4th Asia-Pacific Workshop on Networking (APNet 2020)

August 3-4, 2020
The K-Hotel, Seoul, South Korea ONLINE

Keynote Talks

Song Chong

Head of KAIST Graduate School of AI

Title:

Learning to Make Decisions Optimally for Self-Driving Networks

Abstract: One of the grand challenges of networking research today is to build “autonomous” or “self-driving” networks, where network control decisions are made in real time and in an automated fashion. Yet, building such self-driving networks that are practically deployable has largely remained unrealized due to two major obstacles known as “curse of modeling” and “curse of dimensionality”. In this talk, I will describe a reinforcement learning approach to overcome these obstacles using an example of wireless scheduling and demonstrate that networks can indeed learn to manage radio resources on their own, i.e., directly from experience interacting with their environment. Furthermore, networks can also learn to predict their future from experience if the network states are recurrent, thereby allowing the design of “foresighted” wireless scheduling policies that can solve the long-standing high queueing delay problem in the state-of-the-art max-weight scheduling policy while maintaining throughput optimality.

Speaker Bio: Song Chong is the Professor and Head of the Graduate School of Artificial Intelligence and the ICT Endowed Chair Professor of Electrical Engineering at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). He was the Head of Computer Division in Electrical Engineering and the Founding Director of KAIST 5G Research Center. Prior to joining KAIST, he was with AT&T Bell Laboratories, Holmdel, New Jersey, USA, as a Member of Technical Staff. His research interests lie in decision making under uncertainty, human behavior modelling, stochastic optimization and machine learning with applications to artificial intelligence, data networks and mobile computing. He has served on the editorial boards of IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, and Computer Communications, and the Program Committee of a number of top-tier international conferences including IEEE INFOCOM, ACM MobiCom, ACM CoNEXT, ACM MobiHoc, IEEE ICNP and ITC. He is the Steering Committee Chair of WiOpt, the General Chair of WiOpt 2009 and ACM MobiHoc 2022, and the Program Committee Chair of IEEE SECON 2015 and IEEE WCNC 2020. He received the 2013 and 2016 IEEE William R. Bennett Prize Paper Awards, given to the best original paper published in IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking in the previous three calendar years, the 2013 IEEE SECON Best Paper Award, the 2016 KAIST Grand Prize Technology Innovation Award, and the 2016 Haedong Grand Prize Research Award, given to the Korean scholar who has made the most significant contribution to the advancement of communications research over the last 10 years. He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees from Seoul National University and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Texas at Austin, all in electrical and computer engineering.

Sunghyun Choi

Sunghyun Choi, SVP, Ph.D., FIEEE
Head of Advanced Communications Research Center
Samsung Research, Samsung Electronics, Korea

Title:

Challenges on Next-Generation Mobile Communications

Abstract: 5G technology is being applied to the core infrastructure of a wide range of industries, and is utilized to support everything from high-quality communications services to smart factories, vehicle-to-vehicle communication, and a raft of other new services. Along with that, networks of the future will demand capabilities that can process enormous amounts of information, meaning that more powerful network equipment will be required, and the softwarization of technology, which can lower costs and make equipment more flexible, will become increasingly important. The path towards overcoming some of the current technological challenges facing communications technologies lies in enriching software’s capabilities and advancing AI. Furthermore, both academia and industry are initiating research activities to shape the next-generation communication system, namely 6G. In this talk, I will introduce comprehensive overview of various aspects including technical and societal trends, services, requirements, and candidate technologies for 6G.

Speaker Bio: Sunghyun Choi is a Senior Vice President and Head of the Advanced Communications Research Center at Samsung Research, Samsung Electronics, Seoul, Korea. He was a professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Seoul National University (SNU), Seoul, Korea from Sept. 2002 to Aug. 2019, and served as a Vice Dean for Academic Affairs, College of Engineering during the last two years at SNU. Before joining SNU, he was with Philips Research USA, Briarcliff Manor, New York, USA, as a Senior Member Research Staff for three years. He was also a visiting associate professor at the Electrical Engineering department, Stanford University, USA, from June 2009 to June 2010. He received his B.S. (summa cum laude) and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in 1992 and 1994, respectively, and received Ph.D. at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in September 1999. He is currently heading researches and standardization for 6G, B5G, and IoT connectivity at Samsung Research. He co-authored over 250 technical papers and a book "Broadband Wireless Access and Local Networks: Mobile WiMAX and WiFi," Artech House, 2008 (with B. G. Lee). He holds over 160 patents, and numerous patents pending. He has served as a General Co-Chair of COMSWARE 2008, a Program Committee Co-Chair of IEEE WCNC 2020, IEEE DySPAN 2018, ACM Multimedia 2007, and IEEE WoWMoM 2007. He has also served on program and organization committees of numerous leading wireless and networking conferences including ACM MobiCom, IEEE INFOCOM, IEEE SECON, and IEEE WoWMoM. He has served as a division editor of Journal of Communications and Networks, and as an editor of IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, IEEE Wireless Communications Magazine, ACM SIGMOBILE Mobile Computing and Communications Review, Computer Networks, and Computer Communications. He has served as a guest editor for IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, IEEE Wireless Communications, IEEE Transactions on Cognitive Communications and Networking, and ACM Wireless Networks. From 2000 to 2007, he was an active contributor to IEEE 802.11 WLAN Working Group. He has received numerous awards including KICS Dr. Irwin Jacobs Award (2013), Shinyang Scholarship Award (2011), Presidential Young Scientist Award (2008), IEEK/IEEE Joint Award for Young IT Engineer (2007), Outstanding Research Award (2008) and Best Teaching Award (2006), both from the College of Engineering, Seoul National University, the Best Paper Award from IEEE WoWMoM 2008, and Recognition of Service Award (2005, 2007) from ACM. Dr. Choi was a recipient of the Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies (KFAS) Scholarship and the Korean Government Overseas Scholarship during 1997-1999 and 1994-1997, respectively. He was named IEEE fellow in 2014.