IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc)
Technical Committee on Communications Quality & Reliability (CQR)
Emerging Technology Reliability Roundtable 2018
(ETR-RT18)
Monday, May 14, 2018
IEEE CQR International Workshop 2018
1900 University Avenue
Scope of the Roundtable
- Discuss and identify the RAS (Reliability, Availability and Serviceability) challenges, requirements and methodologies in the emerging technology areas like the Cloud Computing, Wireless/Mobility (with focus on 5G technologies), NFV (Network Functions Virtualization), SDN
(Software Defined Networking), or similar large-scale distributed and virtualization systems. - Discuss the RAS requirements and technologies for mission-critical industries (e.g., airborne systems, railway communication systems, the banking and financial communication systems, etc.), with the goal to promote the interindustry
sharing of related ideas and experiences. - Identify potential directions for resolving identified issues and propose possible solution
2018 ETR-Roundtable_Summary_of_Findings_final
Participants at the ETR-RT 2018 in Austin, Texas
[#00] Spilios Makris – Introduction
[#01] David Lu – Perfect Storm for Software Reliability
[#02] Chih-Lin I – The UR of 5G
[#03] Imtiaz Shaikh – 5G: Very Flexible But Complex
[#04] James Kimery – Evolving 5G and Challenges Ahead
[#05] Dehan Li – Challenges of 5G Ultra Reliability
[#07] Tim Talty – Automotive Challenges
[#08] James Dollar – Going Beyond Out Of Band
[#10] Pasi Hurri – The Network is Content
[#11] Jose de Francisco Lopez – Quality by Design (QbD) for Software Designed Systems
David H. Lu, Vice President, D2 Platform and Systems Development, AT&T Labs, USA
David is currently responsible for development and engineering of AT&T next generation ECOMP platform and Open ECOMP (ONAP) to enable the AT&T network virtualization (SDN) and target OSS/BSS transformation including API, micro-services, policy control & orchestration, hyper-automation, and advanced data analytics. He leads an organization with more than 2,000 people across the globe.
David is a well-respected leader in large scale and real time software architecture and engineering, network performance and traffic management, work flow and policy controlled automation, large databases and big data implementation/mining/analytics, machine learning, artificial intelligence, software reliability and quality, and network operations process engineering. Examples of his achievements include large scale platforms he has led and engineered that process annually: 347 Trillion network performance events and 168 Billion alarms with 99.99%+ automation; 60 Million dispatches with 14.4 Billion automated manual steps; and over 90 Billion API transactions.
Since joining AT&T Bell Labs in 1987, he has served in various leadership positions at AT&T. He has led multiple extreme automation initiatives in AT&T that resulted in Multi-Billion Dollars savings in the past 15 years and won AT&T CIO 100 Awards in 2010. He holds 43 patents and has frequently appeared as a guest speaker at technical and leadership seminars and conferences throughout the world. He received numerous industry awards including the 2015 Chairman’s Award from IEEE Communication Society for Network and Systems Quality and Reliability and 2017 CIE AAEOY (Asian America Engineer of Year) Award. He has also been very active in community organizations and activities including AT&T APCA, DFW-CIE, and DFW Asian American Chamber of Commerce. He was recognized by AT&T APCA with the 2015 Corporate Leadership Award.
He was accepted to the world-renowned Shanghai Conservatory of Music and came to the U.S. to complete his college education. He has an undergraduate degree in music, majoring in cello performance and graduate degree in Computer Science.
TITLE: Perfect Storm for Software Reliability
ABSTRACT: As more and more disruptive and emerging software technologies make entry to market in an alarming speed today, it creates a vast business opportunity to the networking service and software industry, as well as technical challenges in reliability. This is a “perfect storm” for reliability researchers, engineers, entrepreneurs, and disruptive thinkers with an increased emphasis on software reliability. This talk will highlight these new challenges.
Dr. Chih-Lin I, Chief Scientist, Wireless Technologies, China Mobile Research Institute
Chih-Lin I received her Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University. She has been working at multiple world-class companies and research institutes leading the R&D, including AT&T Bell Labs; Director of AT&T HQ, Director of ITRI Taiwan, and VPGD of ASTRI Hong Kong. She received the IEEE Trans.COM Stephen Rice Best Paper Award, is a winner of the CCCP National 1000 Talent Program, and has won the 2015 Industrial Innovation Award of IEEE Communication Society for Leadership and Innovation in Next-Generation Cellular Wireless Networks.
