TEC and Universidade do Porto; Mr. Paulo Fidalgo, INESC TEC and Universidade do Porto; Wagner Pedrosa, INESC TEC and Universidade do Porto; Dr. André Coelho, INESC TEC; Prof. Manuel Ricardo, Universidade do Porto; and Dr. Luis Pessoa, INESC TEC)
• U-Plane-based Two-level Anomaly Detection Scheme for Large Scale 5G-IIoT: An Open-source approach for Aether Onramp, Japan (Mr. Yuxuan Shi, The University of Tokyo; Dr. Qianqian Pan, The University of Tokyo; and Prof. Akihiro Nakao, The University of Tokyo)

Lunch Break

14.00 – 15:30 Afternoon Session

Chair Thomas Magedanz, TU Berlin, Germany  & Serge Fdida, Sorbonne Universite, France

International Panel “Towards a realistic 6G for all” (14.00 – 15:15)

• Tsabi Molapo, Telkom, South Africa
• Charley Lewis, Icasa, South Africa 
• Ivan Seskar, Rutgers University, USA
• José Rezende, UFRJ/RNP, Brazil
• Tasos Gavras, Eurescom, Germany
• Ari Poutu, Oulu University, Finland
• Rui Aguiar, University of Aveiro, Portugal
• Tony Quek, SUTD, Singapore

The motivation for that panel is, that the global research community is pushing for various innovations in the context of 6G such as Joint Communications and Sensing (JCAS) and the Non Terrestrial Network integration. However, most of the network operators around the globe have expressed (for example via NGMN White Papers) that they aren´t foreseeing any major 6G investments due to ongoing 5G ROI challenges. An important exception in this context could be local / private enterprise networks, which are gaining slowly momentum with the progress of digital transformation of various industry sectors. Thus it is very likely that 6G will become an optimized and lower cost version of 5G.

On the other hand we are recognizing the international desire, as highlighted in the ITU 2030 visions, to connect the unconnected by any means. Furthermore, we observe international trends to build up local self-sovereign eco systems to build and run a secure and reliable national communications infrastructures. Therefore local skill sets are urgently needed in every country of this world to plan and build these appropriate communication infrastructures to solve the demands of the local society and industries.

Lots of experiences have been gained in the past 20 years, proving that open test and prototyping infrastructures are of key importance for the early prototyping of next generation mobile network technologies and applications. And with the increasing complexity of technologies due to disaggregation of network functions and components while addressing an increasing need for specific vertical application domain adaptations this is becoming even more important in the future.

Understanding the increasing desire for local eco system developments in different regions of the world and the growing diversity in value chains and business models, the early provision of open research infrastructures and related toolkits (OpenRITs) becomes of high relevance for accomplishing the vision of an “Open 6G for all”, enabling both academia and industry to get started for the international standardization. 

15:15 – 15:30 Closure of Workshop and next OpenRIT Next Steps

Joyce Mwangama, UCT, South Africa, Abhimnayu Gosain, NE University, USA