9h30 - 10h15

Title: Estimation, Detection, Signal Separation, Sparsity, and Unsupervised Learning with Linear State Space Models

Prof. Hans-Andrea Loeliger (ETHZ, Switzerland)

Abstract: We report on a collection of concepts and algorithms using linear state space models, variations of Kalman filter algorithms, and expectation maximization for problems including the estimation of continuous-time signals, analog-to-digital conversion, detection and estimation of localized conditions and pulses, model switches, and unsupervised signal decomposition and labeling.

Slides: Click here

Bio: Hans-Andrea Loeliger has been a full professor at ETH Zurich since 2000. He received both a diploma in electrical engi- neering and a PhD (in 1992) from ETH Zurich. From 1992 to 1995, he was with Linköping University, Sweden. From 1995 to 2000, he was a full-time technical consultant and co-owner of a consulting company. His research interests have been in the broad areas of signal processing, machine learning, information theory, error correcting codes, communications, system theory, and electronics. He is a Fellow of the IEEE.

10h15 - 11h00

Title: Some New Bounds on Low-Rate Codes

Prof. Marco Dalai (University of Brescia, Italy)

Abstract: We present an overview of some recently derived new bounds on codes in the low rate region. First, we introduce some improvements over classic bounds on the reliability function of certain channels with a positive zero-error capacity which combine known bounds on graph capacity and on the minimum distance of codes in Hamming spaces. Then we present a new bound on the zero-error list decoding capacity of a specific but meaningful channel.

Slides: Click here

Bio: Marco Dalai is an assistant professor in the Department of Information Engineering at the University of Brescia, Italy. He received his Laurea degree in Electronics Engineering and his PhD in Information Engineering both from University of Brescia in 2003 and 2007, respectively. His research interests include information theory, signal processing and statistical inference. He received the 2014 IEEE Information Theory Society Paper Award.

11h00 - 11h45

Title: Two Channels with Almost No Benefit from Channel-State Information

Dr. Ligong Wang (ENSEA/ETIS, France)

Abstract: For many communication channels, causal or noncausal channel-state information (CSI) at the transmitter can help to significantly increase their communication capacity. In this talk we discuss two channels for which this is not the case. The first is the very noisy channel. We show that noncausal CSI at the transmitter provides little additional capacity improvement over causal CSI. The second channel is the Poisson channel with random, time-varying dark current. On this channel, capacity improvement from both causal and noncausal CSI is shown to be negligible.

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Bio: Ligong Wang received the B.E. degree in electronic engineering from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 2004, and the M.Sc. and Dr.Sc. degrees in electrical engineering from ETH Zurich, Switzerland, in 2006 and 2011, respectively. In the years 2011-2014 he was a Postdoctoral Associate at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA. He is now a researcher (chargé de recherche) with CNRS, France, and is affiliated with ETIS laboratory in Cergy-Pontoise. His research interests include classical and quantum information theory, and digital, in particular optical communications.

13h45 - 14h30

Title: Hypothesis Testing over Networks

Prof. Michèle Wigger (Telecom Paris, France)

Abstract: As part of the internet of things (IoT), the number of sensor nodes that wish to communicate with each other has exploded and is expected to further increase dramatically. Such an increase of communication devices inherently leads to involved communication and hypothesis testing scenarios, and thus calls for new coding and testing strategies. The talk presents new strategies and corresponding error exponents for different network scenarios, and it proves information-theoretic optimality of the proposed strategies in some cases. Special attention is given to scenarios where information collected at a sensor is desired at multiple decision centres and where communication is multi-hop involving sensor nodes as relays. In these networks, sensors generally compete for network resources, and relay sensors can process received information with sensed information or forward intermediate decisions to other nodes. Depending on the studied error exponents, some of these intermediate decisions require special protection mechanisms when sent over the network.

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Bio: Michèle Wigger received the M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering, with distinction, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering both from ETH Zurich in 2003 and 2008, respectively. She was awarded two ETH Medals, one for her Master Thesis and one for her PhD Thesis. Dr. Wigger received a Swiss National Science Foundation Scholarship for Prospective Researchers, and in 2009 was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of California, San Diego, USA. She has held visiting professor appointments at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and ETH Zurich. She joined Telecom Paris Tech, Paris France in 2009 where she is currently an Associate Professor. Dr. Wigger is an associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. She is a member of the Board of Governors of the IEEE Information Theory Society.

14h30 - 15h15

Title: A Two-Stage Gaussian Identification System

Prof. Tobias Oechtering (KTH, Sweden)

Abstract: In this talk we discuss a two-stage identification problem with pre-processing. In the enrollment phase users’ data are stored into the database in two layers on a local (cache) server and a remote one, respectively. In the identification phase an observer obtained an observation, which is originated from an unknown user in the enrolled database through a memoryless channel. The observation is sent for processing in two stages. The first stage retrieves a list of compatible users from the pre-processed observation and the information in the local server and sends it to the second stage. The second stage obtains the complete information of users contained in the list from both layers and combines it with the original observation sequence to return the exact user identity and a corresponding reconstruction sequence. The inclusion of a list is motivated from the complexity reduction and perhaps privacy enhancement. We mainly discuss the setting where the users' data sequences, the observation and the pre-processed information are jointly Gaussian. Interesting trade-offs among compression rate, identification rate, distortion level and list rate are shown.