In 2011, she joined China Mobile as its Chief Scientist of wireless technologies, established the Green Communications Research Center, and launched the 5G Key Technologies R&D. She is spearheading major initiatives including 5G, C-RAN, high energy efficiency system architectures, technologies and devices; and green energy. She was an Area Editor of IEEE/ACM Trans.NET, an elected Board Member of IEEE ComSoc, Chair of the ComSoc Meetings and Conferences Board, and Founding Chair of the IEEE WCNC Steering Committee.
She was a Professor at NCTU, an Adjunct Professor at NTU, and currently an Adjunct Professor at BUPT. She is the Chair of FuTURE 5G SIG, an Executive Board Member of GreenTouch, a Network Operator Council Founding Member of ETSI NFV, a Steering Board Member of WWRF, a member of IEEE ComSoc SDB, SPC, and CSCN-SC, and a Scientific Advisory Board Member of Singapore NRF. Her current research interests center around “Green, Soft, and Open”.
TITLE: The Ultra Reliability of 5G
ABSTRACT: Coming soon…
Pasi Hurri, Chief Executive Officer, BaseN Corporation, Finland
Since establishing BaseN Corporation in 2001, Pasi Hurri has been holding the position of Chief Executive Officer.
Mr. Hurri is an expert speaker and senior Member of IEEE as well as a visiting lecturer at several Universities. Prior to founding BaseN, Mr. Hurri spent more than a decade in senior technology management positions. He presided over the engineering effort of the KPNQwest Eurorings network, then the largest pan-European carrier transporting more than 50% of the Internet traffic. Within Ahlstrom Corporation, Mr. Hurri managed the creation of a global IP network in the early 90`s.
With his strategic thinking inherited from the Finnish Air Force, Mr. Hurri has always emphasized the importance of deep situational awareness, according to Clausewitz principles. Mr. Hurri also holds the position of the Chairman for Industrial Internet of Things steering group of TEKES.
TITLE: The Network is Content: Emerging dependencies in content delivery architecture
ABSTRACT: Most network providers have learned the lessons to engineer their networks in a resilient way with ring or otherwise protected network architectures. However, at the same time the network traffic patterns have changed dramatically. Today most capacity is used for high volume web and video data, and in order to accommodate to this, most content providers and operators are relying on third party content delivery networks (CDN). The CDN fault tolerance architecture, which usually includes a lot of third parties is an order of magnitude more complex than the underlying network architecture. In addition, the growing use of CDN’s potentially introduce political and surveillance aspects.
Josh Miner – Vice President and GM, Land Mobile Business Unit, for Iridium Communications Inc., the only satellite communications company that offers truly global voice and data coverage. In this role, he is responsible for Iridium’s Land Mobile revenue growth, product strategy, new product and service definition, and major partnerships.
James Dollar – Founder and VP – Products for Uplogix, USA
Mr. Dollar is a respected technology innovator with over 20 years of experience designing and managing network communication infrastructures. Before founding Uplogix, he was a key network architect at several application service providers, responsible for 99.999% application and network availability. Mr. Dollar has spent over a decade with world-class organizations such as The Coca-Cola Company and Reliant Energy, driving key aspects of technology and network architecture strategies. Mr. Dollar received his BBA from Stephen F. Austin State University.
TITLE: The use of Iridium satellite and Uplogix appliances for out-of-band connections to cellular infrastructure to improve resiliency and access during natural disasters or local outages
ABSTRACT: Maintaining high availability of cellular networks presents a number of unique management challenges for operational staff. Current network monitoring tools fall short of meeting these challenges because they only work in-band, or when the network is up. Uplogix, an Iridium partner, automates numerous network support, maintenance, configuration, and recovery procedures when primary networks are impaired due to natural disasters or local outages.
Bin Xie, CEO, InfoBeyond Technology LLC, USA
Dr. Bin Xie received his M.Sc and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science and Computer Engineering from the University of Louisville, Kentucky, USA, 2003 and 2006 respectively. He is the founder & CEO of the InfoBeyond and the Company is featured as one of 50 fast growth IT small businesses in 2017 by The Silicon Review. InfoBeyond offers (i) NXdrive for data security against data breach, and (ii) Security Policy Tool for access control cybersecurity and the product is honored as a Successful SBIR Story by NIST. Security Policy Tool has been used by 800+ enterprise (Boeing, Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, etc.).
