The NEWCOM Network of Excellence

1
The NEWCOM Network of Excellence

• Geir E. Øien
• Department of Electronics and Telecommunications
• NTNU, Norway

2
Overview of talk

• What does NEWCOM mean?
• What is a Network of Excellence?
• NEWCOM motivation and main goals
• NEWCOM history
• NEWCOM partners
• NEWCOM scientific content
• NEWCOM management and organization
• NTNUs share in NEWCOM
• Examples of research topics
• Status

3
What does NEWCOM mean?
http//www.ismb.it/newcom
4
What is a Network of Excellence?

• One of the major mechanisms designed to advance
  European research within the EUs 6th framework
  program.
• Does not fund research per se, but rather
  integration of existing research.
• The idea is to give excellent research groups
  within a field better opportunities to come
  together and stake out common goals for coherent
  scientific advances within the field, and share
  information.
• Funding for e.g.
• inter-network communication
• internal workshops
• joint education and training initiatives
• joint identification of scientific knowledge
  gaps
• development of common software and hardware tools
• joint dissemination activities
• ?

5
NEWCOM motivation and main goals

• NEWCOM aims at creating a European network that
  links in a cooperative way a large number of
  leading research groups, addressing the Strategic
  Objective
• "Mobile and wireless systems beyond 3G"
• which is a frontier research area of the
  Priority Thematic Area of IST (Information
  Society Technologies). 
• The main dimensions of the NEWCOM vision are
• Strengthening, development and integration of
  research in the field
• Empowerment of groups and individuals via
  dissemination activities
• Effective use of produced knowledge via
  exploitation-commercialisation-standardization
  strategies.

6
NEWCOM history

• In April 2002 prof. Sergio Benedetto (Politecnico
  di Torino) consulted a number of colleagues,
  proposing preparation of a proposal within the
  EUs 6th Framework Program, for a Network of
  Excellence in the Wireless Communication field.
• The first meeting was held in May 2002. All 12
  participants liked the idea, and went on
  contacting new potential partners.
• NTNU (Geir Øien) was contacted by one of the
  participants, prof. Arne Svensson (Chalmers), and
  invited to join the network.
• In June 2002 an Expression of Interest (EoI) was
  submitted concerning the NoE, which we decided to
  call NEWCOM.

7
NEWCOM history, contd

• Successively, colleagues from all European
  countries read the EoI and expressed interest in
  participating. Admission was based on a majority
  decision among NEWCOM founders.
• In February 2003, we had the first plenary NEWCOM
  meeting to formalise decisions on acceptance of
  new partners and organisation of the proposal
  writing.
• The European Commission was very positive about
  NEWCOM, and encouraged us to prepare the proposal
  along the lines of the EoI.
• The NEWCOM proposal was submitted in April 2003.
• NEWCOM successfully completed the review phase by
  June 2003.
• The proposal was ranked first among all proposals
  within the Systems beyond 3G action (23.5 out
  of 25 possible points!).

8
NEWCOM history, contd

• A pre-negotiation meeting was held in Brussels in
  July 2003 with agreement of a ceiling grant of 8
  millions Euro for 2.5 years.
• In Sept. 2003 we had the first informal plenary
  meeting of the NEWCOM Scientific Committee,
  preparing the first negotiation meeting, electing
  NEWCOM Director and Executive Board, etc.
• The first negotiation meeting in the presence of
  the EC Contract Officer subsequently took place
  in Brussels.
• Lots of meetings, changes, discussions,
  disappointments, work followed for the next 4
  months
• Finally, in January 2004, after thorough
  examination of and agreement on all workpackages,
  EC proposed a grant of 8 millions Euro for an
  effort of 867 person-months over a 30 months
  period.
• Official kick-off date for NEWCOM was March 1st,
  2004.

9
The NEWCOM partners
UoO
NTNU
UU KU Chalmers KTH LU Ericsson
UiB
Nera
UoE
UoSu VUM UoY
UnivBris
AAU
UGent UCL IMEC ESA
Vodafone
TUM RWTH Aachen
DLR
PUT
UoSo
ENST Bret. TurboCPT
BUE
France Telecom Thales
UEN
TUI
ENST SUPELEC CNRS
TUW FTW
ETH
BUTE
POLITO ISMB I3P
UPC CTTC UPF Telefonica
ASTER
Eurecom
TUL
UoC UoP
CNIT
NCUA CERTH Intracom
UPV
Technion Bilkent ISIK
10
NEWCOM scientific content 1 Departments

• Dept. 1 Analysis and Design of Algorithms for
  Signal Processing at Large in Wireless Systems
• Dept. 2 Radio Channel Modelling for Design
  Optimisation and Performance Assessment of Next
  Generation Communication Systems
• Dept. 3 Design, Modeling and Experimental
  Characterisation of RF and Microwave Devices and
  Subsystems
• Dept. 4 Analysis, Design and Implementation of
  Digital Architectures and Circuits
• Dept. 5 Source Coding and Reliable Delivery of
  Multimedia Contents
• Dept. 6 Protocols, Architectures and Traffic
  Modeling for Reconfigurable/Adaptive Wireless
  Networks
• Dept. 7 QoS Provision in Wireless Networks
  Radio Resource Management, Mobility, and Security

