Aim of the Workshop

The aim of the workshop is to bring together both the mobile communications industry (operators, telecom vendors, radio network planning and optimization consulting firms and tool producers) and academia to present and discuss the problems, challenges, directions, and state-of-art in the fields of future wireless communication networks deployment, planning and optimization. The workshop will try to build a bridge between the mobile communications industry and academic research so that future collaborations between two sectors can be identified. The goal of future wireless networks is to provide ubiquitous connections and support high data rate demand. The WiMAX, LTE, and LTE-Advanced standardizations have already processed toward this direction but still require significant improvements. Network planning and optimization faces many challenges arising from the use of new air interfaces and new technologies (e.g., MIMO, smart antennas, cooperative relay), the mix of voice, video and data traffic, the co-existence of different RATs (Radio Access Technologies), the growing importance of indoor coverage and the paradigm shifts (e.g., femtocells). The future wireless networks cannot operate efficiently, unless these challenges are properly addressed.

In this workshop, the advances of wireless communications that enable future wireless networks and challenges in network planning and optimization arising from the adoption of new technologies will be discussed. OPTNet seeks presentations dealing with architectural issues, theoretical studies, new paradigms, enabling technologies, practical implementations, and policy issues for future wireless communications and network planning and optimization problems. Besides the technical insights, the workshop will provide a supportive environment for technical discussions between like-minded researchers and engineers.

The goal is to have a single track meeting with lively scientific discussions and exchange of views, and to accommodate a wide variety of backgrounds and research attitudes. The program will be organized in such a way to promote networking activities between the participants.