Speaker: Dr Abubakar Siddique Muqaddas

Talk Title: Field trial of multi-layer slicing over disaggregated optical networks enabling end-to-end crowdsourced video streaming

Abstract:

The next generation of networks (5G and beyond) is aimed at supporting new Network Services (NSs) with stringent requirements. A Crowd-sourced Live Video Streaming (CLVS) is an example of such NS, in which thousands of users attending an event stream video from their smartphones to a CLVS platform.  The content from all the users is edited in real time, producing an aggregated video, which can be broadcasted to a large number of viewers.  In order to support new vertical applications, Metro-Haul project has designed and built a cost-effective, agile, disaggregated packet-optical metro infrastructure with compute capabilities at the network edge, addressing the capacity increase and characteristics such as low latency and high bandwidth. Metro-Haul control plane consists of the Control, Orchestration and Management (COM) system, based on the principles of ETSI-NFV framework and a hierarchical SDN control plane facilitating the deployment of multilayer end-to-end network slices, including Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) in multiple datacentres and simultaneously dedicating packet and optical network resources. In this talk, we present the experimental demonstration of a CLVS NS using Metro Haul infrastructure, with NFV orchestration using COM system implemented over a disaggregated optical network testbed in UK. The service creation procedure, from planning to service deployment is shown and measured against the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) defined by 5GPPP.

Bio:

Abubakar Siddique Muqaddas received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degree in Telecommunications Engineering from Politecnico di Torino, Italy, in 2015 and 2019 respectively. He is currently working as a Senior Research Associate in High Performance Networks Research Group, University of Bristol. His interests lie in the areas of NFV orchestration of 5G network services, multi-access edge computing, software defined networks and enterprise/service provider level routing and switching.

Speaker: Dr Shadi Moazzeni 

Talk Title: A Novel Autonomous Profiling Method for the Next Generation NFV Orchestrators

Abstract:

Currently, telecommunication research communities are striving towards the adoption of Zero-touch network and Service Management (ZSM) in Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) orchestration. Contemporary efforts on adopting Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) have caused an upsurge of ZSM application in the VNF space. While ML and AI complement the ZSM goals for building the intelligent NFV orchestration, a deep knowledge about the resource consumption by Network Services (NSs) and its constituent Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) is required, which would enable AI and ML models to manage the available resources better and enhance user experience. In this talk, at first, state-of-the-art works in the topic of VNF and NS profiling will be surveyed. Then, our recently proposed Novel Autonomous Profiling (NAP) method will be presented that not only predicts the optimum network load a VNF can support, but also estimates the required resources in terms of CPU, Memory, and Network, to meet the performance targets and workload by utilising ML techniques. In addition, the performance evaluation results on a real dataset will be explained.

Speaker: Prof Martin Cryan

Talk Title: Optically controlled microwave and millimetre switches

Abstract:

Reconfigurable (or tunable) microwave and millimetrewave circuits have a huge number of applications from military and commercial radar systems to smart antennas for mobile phones. This presentation shows a radically new way of implementing tunability using light interaction with semiconductors. If light is absorbed by a semiconductor like silicon, electron-hole pairs are generated. If sufficient numbers of electrons are generated they form a “plasma” which acts like a metal at microwave and millimetrewave frequencies. These Optically Induced Plasmas can be used as a technology platform to create fast, linear, high power microwave and milliemtrewave control circuits. This talk will present recent results and future directions for this work.

Speaker: Dr Soheyl Soodmand 

Talk Title: Increment in Self Interference Cancelation Bandwidth of In Band Full Duplex Transceiver by Antenna with Stable Impedance 

Abstract: 

Electrical Balance Duplexers (EBDs) in In-Band Full Duplex (IBFD) transceivers provides Transmit (TX)-Receive (RX) isolation to implement a form of self-interference (SI) cancellation to facilitates simultaneous transmission and reception from single antenna. EBD works by coupling transmitter, receiver, antenna, and balancing impedance using a hybrid junction where the balancing impedance needs to be equal to the antenna impedance to achieve a high isolation. Variations in antenna impedance with respect to frequency significantly reduces the isolation bandwidth and is dominant factor in limiting the isolation. A method based on Sample Standard Deviation is introduced to quantify impedance instability in the frequency domain. Also, a frequency independent antenna with a core structure of equiangular Archimedean spiral is designed to achieve impedance stability in frequency domain. The antenna impedance at an ultra-wideband (UWB) frequency range of 1.5GHz to 4GHz is more smoothened in some design steps using electromagnetic absorbers, capacitive Impedance tuning and modification techniques whilst this electrically small antenna also has circular polarization, electromagnetic compatibility, and suitable radiation efficiency. In comparison with the literature, using this antenna in the EBD stage along with a simpler balancing impedance is resulted to 95 times wider cancellation bandwidth and 9 dB decrement in mean isolation value.  