Dr. Xie has been awarded $7.5 million research funding from federal governments. He is/was the PI of 20+ R&D projects that are supported by DoD (Army, Navy, Air Force, Missile Defense), DoE, NIST, DoT, DoC, and Kentucky State. Dr. Xie has published 70+ papers in the IEEE conferences and journals. His research interests are focused on cyber security, wireless communication, big data streaming, and user performance. Dr. Xie is the author of books titled Handbook/Encyclopedia of Ad Hoc and Ubiquitous Computing (World Scientific: ISBN-10: 981283348X, World Scientific Publisher, Best-selling in 2012 & 2013), Handbook of Applications and Services for Mobile Systems (Auerbach Publication, Taylor and Francis Group, ISBN: 9781439801529, 2012) and Heterogeneous Wireless Networks- Networking Protocol to Security, (VDM Publishing House: ISBN: 3836419270, 2007.
Dr. Xie severed as a member of NIH Special Emphasis Panel on System Science and Health in the Behavioral and Social Sciences, ZRG1 HDM-Q (50), 2012-2017. He is an editor member of the Journal of International Journal of Information Technology, Communications, and Convergence (IJITCC). He was the Guest Edit Chair of Elsevier Future Generation Computer Systems (FGCS) in a special issue on Mobile Computing, 2012. He delivered a number of speeches in the Army, Navy, Air Force, academic, and industrial societies. Dr. Xie is an IEEE senior member.
TITLE: L2Wireless: Enabling Low-Latency High-reliability Wireless for Industry Communication Systems
ABSTRACT: Industrial Control Systems (ICSs, e.g., automation, motion control, discrete manufacturing, robotics, refineries) usually needs to continuously monitor the status of the facilities in the plant and perform timely response accordingly. Low latency and high-reliability wired communication networks for ICSs have been successfully deployed for many years using SERCOSIII and other fieldbus standards. Recently, there are increasing interests on moving wireless technologies into manufacturing applications to replace the current wired communication networks to lower the installation and maintenance costs. However, as identified by NIST, the transmission error and delay caused by unreliable wireless connections have been the main concern that prevents the widely usage of wireless networks in manufacturing applications. In this talk, we will discuss the wireless technology to simultaneously address the stringent requirements on latency (close-loop sense-to-actuation time < 1ms) and reliability (transaction error < 10^-9), which are not achieved in the current 5G and other wireless technologies for ICS applications.
Imtiaz Shaikh, Senior Manager, Verizon Communications
Imtiaz Shaikh is currently a Senior Manager at Verizon leading a team of 5G Network Planning engineers responsible for Verizon’s 5G network deployment strategy and network implementation design. Imtiaz has done Telecommunication engineering work for over 21 year, with the last 15 years working for wireless service providers. In 2010, Imtiaz was part of the Verizon team that designed and launched 4G network enabling voice and data 4G services and has years solving real 4G network deployment problems. Imtiaz is an IEEE member with a Masters in Telecommunications and Management degree, has been awarded 45 4G patents and has filed 5 5G patent applications.
Title: 5G Network: Very Flexible but Complex
Abstract: Wireless Service Providers designed and deployed physical network function based 4G networks using 3GPP R8 specifications. With the recent interest and desire to transition to cloud based infrastructure, 5G networks will be constructed utilizing not only virtual network functions but with a substantial number of highly flexibly network deployment options. With flexibility comes heightened degree of responsibilities and associated challenges.
After highlighting some of the key building-blocks differences between 4G and 5G networks, this talk will point out 5G network’s significantly flexible, yet very complex network architecture possibilities, associated reliability and availability challenges and potential network deployment approaches
Tim Talty is a Technical Fellow at General Motors and Thrust Area Lead in the Electrical and Controls Systems Research Lab. Tim provides technical leadership of the development of advanced technologies for autonomous vehicles with a research focus in areas of wireless communications and sensors. Tim is also an Adjunct Professor at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Prior positions included Manager of the HMI & Infotainment Department at GM and Supervisor of The Radios and Antennas Department at Ford Motor Company. Previous academic positions include: Chair of the Electrical Engineering Department at Fairfield University and Associate Professor at The United States Military Academy, West Point.
TITLE: Automotive challenges for 5G, V2X and future telecom technologies
ABSTRACT: The global telematics market value was estimated to be approximately US $26B in 2015 and grow to over US $140B in 2022; representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of approximately 28%. Hence the growth potential is large; however, it assumes that wireless data connectivity, supporting infrastructure and computational resources are deployed in a manner that can support the growing automotive use cases.
Much of the focus of future wireless data connectivity has been on the required increases in data rates. And while large increases in data rates are required to support future automotive use cases, additional requirements such as end-to-end latency, privacy, security, and reliability are equally important for enabling future automotive use cases. If future wireless telecommunication technologies do no support all these requirements, the growth of telematics market will suffer.
The talk will provide an overview of the current state of automotive telematics use cases and the possible requirements of future automotive telematics use cases.
