SDRAN 2015 - 1st IEEE Workshop on Software-Defined Radio Access Networks (SDRAN)

The telecommunication industry is entering a new era. The increased traffic demands imposed by the huge number of always-on connections require a 'quantum-leap' in the field of enabling techniques. Furthermore, the subscribers expect ever-increasing quality of experience with its joy and wonder, whilst the network operators and service providers aim for more power-efficient networks. These requirements herald a revolutionary change in this industry. The success of network-virtualization in the IT industry has had a profound beneficial impact. Wireless designers are opting for radically new philosophies in order to enable future wireless communication networks to face these challenges. To tackle these unprecedented challenges imposed by the introduction of smart phones and tablets as well as to support society's increased dependence on wireless communications, the radio access networks (RAN) are expected to evolve to ever denser cell structures, which create the wireless 'cloud'. The future RANs will rely on the co-existence of multiple deployment scenarios, on diverse radio access specifications, on unconventional mm-Wave and visible-light spectrums, as well as on a rich variety of services and applications. These demands may only be satisfied with the aid of extremely diversified resource pooling.
The key task of RAN research is to identify how we can most efficiently exploit the pooled network resources in order to guarantee the best possible user-experience. This requires an optimized RAN architecture for supporting flexible, dynamically configurable and customized services. Software-defined networking (SDN) along with network virtualization is recognized to be the key technology enabler conceived for meeting these requirements. All these advanced concepts are under consideration for the fifth generation (5G) of mobile wireless networks, which are expected to be commercially available by 2020. This timely workshop will shed light on the fundamental technology components of radically new Software Defined RAN (SDRAN) networks. SDN and network virtualization have become hot topics. Hence a number of SDN related scholarly events have been organized around the globe.
Against this back-cloth, SDRAN 2015 aims to be a high-profile workshop that brings together state-of-the-art contributions on the design, specification, and implementation of architectures, algorithms, supporting wireline infrastructure, and protocols conceived for SDRAN. This workshop will also include service provider and network operator considerations, such as management, cloud-based virtualization, and dynamic orchestration and provisioning. It will offer a rich blend of radically new and partially unorthodox topics, which are expected to become as mature as the main subjects of the conference in a few years time. Hence at the current state-of-the-art they tend to be complementary to the main conference. We aim to provide an environment conducive of cross-pollination amongst researchers from the fields as diverse as networking, wireless communications, optimization, management, distributed computing and cloud computing, all of which are relevant to the advancement and realization of SDRAN. By creating a relaxed, collegial atmosphere, we will foster a dialogue amongst researchers from industry and academia working at the cutting edge of SDRAN. We aim to draw original, unpublished contributions spanning ALL aspects of SDRAN. Possible topics of interest include, but are certainly not limited to:
Network architecture for SDRANs
Multi-layer networking in SDRANs
Wireline and cloud-based infrastructure for SDRANs
Admission control in SDRANs
Traffic engineering in SDRANs
Radio coordination, RRM in SDRANs
Network Coding in SDRANs
In-network storage and processing in SDRANs
Carrying new services and applications in SDRANs
QoE/QoS assurance in SDRANs
Service providers & network management considerations for SDRANs
Network protocols for SDRANs
Network virtualization in SDARNs
Evaluation tools and testbeds for SDRANs