Special Sessions
Title of Special Session: Noisy Error CorrectionAbstract: Many natural and man-made systems involving computing, control, communications and information storage are made of unreliable parts or parts exhibiting stochastic behavior. When reliability of the information transmission/storage medium - the channel - cannot be improved due to the underlying physics and/or manufacturing cost, one relies on error correction to prevent the data loss. Traditional systems rely on the assumption that the error correction circuit is perfect, i.e., that computations are performed on noiseless hardware. However in modern micro and nano-electronics devices, space missions electronics, quantum computers and memories, the hardware for error correction is also noisy. Due to hardware unreliability, the error correction circuit - whose purpose is to correct errors - introduces errors in the process of correcting errors made during transmission/storage. This session will address a range of new approaches and results in systems with noisy components, with an emphasis on noisy error correction systems. Keynote speakers: David Declercq & Lara Dolecek
Bio: Prof. David Declercq received his PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering in 1998 from the University of Cergy-Pontoise (France). He has been successively assistant, associate and now full Professor at the ENSEA, in Cergy-Pontoise. He was the recipient of the Junior position at the institut universitaire de France, from 2009 to 2014, and received 3 times the national grant award PEDR for excellence in research and student advising. He is currently the head of the research department at the ENSEA, adjunct head of the ETIS laboratory and secretary of the GRETSI association. He is also senior member of the IEEE, and serves as associate editor for the IEEE transactions on Communications. His main research areas include LDPC codes and decoders in high order Galois fields GF(q), with q>>2, and low complexity iterative decoders with performance vs. implementation tradeoffs. David Declercq published more than 40 papers in major journals (IEEE-Trans. Commun., IEEE-Trans. Inf. Theo., Commun. Letters, etc.), and more than 110 papers in major conferences in Information and Communication Technologies.
Special Session Chair: Bane Vasic
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Title of Special Session: Coding for Machine Learning and Neural NetworksAbstract: Error correcting coding techniques have been developed with the aim of protecting data from erroneous channel transmissions and storage. The mechanisms involved rely on redundancy and diversity. On the other hand, neural networks are often used to solve machine learning problems, in which typically redundant inputs are associated with sparse valuable output. In this context many problems arise involving combination of neural networks and error correcting coding. These include using coding to improve performance of artificial neural network systems and proposing models to explain the robustness properties of the brain. Keynote speaker: Simon Thorpe
Special Session Chair: Vincent Gripon
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Recent Advances in Coding for Higher Order ModulationAbstract: During the last decade, recently discovered error correcting schemes such as polar codes, spatially coupled codes, and protograph codes were intensively studied and have become mature technologies. Most research efforts were on code design for binary input channels. This special session addresses the code design challenges imposed by higher-order modulation, indispensable to achieve the capacity of bandwidth-limited channels and important for 5G as well as future satellite and optical fiber transmission schemes. The scope of this session comprises:
Keynote speaker: Gerhard Kramer
Bio: Gerhard Kramer is Alexander von Humboldt Professor and Head of the Institute for Communications Engineering at the Technische Universität München (TUM). He received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada in 1991 and 1992, respectively, and the Dr. sc. techn. (Doktor der technischen Wissenschaften) degree from the ETH Zürich, Switzerland, in 1998. From 1998 to 2000, he was with Endora Tech AG, Basel, Switzerland, as a communications engineering consultant. From 2000 to 2008 he was with the Math Center, Bell Labs, Alcatel-Lucent, Murray Hill, NJ, as a Member of Technical Staff. He joined the University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles, CA, as a Professor of Electrical Engineering in 2009. He joined TUM in 2010. Gerhard Kramer’s research interests are primarily in information theory and communications theory, with applications to wireless, copper, and optical fiber networks. He is a Fellow of the IEEE since 2010. In 2008, he was the founding co-chair of the Annual Schools of Information Theory that today run in Australia, East Asia, Europe, India, and North America. He served as technical program co-chair of the 2008 and 2014 IEEE International Symposia of Information Theory (ISIT) and he is general co-chair of ISIT 2017. Gerhard Kramer served as the 2013 President of the IEEE Information Theory Society. He was elected a Full Member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities in 2015. Special Session Chairs: Georg Böcherer and Gianluigi Liva
