IEEE GLOBECOM 2010 Explores Latest Advancements In Mobile Interactivity
More than 2,500 Attendees and Record-Setting Number of Presentations Combine to Make the Premier International Meeting the Most Successful in Conference History
IEEE GLOBECOM 2010 recently held its most successful meeting in the conference's 53-year history with more than 2,500 scientists, researchers and academia attending nearly 2,000 presentations dedicated to the advancement of global communications designed to increase the quality of life worldwide. Held from 6 – 10 December 2010 in Miami, Florida, this annual flagship event of the IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc) committed its entire agenda to "The Age of Mobile Interactivity" and the newest methods for lowering network costs, reducing carbon footprints, increasing efficiencies, expanding services and producing anytime/anywhere usage for users everywhere.
After introductions from Executive General Chair Dr. Kia Makki and IEEE ComSoc President Dr. Byeong Gi Lee, the conference officially commenced on the morning of December 7 with a three-day schedule of high-level keynotes, plenary speaker presentations, technical symposia, business & technology forums, awards and exhibits designed to explore the entire range of communications technologies. During her keynote on Tuesday morning, Dr. Regina E. Dugan, Director of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) challenged all participants to overcome the fear of failure, while reminding everyone that one person can forever change the quality of life for 6.9 billion people worldwide. She also continually reinforced this mission by stating that life is a miracle and the magic that can make all our lives better is needed more now than ever before.
Among the highlights of Tuesday's agenda were also several high-level forums and presentations detailing the latest research and application advancements in areas such as "Faster, Greener and More Frugal Network Transport," "The Channel Access Conundrum," "Dynamic Spectrum Access," "An Executive's Perspective of Tomorrow's Technology" and "Next Generation Internet." For instance, the event's Cloud Computing Forum reviewed the latest services for not only enhancing the consistency of healthcare delivery throughout the world, but also the implementation of technologies that turn capital expenditures to operational expenses, greatly increase competencies and simplify the manageability of internal infrastructures.
On the following morning, the IEEE GLOBECOM 2010 agenda renewed with the keynote presentation of Yoshihiro Obata, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of eAcess Ltd. and Executive Vice President of eMOBILE Ltd. Throughout his address, Yoshihiro highlighted the history of Japan's broadband industry and his own company's growth, which rose from a two-person business in 1999 to a national enterprise that currently has nearly 3,000 individuals and $2.5B in sales.
In addition, Wednesday's well-attended IPv6 Forum began with the very real fact that the entire spate of global IPv4 Internet addresses will be exhausted within the next two years and the transition to IPv6 has "already taken five years too long." As a result, many of the session's speakers concurred that "if you do not transition to IPv6, you will not be a player in the Internet."
Subsequently, the effort to integrate IPv6 into existing and new infrastructures has seen "more activity in the past year than the previous 10 years combined." Although in the early stages, this includes providing consumers with IPv6 connectivity options in the very near future.
Other sessions such as the "Wireless Communications Forum" dealt with the challenges of servicing the world's mobile device users, which already includes 4.1 billion subscriptions and the "Smart Grid and Green Technology Forum" that offered a host of options for enabling cost savings and lowering energy use through the implementation of smart appliances and meters on a global scale. Additional Wednesday highlights included plenary addresses on highly sensitive areas like "Energy-Efficient Wireless Applications," "Multidimensional Convergence of Broadband Access Technologies," "Physical Layer Security in Wireless Networks" and "Smart Phones: A Revolution in Mobile Computing."
On Thursday, Dr. Frederica Darema, the director of the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research, opened the day by detailing the U.S. Air Force's concept of network system science and the fundamental aspects of its practical impact. Lauded for her comprehensive mathematical approach to fostering synergism across widespread scientific disciplines, Dr. Darema's complex network of sensoring and informational gathering has helped create encompassing advances in tornado monitoring, aircraft design, oil exploration, semiconductor manufacturing and electrical power grid enhancements, among others, over the past five years.
Throughout the day, participants were also feted to another full schedule of technical symposia, plenary speeches and informational forums highlighting the areas of design & development, multimedia communications, wireless networking, intelligent transportation and 4G architectural advancements. For example, presenters within the QoS Multimedia Forum offered insights and research findings related to the development of processing techniques that will help reduce traffic congestion as well as enhance the transmission and storage of real-time multimedia experiences. The Multimedia Communications Plenary then offered attendees a glimpse of next steps, which are in progress and starting to digitally teleport individuals and groups of people to virtual meeting arenas, while reconnecting families, delivering healthcare to remote regions and saving energy and commuting costs.
Several other popular forums featured the latest techniques for furthering the latency, spectral efficiency, antenna support and ultimately the performance of next generation mobile broadband wireless networks as well as the initial thrusts to develop Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) that shorten driving times, deliver quicker medical aid and reduce road-related injuries. According to session speakers, the implementation of vehicular communications should be a governmental and corporate mandate worldwide due to its ability to save hundreds of thousands of lives annually in addition to reducing drive time and costs, and delivering another full array of fee-based services to commuters.
IEEE GLOBECOM 2010 then completed the most successful conference in its history with another full agenda of workshops on Friday, December 10. Notable technology experts representing nearly every phase of voice, data, image, and multimedia communications supervised learning sessions in numerous areas that included separation and overlay networks, P2P live streaming systems, self-managed future Internets, virtual machine migration, multimedia computing and real-time Internet trafficking.
Buoyed by the tremendous response to last year's meeting, IEEE GLOBECOM 2011 planning is already underway with the deadline for paper submissions set for 1 March 2011. For information on this global event, which will be held 5 – 9 December 2011 in Houston, Texas, please visit www.ieee-globecom.org/2011 or h.sweeney@comsoc.org.
The IEEE Communications Society has over 40,000 members and is the second largest of IEEE's 38 technical societies. Founded in 1952, it has become the major international forum for the exchange of ideas on communications and information networking.
SOURCE: The IEEE Communications Society