Slides: Click here

Bio: Tobias J. Oechtering received the Dipl.-Ing. degree in electrical engineering and information technology from RWTH Aachen University, Germany, in 2002, the Dr.-Ing. degree in electrical engineering from the Technische Universität Berlin, Germany, in 2007, and the Docent degree in communication theory from KTH Royal Institute of Technology in 2012. In 2008, he joined the Communication Theory Lab, KTH Royal Insti- tute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, where he has been an Associate Professor since 2013. His research interests include wireless communication, network information theory, statistical signal processing, physical layer privacy and security, and communication for networked control.

Dr. Oechtering received the Förderpreis 2009 Award from the Vodafone Foundation. He was an Editor of the IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS from 2012 to 2015. He is currently an Associate Editor of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INFORMATION FORENSIC AND SECURITY since 2016.

15h30 - 16h15

Title: An Information Theoretic Perspective of Fronthaul Constrained Cloud and Fog Radio Access Networks

Prof. Shlomo Shamai (Shitz) (Technion, Israel)

Abstract: Cloud radio access networks (C-RANs) emerge as appealing architectures for next-generation wireless/cellular systems whereby the processing/decoding is migrated from the local base-stations/radio units (RUs) to a control/central units (CU) in the "cloud". Fog radio access networks (F-RAN) address the case where the RUs are enhanced by having the ability of local caching of popular contents. The network operates via fronthaul digital links connecting the CU and the RUs. In this talk we will address basic information theoretic aspects of such networks, with emphasis of simple oblivious processing. Theoretical results illustrate the considerable performance gains to be expected for different cellular models. Some interesting theoretical directions conclude the presentation.

Joint work with S.-H. Park, O. Simeone, and O. Sahin. This work is supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research And Innovation Programme, grant agreement no. 694630.

Slides: Click here

Bio: Shlomo Shamai (Shitz) received the B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the Technion—Israel Institute of Technology, in 1975, 1981 and 1986 respectively.

During 1975-1985 he was with the Communica- tions Research Labs, in the capacity of a Senior Research Engineer. Since 1986 he is with the Depart- ment of Electrical Engineering, Technion—Israel Institute of Technology, where he is now a Tech- nion Distinguished Professor, and holds the William Fondiller Chair of Telecommunications. His research interests encompasses a wide spectrum of topics in information theory and statistical communications.

Dr. Shamai (Shitz) is an IEEE Fellow, an URSI Fellow, a member of the Israeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities and a foreign member of the US National Academy of Engineering. He is the recipient of the 2011 Claude E. Shannon Award, the 2014 Rothschild Prize in Mathematics/Computer Sciences and Engineering and the 2017 IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal.

He has been awarded the 1999 van der Pol Gold Medal of the Union Radio Scientifique Internationale (URSI), and is a co-recipient of the 2000 IEEE Donald G. Fink Prize Paper Award, the 2003, and the 2004 joint IT/COM societies paper award, the 2007 IEEE Information Theory Society Paper Award, the 2009 and 2015 European Commission FP7, Network of Excellence in Wireless COMmunications (NEWCOM++, NEWCOM#) Best Paper Awards, the 2010 Thomson Reuters Award for International Excellence in Scientific Research, the 2014 EURASIP Best Paper Award (for the EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking), and the 2015 IEEE Communications Society Best Tutorial Paper Award.

He is also the recipient of 1985 Alon Grant for distinguished young scientists and the 2000 Technion Henry Taub Prize for Excellence in Research. He has served as Associate Editor for the Shannon Theory of the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, and has also served twice on the Board of Governors of the Information Theory Society. He has also served on the Executive Editorial Board of the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory and on the IEEE Information Theory Society Nominations and Appointments Committee.

16h15 - 17h00

Title: Coded Caching over Wireless: Challenges and Some Solutions

Prof. Mari Kobayashi (CentraleSupélec, France)

Abstract: Coded caching, a recent breakthrough proposed by Maddah-Ali and Niesen, has inspired a rethinking of wireless downlink channels. Although a substantial gain, in particular its scalability with respect to the number of users, is proved theoretically, several limitations hinder its applicability in practical systems. In this talk, we focus on the challenges mainly related to the content delivery phase over the practical downlink channel. To this end, we address the following questions: 1) how to make a scalable content delivery based on coded caching ? 2) how to deal with fairness between users ? 3) how to deal with online delivery when users requests arrive and served continuously ? We provide solutions to each of these questions.

This is a joint work with R. Combes, A. Destounis, A. Ghorbel, K.-H. Ngo, G. Paschos, and S. Yang.

Slides: Click here

Bio: Mari Kobayashi received the B.E. degree in electrical engineering from Keio University, Yokohama, Japan, in 1999 and the M.S. degree in mobile radio and the Ph.D. degree from École Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications, Paris, France, in 2000 and 2005, respectively. From November 2005 to March 2007, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre Tecnològic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain. In May 2007, she joined the Telecommunications department at CentraleSupélec, Gif-sur-Yvette, France, where she is now professor. She is the recipient of the Newcom++ Best Paper Award in 2010, the Joint Information Theory/Communications Society Best Paper Award in 2011. She is a senior member of IEEE.