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Title of Special Session: Are lattice codes ready for application in future networks?Abstract: Future wireless networks are expected to draw heavily on advanced techniques for broadcast transmission, multiple access, and interference mitigation, as well as distributed compression for backhauling. Lattice codes are particularly suited for these scenarios, as they have a linear structure over real and complex numbers, they allow for nested structures, and information theory predicts excellent performance; this is in contrast to other coded modulation schemes like bit-interleaved coded modulation. This session will explore the applicability of lattice codes to the requirements of future network structures with respect to information-theoretical, coding-theoretical as well as practical aspects. The presenters are experts in the field of lattice coding, covering both industry and academia as well as both theory and practice. The session aims at attracting research interest to build the bridge from the so far mostly theoretical results with promising performance to the practical application of lattice codes to meet the high requirements of future communication networks. Keynote speaker: Jean-Claude Belfiore
Special Session Chairs: Ingmar Land, Frédéric Gabry, Valerio Bioglio
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Bio: Lara Dolecek is an Associate Professor with the Electrical Engineering Department at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She holds a B.S. (with honors), M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, as well as an M.A. degree in Statistics, all from the University of California, Berkeley. She received the 2007 David J. Sakrison Memorial Prize for the most outstanding doctoral research in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at UC Berkeley. Prior to joining UCLA, she was a postdoctoral researcher with the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She received several research and teaching awards including IEEE Globecom Best Paper Award (2015), IBM Faculty Award (2014), Northrop Grumman Excellence in Teaching Award (2013), Intel Early Career Faculty Award (2013), University of California Faculty Development Award (2013), Okawa Research Grant (2013), NSF CAREER Award (2012), and Hellman Fellowship Award (2011). She is an Associate Editor for Coding Theory for IEEE Transactions on Communications. Her current research is in coding theory, inference, and computational methods, and especially in discovering new mathematical tools that will enable future data storage and processing technologies.
Bio: Bane Vasic is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Mathematics at the University of Arizona and a Director of the Error Correction Laboratory. He serves as a Chair of the IEEE Data Storage Technical Committee. He is an inventor of the soft errorevent decoding algorithm, and the key architect of a detector/decoder for Bell Labs data storage read channel chips which were regarded as the best in industry. Different variants of this algorithm were implemented in virtually all magnetic hard drives. His pioneering work on structured low-density parity check (LDPC) error correcting codes and invention of codes has enabled low-complexity iterative decoder implementations. Structured LDPC codes are today adopted in a number of communications standards. Dr. Vasic's theoretical work in error correction coding theory and codes on graphs has led to analytical characterization of the hard decision iterative decoders of low-density parity check (LDPC) codes, and design of codes and decoders with best error-floor performance known today. He is an IEEE Fellow.
Bio: Simon Thorpe is the Director of the CerCo (Brain and Cognition Research Centre) in Toulouse, and also director of the Toulouse Mind & Brain Institute). He was born in 1956 near London and studied Psychology and Physiology at the University of Oxford, where his obtained his doctorate with Prof. Edmund Rolls in 1981. After a year as a postdoc with Max Cynader in Canada, he moved to France where he joined Michel Imbert's laboratory in Orsay before moving to Paris. Recruited as a CNRS researcher in 1983, he was one of the founding members of the Brain and Cognition Research Centre (CerCo) that was created in Toulouse in 1993. His research has covered a wide range of subjects, ranging from the neurophysiology of the frontal cortex, and the visual system of both monkeys and cats. But more recently, he has become particularly well known for his work on the mechanisms of ultra-rapid categorisation in both man and monkey. He is also well known for his theoretical work on neural coding, and more specifically the potential of temporal coding schemes based on waves of spikes. This work led to the creation of a high tech start-up company in 1999. SpikeNet Technology currently employs 14 staff and develops bio-inspired software and hardware systems for image processing and object recognition.
Bio: Vincent Gripon is a permanent researcher with Télécom Bretagne (Institut Mines Télécom), Brest, France. He obtained his M.S. from École Normale Supérieure of Cachan and his Ph.D. from Télécom Bretagne. His research interests lie at the intersection of information theory, computer science and neural networks. Specifically, he is interested in sparse representations of content in neural networks and their consequence on storage capacity, robustness and performance. In 2011, he proposed with Claude Berrou novel families of associative memories achieving unprecedented performance thanks to the use of error correcting techniques. Today, together with his colleagues he is contributing to the rise of informational neurosciences.
Bio: Georg Böcherer obtained his MSc degree in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology from the ETH Zürich. He spent one semester at the EPF Lausanne and wrote his master thesis at the Federal University of Pernambuco in Recife, Brazil. From 2007 to 2012 he worked towards his PhD degree at the Institute of Theoretical Information Technology at RWTH Aachen University. Since April 2012, he is with the Institute for Communications Engineering at Technische Universität München. His PhD thesis on probabilistic shaping received the E-Plus Dissertation Award. His work on coding for the ICT Cubes received the best paper award at ISWCS 2011. His proposal on coded modulation with probabilistic shaping won a Bell Labs Prize in 2015.