James Kimery – National Instruments Director of Marketing for SDR and Wireless Research initiatives, USA
In this role, James is responsible for the company’s 5G strategy encompassing both research and business initiatives. James also leads NI’s RF and Communications Lead User program which works with leading researchers across the world to accelerate the transition from theory to prototype and deployment. James also manages the company’s software defined radio business including the Ettus Research subsidiary acquired by NI in 2010. In 2014, James chaired the IEEE Globecom industry committee which was held in Austin, Texas. Prior to joining NI, James was the Director of Marketing for Silicon Laboratories’ wireless division. As Director, the wireless division grew revenues exceeding $250M (from $5M) and produced several industry innovations including the first integrated CMOS RF synthesizer and transceiver for cellular communications, the first digitally controlled crystal oscillator, and the first integrated single chip phone (AeroFONE). AeroFONE was voted by the IEEE as one of the top 40 innovative ICs ever developed. James also worked at National Instruments before transitioning to Silicon Labs and led many successful programs including the concept and launch of the PCI eXtensions for Instrumentation (PXI) platform. James was a founding member of the VXIplug&play Systems Alliance, VISA working group, and PXI System Alliance. He has authored over 60 technical papers and articles covering a variety of wireless and test and measurement related topics. James holds degrees from the University of Texas at Austin (MBA) and Texas A&M University (BSEE).
TITLE: Evolving 5G and the Challenges Ahead
ABSTRACT: With the release of the first 5G draft in December 2017, what is next? The 3GPP did address many of the key objectives outlined by the industry for 5G with the initial specification; however there is much work left to do. Expected challenges include commercialization, testing and enabling application ecosystems beyond 4G. In addition, wireless research enters a new phase; one that perhaps is not tethered to the stringent path outlined by LTE many years ago. 5G has opened new research vectors in further evolving the physical layer, upper layers and even network topologies to address higher capacity, higher data rates, and lower latency with higher reliability. This talk will review the road to 5G, the challenges ahead, and introduce possible research areas necessary to advance wireless communications into the next decade.
Dehan Li, Technical Expert of RAS Design, Huawei Technologies, China
Dehan has been working on RAS design in Huawei for more than 17 years. His current research interests include overload control in NFV/SDN or Cloud, zero-touch network, ultra-reliability in 5G E2E network, etc. Now responsible for reliability technical plan in Huawei.
Dehan graduated from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC) in 2001 with a BS in Electrical Engineering. In 2010-2013, he has worked in Stockholm, Sweden, lead an expert team which focus on FM and OLC in Huawei Sweden R&D Center.
TITLE: New Challenges of Ultra-Reliability in 5G
ABSTRACT: 5G will face several challenges brought by emerging application scenarios such as URLLC（Ultra-reliable low latency communication) for mission critical industrial. The difference between traditional telecom grade reliability and ultra-reliable are compared. How to understand the scenario of URC (ultra-reliable communication) for automation in vertical domain are discussed, also ultra-reliable challenge for E2E network including edge cloud. Some possible direction to reach ultra-reliable are considered as well.
Kathy Meier-Hellstern, Assistant Vice President – Inventive Science and AT&T Fellow, AT&T Labs, USA
Kathy Meier-Hellstern is an AT&T Fellow and Assistant Vice President in AT&T Labs Research, where she leads the Optimization, Reliability and Customer Analytics Department (ORCA). Kathy and her team are focused on optimization, performance and reliability and network and analytics for AT&T’s Next Generation Network Cloud. Her team designs and implements the optimization algorithms for AT&T’s SDN network, and is responsible for applying machine learning and data-powered analytics in the areas of virtualized services, network security, cloud infrastructure and 5G.
Kathy received her Ph.D. in Operations Research from the University of Delaware with a research focus in Applied Probability and Queueing Theory. She has been a visiting researcher at the University of Stuttgart, Technion, and Rutgers University Wireless Information Network Lab. Kathy is the author of numerous publications and patents in applied probability.
ABSTRACT: Carriers are transforming their networks using SDN and cloud technologies to virtualize their networks. This brings with it new challenges for creating highly reliable services on commercial hardware and software. Fortunately, SDN also creates new opportunities for automation and analytics that can be used to create highly reliable networks. This talk will explore some of the main challenges and solutions for achieving carrier grade reliability.
