BIO: Symeon Chatzinotas is currently Full Professor / Chief Scientist I and Head of the research group SIGCOM in the Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust, University of Luxembourg. In parallel, he is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Electronic Systems, Norwegian University of Science and Technology and a Collaborating Scholar of the Institute of Informatics & Telecommunications, National Center for Scientific Research “Demokritos”. In the past, he has lectured as Visiting Professor at the University of Parma, Italy and contributed in numerous R&D projects for the Institute of Telematics and Informatics, Center of Research and Technology Hellas and Mobile Communications Research Group, Center of Communication Systems Research, University of Surrey.

TITLE: Integrating UAVs into 6G Networks: Opportunities and Challenges

ABSTRACT: UAVs have shown great promise in many areas of socioeconomic impact. However, their wide adoption is still obstructed by a complicated regulatory environment and the unavailability of reliable connectivity, especially for Beyond Visual Line of Sight operation. In the current talk, we review the main opportunities ahd challenges, while integrating UAVs into 6G Networks. In addition, we present relevant research results and insights for two specific domains: 1) Mobile Edge Computing for UAV applications, 2) 3D Connectivity through Active Antenna Systems. Finally, a list of open research challenges is presented.

Gino Masini

BIO: Gino Masini is Principal Researcher with Ericsson in Sweden. He graduated from Politecnico di Milano and received an MBA from SDA Bocconi School of Management in Milano. He started his career as a researcher at Politecnico di Milano, working for the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency on millimeter wave radio propagation, helping among other things to pave the way for the Alphasat mission. He has been with Ericsson since 1999, working at first with microwave radio link antennas, network planning and MMIC design, and since 2009 with 4G and 5G radio access network architecture. He has been active in international standards for more than 20 years, having represented Ericsson in ETSI, ITU, CEPT, and 3GPP. He served as 3GPP RAN3 Chairman for two terms, overseeing the standardization of 5G radio access network architecture, interfaces, and protocols. He is the author of more than 80 patents and of several scientific publications, and he also holds a "Six Sigma" certification. He is co-author of books on 5G and on 5G non-terrestrial networks.

TITLE: NTN and 3GPP Standards from 5G to 6G

ABSTRACT: Prior to the advent of 5G, satellite and mobile networks were designed independently from one another and were addressing separate user markets. Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN) are now part of 3GPP standards since Rel-17, providing seamless extended coverage to all 5G users. 6G will offer an opportunity to natively specify system architecture and protocols from the very beginning, enabling terrestrial and non-terrestrial network components to support a unified set of use cases. We will briefly introduce industry standardization of NTN in 3GPP, reviewing current NTN features of 5G. We will then provide some initial considerations on 6G and how NTN can be a native part of it, specifically focusing on radio access network architecture.

Michela Meo

BIO: Michela Meo is a Professor of Telecommunication Engineering at Politecnico di Torino, Italy. Her research interests include green networking, energy-efficient mobile networks and data centers, and machine learning for video quality of experience. She has edited the book "Green Communications" (Wiley) and several special issues of international journals. She chaired the International Advisory Council of the International Teletraffic Conference from 2015 to 2022. She is a Senior Editor of IEEE Transactions on Green Communications and has served as an Associate Editor for ACM/IEEE Transactions on Networking, the Green Series of the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas of Communications, and IEEE Communication Surveys and Tutorials. As General or Technical Chair, she has led the organization of several conferences.

TITLE: Aerial platforms to enhance the sustainability of radio access networks

ABSTRACT: High Altitude Platforms (HAPS) equipped with base stations have recently been considered a promising aerial network component to support Radio Access Networks. They are typically envisioned as a means to extend radio coverage to remote areas or provide connectivity in case of a disaster. In this presentation, we take a different perspective and consider HAPS as elements that can increase network sustainability in two ways: first, they help operate the radio access network in a more energy-efficient manner; second, they reduce the need for network densification.

Maria Luisa Merani

BIO: Maria Luisa Merani is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering “Enzo Ferrari”, at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Modena, Italy. Her research interests lie in the area of wireless networking, with an emphasis on vehicular communications, road safety, and the protection of vulnerable road users. Maria Luisa served as the technical program co-chair of the Wireless Comunication Symposium at Globecom, in the 2007 and 2009 editions. In 2010, she was the General Chair of the fifth edition IEEE International Symposium on Wireless Pervasive Computing. She also served as an Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications in the 2013-2015 period. She is an IEEE Senior Member and will be the general chair of the 2025 edition of the IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference, which will be held in Milan.

TITLE: Serving CAV and VRU traffic: an all-around view

ABSTRACT: This talk focuses on the characterization of road safety messages and on the effectiveness of the cellular standard for vehicular communications to accommodate them. First, awareness messages broadcasted by connected vehicles and vulnerable road users are examined, providing an experimental analysis of their temporal features in different road environments. Next, the limits of the scheduling schemes envisioned in the New Radio V2X Side Link standard when serving this traffic type are highlighted, followed by the discussion of a possible countermeasure based on machine learning to address the shortcomings. Next, cooperative perception messages are introduced and their features illustrated, providing evidence of their size variability and dependence on the fusion rules enforced by the connected and automated vehicles.

