23rd Infocom World Conference (“Recharging Greece: Revolution of the Evolution!”)

The latest 23rd Infocom World Conference that has been held virtually in Athens, Greece, on November 24-26, 2021, (https://infocomworld.gr/en/home-en/) has been considered as “the greatestICT & Media Conference in South-Eastern Europe” and it is widely regarded as “the Major Annual Meeting of all the digital market stakeholders in order to implement Digital Transformation, conformant to current market needs and related challenges.

The Infocom World Conference 2021, following a successful tradition of 23 subsequent years, has been about the revolutionary effects coming from technology and market evolution towards new digital dimensions in a fully converged world. The pandemic measures and conditions as shaped in all specs of social and professional everyday life, changed everything and led to an awesome acceleration, in terms of utilizing digital technologies. As the entire planet tries to return to normal, Greece is also at a critical juncture, facing the great challenge of harnessing the dynamics created by the further adoption of new technologies so that using digital transformation as a means, it may lead to increased growth rates at multiple levels, regaining potential lost ground. Digital technologies, and especially telecommunications infrastructure and ICT services and solutions for citizens and businesses, are the “key” to this effort to restore and “accelerate” the process for growth.

The Infocom World Conference 2021 included, among other, challenges about developing 5G infrastructures, setting up an ecosystem of applications and solutions that utilize 5G, as well as focusing on investments in new technological infrastructures and solutions, and their utilization by the public and private sectors.

The 2021 Conference has been organised in three daily Workshops, each one covering specific aspects and related challenges.

The context of the third day event (Friday, November 26, 2021) was about structuring a research-oriented full-day Workshop to discuss “More than 5G!”aspects.

To this aim, Hellenic Telecommunications Organization S.A. (OTE) organized seven (-7-) distinct sessions, all oriented to actual 5G challenges and hosted several speakers coming from ongoing EU-funded projects, most of which from the 5G-PPP framework of reference. 

The proposed sessions have been about:

  1. Focus on the fundamental context of the 5G infrastructure; this has also assessed appearing challenges towards “Beyond 5G” (B5G) and provided information about two among the three of the core 5G platforms, used for interoperability and testing purposes (i.e. the 5GENESIS and the 5G-EVE projects).
  2. Setting emphasis on the verticals by presenting not only the context and the architectural framework but also by discussing advanced validation trials (including results and assessment of respective KPIs) from multiple vertical industries. (Results from the ongoing 5G-TOURS and 5G-HEART projects have been presented, in parallel with the progress of DataPorts project together with MARVEL and CYRENE projects).
  3. Presenting the specific case of the 5G-PPP LOCUS project, assessed as platform/tool dealing with localization and analytics on-demand embedded in the 5G ecosystem, for serving vertical applications. This can be assessed an example for supporting innovation in verticals.
  4. Discussing 5G innovations for verticals with potential third-party services, together covering issues about the intended deployment and offering of various NetApps. In this framework, some of the ongoing research initiatives have been introduced (i.e., the cases of the Smart5Grid , 5G-ERA, 5G-INDUCE, VITAL-5G, EVOLVED-5G and 5GASP projects);
  5. Assessing the detailed innovative scope of the ongoing MARSAL project, especially focusing on the development of Machine Learning-based solutions towards B5G.
  6. Presenting a broader approach on concerns for the inclusion of AI and ML techniques to achieve better network management in the context of the ongoing DAEMON and MonB5G projects, within the longer term vision, targeting the realization of pervasive mobile virtual services.
  7. Discussing examples and market applications, by identifying results within dedicated business or scientific scenarios. (This session comprised presentations coming from the Int5Gent project, the RESPOND-A project, the C-ROADS Platform and the AEOLUS project. Other technical issues were about earth observation, the implementation of smart city applications in the municipality of Egaleo in Athens and applications for cooperative and automated mobile cross-border environments).

The entire event has hosted a total of thirty-five (-35-) distinct lectures, representing twenty-two (-22-) European projects.

More information can be found at: https://infocomworld.gr/en/day-3-en/

Presentations of the entire Day-3 Workshop (including material from all Sessions) can also be found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ng4GjkCbRy4

Among the above, in the scope of the third Session, OTE organized and coordinated a full sequence of eight (-8-) presentation about the progress of the ongoing 5G LOCUS project. Several project partners had active presentation and participation.

The first presentation one was about a detailed introduction to the context and the framework of the LOCUS project entitled as “The LOCUS Project:  LOCalization and analytics on-demand embedded in the 5G ecosystem, for Ubiquitous vertical applicationS”. The presentation has been given by the project coordinator, Prof. Nicola Blefari-Melazzi / CNIT, Italy.

The second presentation has been aabout “LOCUS: Overview of the Main Results” and has been realised by Dr. Stefania Bartoletti /CNIT, Italy.

The third, in turn, presentation was about “Localization Analytics as Service Platform” and has been given by Dr. Giacomo Bernini, representing Netxworks, Italy.

The fourth presentation was about “Deployment Scenarios and and Business Exploitation of LOCUS Platform” and has been given by Dr. Kostas Tsagkaris, representing Incelligent, Greece.

The fifth presentation was about “People-Centric Location and Context-based Analytics” and has been given byDr. Gürkan Solmaz, representing NECLE, Germany.

The sixth presentation was about “ML for Positioning and Geo-Analytics in LOCUS” and it has been given by Dr. Takai Kennouche, representing VIAVI, France.

The seventh presentation was about “Industry View and Samsung Role in LOCUS Project” and has been given byDr. Tomasz Mach representing Samsung R&D Institute, United Kingdom.

The final presentation was about “Operator’s View on Location-based Services” and has been given by Mrs. Maria Belesioti representing OTE, Greece.

Figure 1: LOCUS presentations in Session 3 of the Day-3 Workshop (November 26, 2021)
in the framework of Infocom World 2021

 

Presentations of the entire Day-3 Workshop (including material from all Sessions) can also be found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ng4GjkCbRy4