Jose de Francisco Lopez, Senior Design Director at Nokia Software Group, USA
His 15+ year experience encompasses multi-disciplinary leadership responsibilities in strategy, product management, research & development, marketing, partnerships and project management. Jose has worked with Bell Labs on next generation platforms and holds several patents. He is a Member of the Advisory Council at MIT’s Institute for Data Systems and Society (IDSS) and is the recipient of an MBA in International Marketing and Finance from Chicago’s DePaul University as a Honeywell Europe Be Brilliant Scholar. Jose also holds a postgraduate degree in Human Factors Engineering from Barcelona Tech and can be followed on innovarista.org.
TITLE: A Programmatic Approach for an Artificial Intelligence Code of Conduct
ABSTRACT: DX, Digital Transformation, is redefining Quality as we strive to deliver meaningful experiences. Design Thinking leads us to humanize the impact of emerging technologies. This is not only about addressing acceptance criteria, but it has also to do with accelerating service adoption rates while fostering continuous innovation practices. In this context, AI, Artificial Intelligence, enables us to envision and implement capabilities well beyond the reach of legacy systems’ last gasps. This session discusses a path forward, one which takes the form of augmented Human-Machine Intelligence under a journey that calls for a “Programmatic Code of Conduct for AI.” The objective is to optimize end-to-end system performance driven by Quality outcomes. Full abstract.
Roundtable Chair: Spilios Makris, PhD, Director, Palindrome Technologies, USA and Ex-Chairman of the IEEE SRPSDVE Study Group
Spilios Makris is currently the Director of Network Resilience and Business Continuity Management (BCM) in Palindrome Technologies. Spilios has extensive experience in BCM and network resilience serving as Director and Senior Consultant at Telcordia Technologies (formerly Bellcore) for over 28 years, conducting studies and developing methodologies along with industry Best Practices for over 50 Tier 1&2 telecom companies, telecom vendors, and Telecom Regulatory Authorities (TRAs) worldwide. Spilios has served as Chair, Vice-Chair, Lead Contributor of the Standards T1A1.2 WG on “Network Survivability Performance” (was renamed PRQC Reliability Task Force) for 20 years. He successfully managed thebdevelopment and regular update of Telcordia Generic Reliability Requirements documents establishing them as the “de facto” industry standards (e.g., SR-332 on Reliability Prediction Procedure for Electronic Equipment).
Spilios recently served as the Chair of the IEEE Study Group for Security, Reliability, and Performance for Software Defined and Virtualized Ecosystems (e.g., SDN, NFV, etc.). (http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/srpsdv/meeting_information.html).
Spilios received his PhD in Industrial Engineering & Operations Research from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Mass., MS in Engineering Management from Northeastern University, Boston, Mass., and Diploma (equiv. to MS) in Electrical & Mechanical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece.
He is a Certified Business Continuity Professional (CBCP) by the Disaster Recovery Institute International (DRII) and a Senior Member of IEEE.
Roundtable Advisor: Chi-Ming Chen, PhD, AT&T Labs, USA
Chi-Ming Chen joined AT&T in 1995. He is with the AT&T Labs architecture organization which designs the Enhanced Control Orchestration Management Platform (ECOMP) and Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP). Prior to joining AT&T, Chi-Ming was with the Quality Assurance Center of Bell Communications Research (Bellcore) from 1985 to 1995 and was a faculty member at Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan from 1975 to 1979.
He received his Ph.D. in Computer and Information Science from the University of Pennsylvania in 1985; M.S. in Computer Science from the Pennsylvania State University in 1981; M.S. and B.S. in Physics from Tsing Hua University, Taiwan, in 1973 and 1971 respectively.
Chi-Ming Chen is a Life Senior Member of IEEE and Senior Member of the ACM. He is an Advisory Board Member of IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc) Technical Committee on Communications Quality & Reliability (CQR). He was a member of the IEEE GLOBECOM & ICC Management & Strategy (GIMS) Standing Committee and served as the GLOBECOM and ICC Site Selection Chair from 2012 to 2017. He has chaired the Industry Forums of several GLOBECOMs and ICCs and is serving as the GIMS Advisor for ICC 2019, Shanghai, China.
From 2015 to 2017, Chi-Ming was a Steering Committee member of the IEEE SDN Initiative and IEEE Big Data Initiative. Currently, he is co-chairing the 5G Roadmap Working Group of IEEE 5G Initiative. He has been a key Organizing Committee member of CyberC conference since it’s started in 2009. In addition, he also organizes the annual IEEE Emerging Technology Reliability Roundtable (ETR-RT) since 2014.
Resource Links:
- ETR-RT 2017 presentations and summary of findings
- ETR-RT 2016 presentations
- ETR-RT 2015 presentations
- ETR-RT 2014 presentations
- IEEE SDN Initiative
- ETSI NFV
- ETSI NFV Portal TB (Technical Body)