Francesco Raviglione

BIO: Francesco Raviglione received his B.Sc. degree in computer engineering from Politecnico di Torino (2016), followed by an M.Sc. degree in mechatronics engineering (2018), with a focus on automotive and embedded systems. In 2022, he pursued a Ph.D. cum laude in Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering in Politecnico di Torino, presenting a final thesis work titled "Open platforms for connected vehicles". During his Ph.D., he also spent a six-month visiting period at the Roux Institute at Northeastern University, in Portland, Maine, USA, working on a multi-technology platform for enabling Vehicular Edge Intelligence. He is currently an Assistant Professor with time contract at the Department of Electronics and Telecommunications (DET) in Politecnico di Torino. He is working in the field of developing and evaluating vehicular networking platforms and protocols, on open source, customizable, solutions for wireless networking use cases, and on network measurements and performance assessment. He is also teaching in courses related to networking technologies for connected vehicles and mobile networks.

TITLE: Open Connected Vehicles: Frameworks for Simulation and Field Trials

ABSTRACT: Vehicular networks (also known as "Vehicle-to-Everything", V2X) represent one of the most impacting technological advances for the next generation of vehicles, that are going to be characterized by increasing levels of automation. Connecting vehicles and allowing them to exchange data with other road users or with the infrastructure faces several challenges. In this context, open platforms assume a pivotal role both for research and industry since they enable the reproducibility of results, they provide transparency, reliability and community support, and they are a low-cost and effective way of researching new protocols and services. In this talk, we will first understand why open source is important in the context of V2X research and deployment. We will then present an open simulation and emulation framework, called ms-van3t, for advanced research and simulation of V2X scenarios. The talk will include the presentation of the framework and a set of application-layer and network-layer results to showcase the capabilities of ms-van3t. Since simulations may not be enough when testing a novel protocol or service for automotive applications, field tests play a fundamental role in studying the behavior of a V2X system in real-world scenarios. Motivated by this, we will present the DriveX On-Board Unit (OBU) and OScar (Open Stack for car), a cost-effective combination of customizable hardware (DriveX OBU) and open source software (OScar) to enable research on V2X by equipping existing vehicles, in a plug-and-play manner, with V2X communication technologies and a full ETSI C-ITS stack. Finally, we will showcase LaTe, a lightweight latency measurement tool.

Fortunato Santucci

BIO: Fortunato Santucci (SM IEEE) is a Professor of Telecommunications with the Department of Information Engineering, Computer Science and Mathematics. He has been a visiting researcher with the University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada, and also has been involved in visits with several universities worldwide. He has authored or coauthored more than 250 articles in international journals or conference proceedings. His research activity is focused on energy-efficient communication paradigms for the Internet of Things, vehicular communication networks, network security, and advanced signal processing for satellite transponders and 5G infrastructures. He is the deputy Director of the Centre of Excellence Ex-EMERGE on connected vehicles at the University of L’Aquila and Co-Founder of WEST Aquila S.r.l., a spin-off of the University of L’Aquila. He has held other management positions at the University of L’Aquila, among those he has been a member of the Academic Senate. He has been a member of several technical committees of the IEEE Communications Society and a member of editorial boards. From 2000 to 2013, he served as an Editor for IEEE Transactions on Communications.

TITLE: A research and innovation initiative on connected and automated driving

ABSTRACT: In the challenging field of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) we present a multi-disciplinary research project that aims at developing and validating key technology enablers for advanced levels of automated mobility: vehicular communications, accurate and reliable positioning, machine learning for automated operations, multi-access edge computing architectures and security by design. The research activities have been focused to define and develop some case studies, whose functional and performance requirements are tested in real scenarios. Those case studies are deployed on experimental facilities, that encompass a small fleet of light commercial vehicles provided with the on-board units designed and developed within the project, a collaborative initiative of Radiolabs, University of L'Aquila, Leonardo, Telespazio and Elital.

Sergio Matteo Savaresi

BIO: Sergio M. Savaresi received the M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering (Politecnico di Milano, 1992), the Ph.D. in Systems and Control Engineering (Politecnico di Milano, 1996), and the M.Sc. in Applied Mathematics (Catholic University, Brescia, 2000). After the Ph.D. he worked as management consultant at McKinsey&Co, Milan Office. He is Full Professor in Automatic Control at Politecnico di Milano since 2006 . He is Deputy Director and Chair of the Systems&Control Section of Department of Electronics, Computer Sciences and Bioengineering (DEIB), Politecnico di Milano. He is author of more than 500 scientific publications. His main interests are in the areas of vehicles control, machine learning, and control applications, with special focus on smart mobility. He has been manager and technical leader of more than 400 research projects in cooperation with leading companies in the automotive industry. He is co-founder of 10 high-tech startup companies. He is the team leader of PoliMOVE, the winner of the the Autonomous Challenge @ CES 2022 (first ever high-speed fully-autonomous head-to-head multi-agent race).

TITLE: Robo-driver: the enabler of the revolution of personal mobility

ABSTRACT: In the next 30 years a revolution is expected in the mobility model: the traditional personal mobility model (based on big, fossil-fuel-powered, personal-ownership cars) will be almost entirely replaced by Mobility-As-A-Service, autonomous, electric/H2 cars. This “revolution” aims to make a quantum leap in the overall efficiency of the mobility system, and to contribute to the improvement of the safety and sustainability of vehicles. This revolution will also deeply affect the structure of the entire automotive industry (layers, players, etc.) Among the main technology megatrends, the autonomous-driving technology has a special/key role: not only is (by far) the most challenging from a technical point of view, but it will play the role of booster/catalyzer of all the other megatrends. The plenary speech aims to provide a high-level view of this technology revolution, highlighting the role and the impact of the autonomous-driving technology.