Title: Road to 5G: Small Cells, Context-Awareness and Ultra-Dense Networks

Abstract: 5G networks will not only support significant increases in data rates and capacity but will also reduce latency and minimize energy while satisfying users' Quality of Experience. It is likely that these gains will be achieved via ultra-small-cell densification, resource sharing and offloading techniques induced by network intelligence, context-awareness and proactiveness. This talk will present the latest trends in small cell research including SON, LTE/WiFi interworking, dynamic switch on/off, dynamic UL/DL TDD, carrier aggregation. In addition, current 5G research focusing on the novel paradigm of proactive networking will be presented highlighting recent findings in this area, such as edge caching. Finally, this talk will explore future directions for research in this area.

Short Biography

Mehdi Bennis (Senior Member, IEEE) received his M.Sc. degree from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland and the Eurecom Institute, France in 2002. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering December 2009 on spectrum sharing for future mobile cellular systems. His main research interests are in radio resource management, heterogeneous networks, game theory and machine learning. Dr. Bennis was the co-PI of the Broadband Evolved FEMTO (FP7-BeFEMTO) project, and is currently the PI of the European CELTIC project SHARING (2013-2016). He has published more than 100 research papers in international conferences, journals, book chapters and patents. Dr. Bennis is currently an editor for the IEEE Transaction of Wireless Communications. Dr. Bennis co-chaired a dozen of IEEE workshops including the four consecutive editions of the international workshop on small cell wireless networks (SmallNets) held in conjunction with IEEE ICC 2012-2015. Recently, Dr. Bennis gave tutorial presentations at IEEE PIMRC 2012, IEEE GLOBECOM 2012, IEEE DySPAN 2014, IEEE WCNC 2014 and IEEE GLOBECOM 2014, IEEE ICC 2015. Dr. Bennis has also given keynote speeches at IEEE ICT 2013, and IEEE WCNC 2014 CLEEN WS. Finally, Dr. Bennis was a guest editor on 4 special issues (forthcoming JSAC SI on Hetnets, IEEE Communication magazine on full duplexing, big data and UAVs). Dr. Bennis is the winner of the 2015 IEEE Communications Society Fred W. Ellersick Prize.