Speaker: Mrs Teresa Yu Bi

Talk Title: Multi-objective Optimization for Service Chaining

Abstract:

To cope with high capacity and low latency requirements of 5G services, the service function chains placement problem is solved, for the first time, by the multi-objective optimization approach combining the virtual layer, IP layer, and optical layer. We approximate the Pareto-fronts and propose a weighted-sum algorithm as a building block for 5G management and orchestration architecture by interacting with the NFVO (e.g., OSM). Both simulation and experiment are conducted over a real testbed composed of multiple OpenStack deployed servers interconnected via optical fibers. Results prove that our algorithm can optimize resource usage in multi-access edge computing nodes under diverse workload scenarios while maximizing service acceptance rate. 

Bio:

Teresa Yu Bi is a research associate in High Performance Networks group. She received the B.Sc. degree of Optical Information Science and Technology from Beijing Jiaotong University and then the M.Sc. with distinction in Communication Networks and Signal Processing from the University of Bristol. She is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree at the University of Bristol. Her research interests include Network Optimization, Game Theory, Network Function Virtualization, and Optical Networks.

Speaker 1: Dr Manish Nair

Title: Power Amplifier Design for Wireless Communications, Beamforming at Millimetre Wave and Machine Learning for Non Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA)

Abstract: 

Wireless communication standards such as WCDMA and GSM require power amplifiers that wideband, efficient and highly linear. A high linearity Doherty power amplifier for WCDMA and wideband power amplifier for GSM is presented. These design principles are applicable in LTE and 5G. Switched-beam systems offer a promising solution for realising multi-user communications at millimetre wave (mmWave).  Maximum achievable sum data-rates achievable in switched-beam mmWave systems are presented and compared with a practical mmWave lens antenna system. Lastly, the concept of non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) is introduced and machine learning approaches for beam-allocation and user selection are discussed.

Speaker 2: Dr Emilio Hugues Salas 

Title: High Capacity Coexistence of Quantum and Carrier-Grade Channels for Future Secure Applications

Abstract:

Quantum key distribution (QKD) is becoming a widely used method for encryption with a variety of applications in today’s telecommunications networks. To become practical, QKD requires to be compatible with optical network infrastructures and several challenges need to be addressed for its suitable implementation. In this Smart Internet Lab seminar talk, I will focus on describing these challenges and present our work of the record-high coexistence of 11.25 terabit per second of standard channels with DV-QKD over a multicore fibre.

Mark Graham is a PhD Student from the Centre of Doctoral Training in Communications. He is researching network coding, its applications to vehicular communications, and is working to find analytic bounds on its performance. He received a BSc in Mathematics in 2016 from the University of the West of England, Bristol, and is supervised by Ayalvadi Ganesh (School of Mathematics) and Robert Piechocki (SCEEM/CSN).

Abstract:

Communication over data networks has become an integral part of modern life, with the Internet now considered a utility as much as mains water. It is a common misconception that information flow in data networks behaves in the same way as in any other utility networks (such as oil, gas or water pipelines, road traffic networks etc), and that the data packets are analogous to boxes/cars which are simply stored, forwarded or routed. Recent achievements in network information theory show that this approach is suboptimal. Vastly improved efficiency may be achieved by using network coding: a strategy in  which coding of packets is performed at every node in the network.

 Our motivating application is the sharing of sensory data between autonomous vehicles. This has the potential to improve road safety by allowing vehicles to discover hazards more quickly, and to reduce journey times and CO2 emissions by cooperatively increasing the efficiency of road utilisation. V2V wireless channels however experience heavy packet loss due to shadowing, caused by varying terrain and other obstructing road users. All vehicles within a reasonable range must however be able to share data quickly and reliably. Random Linear Network Coding (RLNC) is a potential solution to this problem, in which packets are combined at each intermediate node and decoded at the recipient. A barrier to the application of these methods is their encoding and decoding complexity. We present an all-cast method for networks of n nodes, based on RLNC, in which only log(n) packets are combined at a time, yielding sparse linear systems which may be solved with reduced cost. We compare the performance of our method with an uncoded method for various network sizes, using analytical results and using numerical studies.

