Texas Wireless Summit (TWS) 2015 explored next generation wireless networks in a day-long event focused on The View to 5G: From Applications to the Air Interface. The 13th annual TWS provided a forum on emerging technology and business models for industry leaders and academics. Hosted by WNCG, TWS offered direct access to cutting-edge research and innovations from industry leaders, investors, academics and startups. Through keynote and panel-driven discussions, leading business and technology executives and top academics shared entrepreneurially-oriented research. WNCG Profs. Jeff Andrews and Robert Heath chaired this year's event.
This year’s keynote speakers included Gerhard Fettweis, the Vodafone Chair at the Technical University of Dresden, and Tom Marzetta, a Group Leader of Large-Scale Antenna Systems at Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs. Dr. Fettweis, the visionary behind the “Tactile Internet,” spoke about the fundamental changes 5G networks will require versus 4G networks to support the applications of the 2020’s. Dr. Fettweis’ rare blend of expertise spans circuit design, communication theory and networking, and gives him unmatched insight into future wireless system design. His lab has produced over 10 startup companies in the telecommunications space and has made seminal theoretical contributions to wireless communication systems.
Dr. Marzetta pioneered Massive MIMO in the late 2000’s, which is now viewed as an indispensable technology for 5G. His early work on Massive MIMO received the 2013 IEEE Marconi Award and the 2015 IEEE Baker Prize, which is given to the most outstanding paper published over all IEEE journals in the preceding five years, as well as the 2014 Thomas Edison Patent Award. He is a Bell Labs and IEEE Fellow and leads Massive MIMO research at Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs.
Additional speakers at the 2015 event included: Amitava Ghosh, head of North American radio systems research at Nokia Networks; Anthony Soong, chief scientist for wireless research and standards at Huawei Technology; Arun Ghosh, director of wireless communications at AT&T Labs; Brian Modoff, executive vice president of strategy and M&A at Qualcomm; Charlie Zhang, vice president of research at Samsung Research America; Eduardo Esteves, vice president of product management at Qualcomm; Erik Dahlman, senior expert at Ericsson; Farooq Khan, president of Samsung Research America; Ian Wong, senior manager of the advanced wireless research group at National Instruments; Mike Barrick, business development manager at Anritsu; Nihar Jindal, staff hardware engineer at Google; Gaurav Bansal, senior researcher at Toyota Infotechnology Center; Theodore Rappaport, professor at NYU Wireless; Vinko Erceg, technical director at Broadcom; and Xinzhou Wu, principal engineer and manager at Qualcomm.
During the event, 20 WNCG students also presented posters related to current WNCG research in the area of 5G wireless.
TWS 2015 was made possible by the support of industry sponsors. This year’s sponsors included: Huawei Technology, Qualcomm, Anritsu, Norton Rose Fulbright, Rohde & Schwarz and TWS media sponsors RCR Wireless, IEEE Communications Society Austin Chapter and the Austin Technology Incubator.
Watch TWS 2015 online, courtesy of RCR Wireless.