MobiHoc 2023

6G-PDN (6G Programmable Deterministic Networking with AI) Workshop

In the scope of the 24th International Symposium on Theory, Algorithmic Foundations, and Protocol Design for Mobile Networks and Mobile Computing which will be held in Washington DC, USA, October 23-26, 2023, DESIRE6G and PREDICT-6G will co-organise the “6G-PDN” workshop. The workshop will be hosted at the George Washington University Student Center located at 800 21st St NW, Washington, DC 20052. 6G-PDN: Room 404

6G will accelerate the path started in 5G for catering to the needs of a wide variety of vertical use cases, both current and emerging. That will require major enhancements to the current 5G capabilities, in terms of well-established key performance indicators (latency, reliability, bandwidth etc.), as well as new key value indicators (sustainability, trustworthiness etc.).

Next generation mobile networks should consider such indicators, enhancing the network to be more reliable, predictable, and time-sensitive, by developing an end-to-end 6G solution including architectural enhancements and protocols that can guarantee seamless provisioning of services for vertical use cases with extreme performance requirements far beyond 5G. To succeed, the solution will target deterministic network infrastructures at large, including wired and wireless segments and their interconnections with the edge and cloud domains.

At the same time, networks are consistently being softwarised and cloudified, making them increasingly flexible. However, programmable networks are not yet able to fulfill the 6G-anticipated performance requirements. Pursuing deep programmability of the network fabric both vertically (i.e., control and data plane) and horizontally (i.e., from the radio access network to edge and core network) is expected to accelerate in 6G, in order to support 6G extreme performance requirements and increase flexibility and sustainability of the infrastructure.

The aim of this workshop is to discuss the roadmap and challenges in the technological areas of deterministic communications and deep network programmability in 6G. to support future end-to- end time-critical applications.

Programme

Monday, October 23, 2023 (6G-PDN: Room 404)
8:30 Opening
9:00 Keynote 1 Extreme Reconfigurability for 6G: From Programmable Wireless Networks to Programmable Environments, Kaushik Chowdhury

See abstract and bio

Abstract: Network reconfigurability will be a defining characteristic of future 6G networks. Driven by advancements in hardware, availability of open source network protocol stacks, and edge computing, emerging networks will intelligently sense the environment, share spectrum, overcome interference, and allocate communication resources. In this talk, we lay out the promise of such extreme reconfigurability on two fronts: In the first part that concerns network infrastructure, we describe the benefits and challenges of radio access networks (O-RAN) that allows disaggregation, intelligent controllers, virtualization, and open interfaces. We show an example of how a classical communication network can be reconfigured into a spectrum sensing network by leveraging these unique features of O-RAN. In the second part, we discuss how to extend this programmability from the network to the environment through Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS). While the concept of deploying passive reflectors that influences the signal propagation is intuitive, we outline problems and solutions in practically realizing them. The talk concludes by giving a glimpse of open research topics in other frontier directions in the areas of multimodal data fusion for wireless, digital twins and non-terrestrial networks.

Bio: Kaushik Roy Chowdhury is Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Northeastern University, and the Associate Director of the Institute for the Wireless Internet of Things. Prof. Chowdhury was a finalist for the 2023 US Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists. He was also the winner of the U.S. Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) in 2017, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Young Faculty Award in 2017, the Office of Naval Research Director of Research Early Career Award in 2016, and the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award in 2015. He is the recipient of best paper awards at IEEE GLOBECOM’19, DySPAN’19, INFOCOM’17, ICC’13,’12,’09, and ICNC’13. He currently serves as area editor for IEEE Trans. on Networking. He co-directs the operations of Colosseum RF/network emulator, as well as the Platforms for Advanced Wireless Research project office, a joint $100 million public-private partnership between the NSF and wireless industry consortium to create city-scale testing platforms.
10:00 Coffee
10:30 Session 1 A hierarchical AI-based control plane solution for multi-technology deterministic networks, P. Giardina, P. Szilágyi, C. Chiasserini, J. Carcel, L. Velasco, S. Spadaro, F. Agraz, S. Robitzsch, R. Rosales, V. Frascolla, R. Doostnejad, A. Calvillo, G. Bernini
Using RAW as Control Plane for Wireless Deterministic Networks: Challenges Ahead, C. Bernardos, A. Mourad, M. Groshev, L. Contreras, M. Roselló, O. Bularca, V. Frascolla, P. Szilagyi, S. Robitzsch
Aligning rTWT with 802.1Qbv: a Network Calculus Approach, C. Barroso-Fernández, J. Martín-Pérez, C. Ayimba, A. de la Oliva
Enabling Programmable Deterministic Communications in 6G, M. Thi, S. Said, A. Roberty, F. Chbib, R. Khatoun, L. Linguaglossa
12:00 Lunch
13:30 Keynote 2 Next Generation Hybrid Network (core, 5G/6G, non-terrestrial) Automation: Integrated Model-Based and Data-Driven Systems Engineering
John Baras (Professor and Lockheed Martin Chair in Systems Engineering at the University of Maryland)
14:30 Session 2 In-Network Quality Control of IP Camera Streams, C. Györgyi, K. Kecskeméti, P. Vörös, S. Laki, G. Szabó
In-Network Security Applications with P4RROT, K. Kecskeméti, C. Györgyi, P. Vörös, S. Laki
15:30 Coffee/end
16:00 Session 3 Towards extreme network KPIs with programmability in 6G, G. Pongrácz, A. Mihály, I. Gódor, S. Laki, A. Nanos, C. Papagianni
Failure Prediction in Software Defined Flying Ad-hoc Network, D. Uomo, A. Sgambelluri, P. Castoldi, E. De Paoli, F. Paolucci, F. Cugini