Bio:

Professor Siyuan Yu, is a Professor in the Photonics & Quantum research group at the University of Bristol and a member of the Smart Internet Lab.  His research areas include Photonic devices and Networks.

Bio:

I am Full Professor at the Federal Univerty of Uberlandia in the Faculty of Computing and I received the Ph.D. degree within an international agreement between the University of São Paulo and CNRS/France at the Laboratory of Analysis and Architecture of Systems (LAAS, Toulouse). I have experience in the areas of Computer Science, Engineering and Mathematics, with emphasis on Highly Scalable and Highly Available Architectures, Cloud/Edge Computing and Design and Validation of Protocols. Currently, I am working primarily in the following areas: Smart Cities, Future Internet, DL/ML, SDN, NFV, 5G networks, Scalable Automata, Web Services, and Smart Grid. 

Speaker: Dr Dimitrios Zorbas

Abstract:

Current Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) protocols suffer from short 
range links and limited mobility. A Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) 
solution such as the LoRaWAN can resolve those issues, however, the 
ALOHA-based transmission policy of those technologies makes the delivery 
of a large number of packets by a large number of nodes impossible. To 
avoid bursts of collisions and expedite data collection, we propose 
scheduling of transmissions in time slots. We provide evidence through 
extensive experiments that time-slotted synchronous LPWAN communications 
are feasible under different node arrangements.

Biography:

Dr. Dimitrios Zorbas holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University 
of Piraeus in Greece. He has worked as a post doctoral researcher at 
Inria Lille – Nord Europe and at University of La Rochelle in France. He 
is currently researcher at Tyndall National Institute after receiving a 
Marie Curie fellowship. He is author of more than 40 peer-reviewed 
publications in the area of computer communications, energy efficiency 
in networks, and secure communications. He has also worked in several 
national as well as FP7 and H2020 projects. He is member of the IEEE.

Speaker 1: Dr Shuangyi Yan

Title of Talk:  “On-Demand Dynamic Optical Networks with Machine Learning Technologies”

Biography: 

Shuangyi Yan is currently a lecturer in High Performance Networking & Optical Networking at the University of Bristol. He received the B.E degree in information engineering from Tianjin University, Tianjin, China in 2004. In 2009, he got the PhD degree in optical engineering from Xi’an Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics, CAS, Xi’an, China. His doctoral dissertation focused on key technologies in ultra-high-speed optical communication networks, such as ultra-short optical pulse generation, high-bandwidth optical signal processing. From 2011 to 2013, He worked on the spectra-efficient long-haul transmission system and low-cost short-range transmission system in Photonics Research Centre, Dept. EIE of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong. He was involved in several industrial funded projects. In July 2013, he joined the High Performance Networks Group at University of Bristol. His research interests include Artificial intelligence in Optical Networks, multi-dimensional programmable optical networks, multi-layer network analytics for network optimisation, and next generation data centre networks. He is the author or co-author of over 60 publications, of which consist patents and several post deadline papers in optical communication related top-level conferences.

Speaker 2: Dr Krishna Coimbatore Balram

Title of Talk: “Looking at future RF systems through a photonic lens”

Biography: 

I grew up in Delhi, India's historic capital city and partly because of that, I have a lifelong affection for history and all things ancient. I got my undergraduate degree in India, graduate degrees in the US and started as a lecturer at Brisol in January 2017. My research interests are primarily in the field of nanoscale opto-electro-mechanical devices for information processing and sensing applications. I am particularly interested in nanoscale device fabrication and aim to produce state of the art opto-electronic devices at the Bristol nano-fabrication facility.

Speaker: Dr George Woodward

Title of talk: Harmonic Radar to Chase Insects, Masive MIMO and other Research Highlights from the Wireless Research Centre, University of Cantebury, NZ

The Wireless Research Centre (WRC) at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, is an industry facing research centre focussing on research challenges defined by the needs of industry and government.   The centre has extensive knowledge and experience working with emerging wireless standards, including the 3GPP family of cellular standards (3G, 4G, 5G, and now emerging 6G concepts), local area and personal-area networks.  Specific technologies of expertise include information theory, multi-antenna systems (MIMO), modulation and coding, diversity systems, relaying, scheduling, combinations of wireless and geospatial technologies, and the internet of things.  Application areas include mission critical communications (civilian and strategic), intelligent transportation systems (vehicular automation), swarm intelligence (e.g. Unmanned Aerial Vehicle/drone swarming), biosecurity (e.g. trapping and tracking of invasive species), and Antarctic operations (e.g. remote sensing).