Bio: Gianluigi Liva received the M.S. and the Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Bologna (Italy) in 2002 and 2006, respectively. Since 2006 he is with the Institute of Communications and Navigation at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), where he currently leads the Information Transmission group. In 2010 he has been appointed lecturer for channel coding at the Institute for Communications Engineering (LNT), Technische Universität München (TUM). In 2012 and 2013 he has been lecturing for channel coding at the Nanjing University of Science and Technology (China). Since 2014 he is lecturer for channel codes with iterative decoding at the Institute for Communications Engineering (LNT), Technische Universität München (TUM). His main research interests include satellite communications, random access techniques and error control coding. He is/has been active in the DVB-SH, DVB-RCS and DVB-S2 standardization groups, as well as in the standardization of error correcting codes for deep-space communications within the CCSDS.
Bio: Jean-Claude Belfiore is Head of the Communication Science Department at the Huawei Mathematical and Algorithmic Sciences Lab and professor at Telecom ParisTech. He received his MSc from Supelec and his PhD from ENST. In 1989, he was enrolled at ENST (now Telecom ParisTech), where he became full Professor in the Communications & Electronics department, in charge of research activities in the areas of digital communications, information theory and coding. Jean-Claude Belfiore has made pioneering contributions on modulation and coding for wireless systems (especially space-time coding) by using tools of number theory. He is also one of the co-inventors of the celebrated Golden Code. He is now working on wireless network coding, coding for physical security, coding for interference channels and more generally on lattice coding problems for multiterminal communications. He is author or co-author of more than 200 technical papers and communications and he has served as advisor for more than 30 Ph.D. students. Prof. Belfiore has been the recipient of the 2007 Blondel Medal. He has been Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory for Coding Theory.
Bio: Ingmar Land has joined the Huawei French Research Centre in December 2014 and is heading the Communication Algorithms Design. Previously he was Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Telecommunications Research, University of South Australia, from 2007 to 2014, and Assistant Professor at Aalborg University, Denmark, from 2005 to 2006. He received his Dr.-Ing. (summa cum laude) in 2004 from the University of Kiel, Germany, and studied for his Dipl.-Ing. at the University of Ulm and the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany. He was recipient of four competitive research grants from the Australian Research Council. He has more than 60 scientific publications, including journal and conference papers, one book and one book chapter, and he holds several patents. He further has extensive experience in student supervision and teaching (Teacher of the Year Award 2006, Aalborg University). His main research interests are coding and information theory with application to multi-user communications, cooperative communications, physical-layer security, and to distributed storage.
Bio: Frédéric Gabry received the M.Sc. degree from Telecom Paristech, Paris, France (Ingénieur Telecom ParisTech) in 2009 and the M.Sc degree and Lic. Eng. degree from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden in 2009 and 2012, respectively. Since October 2009, he was working towards a Ph.D. degree in telecommunications in the Communication Theory Division at KTH and he graduated in November 2014. In 2014, he was a visiting Ph.D. student at the Communications Theory laboratory, TU Dresden, Germany. His main research interests are information theory and communication theory with focus on applications including physical layer security, channel coding, codes for caching and distributed storage, game theory for cooperative and secure communications. He is working as a Research Engineer in Huawei France Research Center, Mathematical and Algorithmic Sciences Lab, Paris, since December 2014.
Bio: Valerio Bioglio has joined the Huawei French Research Centre in January 2015 as Researcher for the Team Coding for Data Networks. Previously he joined the CRISP Team as a Post-doc Researcher at the Telecommunication Department, Politecnico of Torino. Heobtained his BSc in Mathematics from Università degli Studi di Torino (Italy) in 2006. He obtained her MSc in Applied Mathematics from Università degli Studi di Torino (Italy) in 2008. He completed his PhD in Computer Science at the Computer Science Department of the Università degli Studi di Torino (Italy) in 2012. His main research interests are information theory, communication theory and signal processing with focus on mathematical modeling. His publications include papers on rateless codes, network coding, P2P streaming, game theory for cooperative communications, codes for caching and distributed storage, compressed sensing, image processing. He further has extensive experience in student supervision, teaching and scientific vulgarisation. His current research interests lie in the field of 5G communication systems, with application to distributed storage, caching, and polar codes.