TPC Chairs

  • Dr. Antonio de la Oliva, University Carlos III Madrid (UC3M) - General co-chair
  • Dr. Chrysa Papagianni, University of Amsterdam (UvA) - General co-chair
  • Dr. Christian Esteve Rothenberg, University of Campinas (UNICAMP) - TPC co-chair
  • Dr. Dave Cavalcanti, Intel Corporation - TPC co-chair

PC Chairs

  • Carlos J. Bernardos, University Carlos III Madrid (UC3M) - TPC co-chair
  • Carla Fabiana Chiasserini, Politecnico di Torino (POLITO) - TPC co-chair
  • Chia-yu Chang (Nokia Bell Labs) - TPC co-chair
  • Cristiano Bonato Both, Universidad de Vale do Rio dos Sinos (UNISINOS) - TPC co-chair
  • Fábio L. Verdi, Universidade Federal de São Carlos (LERIS – UFSCar) - TPC co-chair
  • Filippo Cugini, Consorzio Nazionale Interuniversitario per le Telecomunicazioni, (CNIT) - TPC co-chair
  • Gergely Pongrácz (Ericsson Research) - TPC co-chair
  • Hasanin Harkous (Nokia Bell Labs) - TPC co-chair
  • István Gódor (Ericsson Research) - TPC co-chair
  • Juan Jose Vegas Olmos (NVIDIA) - TPC co-chair
  • Kleber Vieira Cardoso (Federal University of Goias) - TPC co-chair
  • Luiz F. Bittencourt (State University of Campinas) - TPC co-chair
  • Magnos Martinello (Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo) - TPC co-chair
  • Sándor Laki (Eötvös Loránd University) - TPC co-chair
  • Szilveszter Nádas (Ericsson Research) - TPC co-chair

Key Dates

July 12July 29

2023

Paper Submission

August 5

2023

Notification of Acceptance

August 26

2023

Camera Ready and Registration

October 23

2023

Workshop Date

Call for papers

Creating a deterministic network, understood as end-to-end time sensitive, reliable, and predictable communications, remains a challenge for cellular networks, especially in an industrial context. Wired deterministic communication standards have already emerged including Time Sensitive Networking (TSN) and Deterministic Networking (DetNet) and 5G has specified mechanisms for interworking with those standards. However, the available support of 5G in conjunction with TSN and DetNet is not sufficient for future end-to-end time-critical applications.

Network programmability is key in supporting emerging 6G networks in achieving their promises of increased performance and flexibility at a lower cost. Deep network programmability is expected to characterize the new generation of mobile networks (6G), currently under development, towards supporting extreme performance requirements and service-specific operations.

Enriching next-generation mobile networks with data plane programming capabilities can bring significant benefits with regards to network slicing and multi-tenancy, dynamic traffic engineering, offloading network functions to the data plane, etc. Coupled with edge solutions and advanced machine learning algorithms for network automation can help to overcome network performance limits, e.g., in terms of latency and deterministic delivery.

This workshop aims to bring together academic and industry researchers to stimulate discussions, introduce news ideas and technical solutions in the aforementioned areas and therefore contribute to the progress of 6G networking research.