This talk will introduce the capabilities of the Centre and give some research highlights from the most recent year.  We will spend some time talking about an ambitious project to use bistatic harmonic radar operating from a swarm of unmanned aerial vehicles to track insects.  The engineering challenges arising from the project are many-fold, including design of miniaturised passive harmonic radar tags for mounting on insects, bistatic radar system design including node synchronisation, and co-ordination of the drone swarm. 

Biography:

Dr Graeme Woodward received B.Sc., B.E., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Sydney, and has enjoyed a career spanning industry and academia.  His extensive industrial research experience includes pioneering VLSI designs for multi-antenna 3G Packet Access (HSDPA) with Bell Labs (Lucent Technologies), Sydney. Subsequently he worked with Agere Systems and LSI Logic with a focus on low power chip design for 3G and 4G (LTE) terminals contributing to chip designs shipped in volume to a major international handset vendor.  From 2007 he worked as Research Manager of the Telecommunications Research Laboratory, Toshiba Research Europe (Bristol, UK) engaged in numerous large UK and EU projects.  He is now Research Leader with the Wireless Research Centre, University of Canterbury, New Zealand.  His speciality is digital baseband signal processing for wireless communications standards, with a particular interest in multi-antenna processing and interference/channel distortion mitigation.  He is a Senior Member of the IEEE, has authored more than 50 papers and 12 U.S. patents and has served on numerous conference committees.

Speaker 1: Dr George Oikonomou

Title of Talk: “IPv6 multicast forwarding in networks of severely-constrained wireless embedded devices”

Biography: 

Lecturer in IoT Networking, with 7 years of post-doctoral research experience in the UK (University of Bristol and Loughborough University). Originally a statistician, with an MSc in Information Systems and PhD in Computer Networking from the Department of Informatics at the Athens University of Economics and Business.

Co-founder, steering group member and maintainer of Contiki-NG, the next generation, open source operating system for the IoT. Maintainer of the original Contiki OS. Inventor of the Sensniff open source software project. cc2538-bsl collaborator.

IoT Enthusiast, Software Developer, Open Source & Creative Commons proponent.

Speaker 2: Mr Alex Mavromatis

Title of Talk: “An AI Assisted Microservices Solution for Mission-Critical IoT Applications”

Summary

Multiobjective Optimization Problems (MOP) have become a hot topic in today complex world where several different objective functions should be considered to find a real good compromise solution for today problems.

This talk will formally present the basis on Multiobjective optimization, presenting topics as:

• Formal Introduction (Math).
• Solving MOP.
• Metrics.
• Many Objectives Optimization Problem (MaOP).
• A couple of Applications.
• A practical example using Machine Learning (in a Multiobjective context).
• Open research areas.

The University of Bristol’s, Smart Internet Lab held the World's first music lesson with critically acclaimed jazz musician, Jamie Cullum. This landmark event was delivered using brand new 5G technology and the Smart Internet Lab’s 5GUK Test Network, and kindly hosted by We The Curious, Bristol’s Science Museum.

For more information see here.

A world-leading consortium of industry pioneers has been showcasing the latest innovations in 5G networking and technologies across a four-day event at the University of Bristol’s Smart Internet Lab.

To read the full press release see here.

Over the weekend of 17-18 March 2018, the University of Bristol’s Smart Internet Lab held the world’s first public 5G end-to-end trial. 

See more information here.

The Smart Internet Lab invites you to join visiting Dr Nikos Pleros from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece as he shares his insights around how photonics can bring significant functional benefits in computing architectures.

Abstract: How should someone exploit photonics in computing? Simply replacing the electrical with optical wires and increasing the data rate is the first and obvious answer, but the idiosyncrasy of photons can lead to improved architectures that can offer additional functionality in Datacom and Computercom environments.

This talk will concentrate on how photonics can bring significant functional benefits in computing architectures, spanning from disaggregated rack-scale through disintegrated chip-scale and even to the emerging neuromorphic platforms. Nikos Pleros will present how innovative optical switching, photonic Network-on-Chip and optical RAMs can shape a radically new computing environment with increased granularity, modularity, performance and energy efficiency.