11
NEWCOM scientific content 2 Projects

• Project A Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks
• Project B Ultra-Wideband Communication Systems
• Project C Functional Design Aspects of Future
  Generation Wireless Systems
• Project D Reconfigurable Radio for Interoperable
  Transceivers
• Project E Cross Layer Optimisation

12
NEWCOM management and organization
13
NEWCOM management and organization, contd

• Director
• Prof. Sergio Benedetto, ISMB/PoliTo.
• Overall responsibility for the project, both
  scientific and administrative aspects.
• The Network Office
• Led by the Operations Director (Mr. Stephen
  Sadler, ISMB)
• Supports all NEWCOM partners and
  Departments/Projects administratively, and drives
  forward the Joint Programme of Activities (JPA).
• The Scientific Committee
• The Local Representatives of each NEWCOM partner
  (NTNU Geir), plus the Operations Director.
• he highest governing body takes strategic
  decisions on activities to be undertaken, and on
  distribution of funds.

14
NEWCOM management and organization, contd

• The Advisory Board Independent body evaluating
  the JPA and annual activity reports also Award
  Committee for the NEWCOM best paper award.
  World-wide known scientists from outside Europe
• Fumiyuki Adachi
• David G. Forney, Jr.
• Robert Gallager
• James E. Massey
• Andrew J. Viterbi
• Vijay Bhargava
• Robert Calderbank
• Henry Bertoni
• The Executive Board Elected by the Scientific
  Committee, responsible for executing Scientific
  Committee decisions and for supervising the life
  of NEWCOM through frequent meetings.

15
The NEWCOM Executive Board

• Sergio Benedetto, ISMB/PoliTo, Italy
• Ernst Bonek, Techn. Univ. Wien, Austria
• Pierre Duhamel, CNRS, France
• Joachim Hagenauer, Tech. Univ. München, Germany
• Lajos Hanzo, Univ. of Southampton, UK
• Marco Luise, Univ. of Pisa, Italy
• Heinrich Meyr, RWTH Aachen, Germany
• Sergio Palazzo, Univ. of Catania, Italy
• Erdal Panayirci, ISIK Univ., Turkey
• Andreas Polydoros, National Univ. of Athens,
  Greece
• Phillip Regalia, Institut National des
  Télécommunications, France
• Ingrid Reynaert, IMEC, Belgium
• Arne Svensson, Chalmers Univ. of Technology,
  Sweden
• Luc Vandendorpe, Univ. Cath. Louvain, Belgium
• Roberto Verdone, Univ. of Bologna, Italy

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NTNUs share in NEWCOM

• As a medium-sized partner out of a total of 60
  partners, our share of the budget is approx. 1.5
  , or 120.000 1.0 MNOK, distributed over 30
  months.
• This corresponds to approx. 13 person-months
  work.
• Our personnel is the BEATS team 5 professors
  (Geir, Lars, Nils, Tor, Kjell Jørgen) and 7 PhD
  students (Bengt, Ola, Duc, Anna, Greg, Fredrik,
  Gang).
• We will keep our involvement to a minimum number
  of workpackages (WPs), not to spread our few
  person-months over too many deliverables.
• Scientifically we are involved in
• Department 1, Analysis and Design of Algorithms
  for Signal Processing at Large in Wireless
  Systems
• Department 5, Source Coding and Reliable Delivery
  of Multimedia Contents
• In addition there are many compulsory WPs on
  activities regarding integration, dissemination,
  spreading of excellence, etc.

17
Research topics, Dept. 1

• Coding and Signal Design for Future Wireless
  Broadband Systems
• Synchronisation, Channel Estimation, and
  Equalisation
• Iterative Receivers
• Multiuser Receivers
• Multiple-Input Multiple-Output Systems
• Mobility Management, Handoff Algorithms, and
  Network Information Theory

18
Research topics, Dept. 5

• General Tools for Robust Source Coding
• Joint Source and Channel Decoding
• Joint Source and Channel Encoding
• Methods Requiring Transmission of Quantities
  between Various Network Layers

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Status

• NEWCOM website is active, cf. http//www.ismb.it/n
  ewcom.
• Work initiated on establishing a shared NEWCOM
  software tool database.
• Work initiated on establishing NEWCOM
  videoconferencing facilities.
• Work initiated on identifying knowledge gaps in
  Dept. 1.
• First internal Dept. 1 meeting at ENST in Paris
  on June 25th, immediately following ICC-2004.
• (Probably similar things happening in other
  departments and projects!)
• Eligible cost insecurity

20
Questions?