Submitted papers may cover any of the following topics:

  • Programmable data planes for TSN
  • Network softwarization for 6G
  • Programmable Networking Protocols
  • Programmable SDN and NFV: languages and architectures (P4 and others)
  • Hardware acceleration for programmable network functions
  • Multitenant data planes
  • Orchestration and Management of Software-Defined Deterministic Networks
  • Control and Management of Data plane programmable devices
  • Artificial intelligence for deterministic networks
  • In network Machine Learning
  • In-network service level tuning and optimization; QoS
  • High precision traffic monitoring/telemetry
  • Service assurance and fulfillment programmability
  • Slicing for 6G
  • Intent-based systems and Digital twinning applied in 6G.
  • Reliability, time sensitiveness and predictability in 3GPP and WiFi systems.

Submission instructions

Papers should be submitted via the HotCRP submissing website at https://pdn-6g23.hotcrp.com/. We accept two types of submissions to the workshop:

  • Full Papers: Full papers should not exceed 6 pages (US letter size) double column including figures, tables, and references in standard ACM format.
  • Extended abstracts:  Extended abstracts should not exceed 3pages (US letter size) double column including figures, tables, and references in standard ACM format. Accepted extended abstracts will be charged at the same rate as paper contributions.

Papers must be submitted electronically in printable PDF form. Templates for the standard ACM format can be found at this link.

If you are using LaTeX, please refer to the sample file “sample-sigconf.tex” after you download the .zip templates file and unzip it. Note that the document class “\documentclass[sigconf]{acmart}” should be used. No changes to margins, spacing, or font sizes are allowed from those specified by the style files. Papers violating the formatting guidelines will be returned without review.

All submissions will be reviewed using a single-blind review process. The identity of referees will not be revealed to authors, but author can keep their names on the submitted papers, on figures, bibliography, etc.

Dual Submission Policy

Accepted papers will appear in the conference proceedings published by the ACM. Warning: It is ACM policy not to allow double submissions, where the same paper is submitted to more than one conference/journal concurrently. Any double submissions detected will be immediately rejected from all conferences/journals involved.

Camera-Ready Preparation

Authors should visit the official ACM MobiHoc 2023 website at https://www.sigmobile.org/mobihoc/2023/camera-ready.html to follow the procedure for preparing the camera-ready version of their paper. If there are any formatting errors in your camera-ready, please upload a new version to address the formatting errors soon.

Author Registration Requirement

To ensure the inclusion of the paper in the final proceedings, every paper must have a separate regular (i.e., non-student) registration by an author. ONE registration is valid for ONE paper. If an author has both a conference paper and a workshop paper, they can use the combined conference+workshop rate to cover both papers, but they must be authored by the same individual. Authors should register prior to the submission of camera-ready manuscript. The registration policy and site can be accessed at https://www.sigmobile.org/mobihoc/2023/registration.html.

Confirmation Email

After completing the registration process, authors should send an email to the Registration Chair, Laura Galluccio (laura.galluccio@unict.it). The subject of the email should be “[ACM Mobihoc 2023 Registration].” In the body of the email, authors need to provide the following information:

  • Paper number
  • Paper title
  • The name of the registered author

This confirmation email is necessary to verify the name of the author who is registered for each paper.

Paper Presentation

Each paper must be presented at the workshop. We recommend you plan your trip as soon as possible. Venue and Hotel information is available at https://www.sigmobile.org/mobihoc/2023/venue.html. Visa information is available at https://www.sigmobile.org/mobihoc/2023/visa.html

Questions & Answers

Are we allowed to remove the copyright information on the rebuttal?
You can remove the copyright information on the rebuttal by using the following commands in Latex:
\settopmatter{printacmref=false}
\setcopyright{none}
\renewcommand\footnotetextcopyrightpermission[1]{}

In the rebuttal, are we allowed to point to a PDF with a new version of our paper, replying to the reviewer’s comments, and with the proposed modifications marked in red? Or must the review be self-contained, without external links?
Also, the rebuttal has to be self-contained and cannot point to any external documents or sites. Additionally, since the review was for the draft that was submitted, having a newer version is more like a new submission which would neither be fair (to the others) nor acceptable (for the conference). We hope you understand.

For more information, please contact the organisers: Chrysa Papagianni (c.papagianni@uva.nl), Antonio de la Oliva (aoliva@it.uc3m.es)

DESIRE6G and PREDICT-6G are projects funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Programme under the Smart Networks Services Joint Undertaking