2016 Annual Report IMDEA Networks File Download
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developing the science of networks imdea networks institute .imdea.org 0 networks annual report annual report www. 2 Arturo Azcorra Director of the IMDEA Networks Institute April 2017 annual report IMDEA Networks Institute is a top worldwide research and the economy over the last decades. Far from stabi- institute in the Science of Networks. In 2016, the Insti- lizing, this area continues to transform our lives at an tute has continued to boost Madrid’s competitiveness amazing pace. As a matter of fact, the Institute is cur- as a technology-oriented region. The Institute not only rently engaged in the development of a new disruptive strengthens the technology profile of the region, but its technology that is going to change the way we perceive collaboration with local companies also helps to enhance and communicate with the surrounding world: 5G. With Madrid’s high-tech output with cutting edge research. Our 5G, current reality will become a “connected reality”, ultimate goal is to help Madrid make its mark on the 21st where all people and objects are connected to each Century by focusing on the development of products and other, forming a single “whole”. Not only each of us will services that incorporate the most advanced network and be permanently connected to our doctor, friends, work communication technologies. colleagues, clients/providers, security service, etc., but additionally we will also be connected to our car, fridge, IMDEA Networks focuses on an area that has a profound favorite bakery, leisure shops, metro, airport, home, … impact on people’s lives, and has transformed society any object that can be of our interest. And objects will be also connected to each other: a package may “complain” With the goal of bringing Madrid and Spain to the fore- to its delivery company that the route taken is not right, front of such a strategic technology, the Institute is cur- or the heater may download a new software to become rently leading one of the most exciting entrepreneurial more efficient. initiatives that our country has seen over the last decade: the 5TONIC laboratory. This initiative, founded by Tel- In order to realize this vision, we are working on extremely efonica and IMDEA Networks, provides an open research complex technological challenges. 5G will not only have and innovation ecosystem in which industry and academia 0 annual report annual report to connect more than 7 billion of people (all people on come together to boost technology and business innovative 2 Earth), but also around 1,000 objects for each one of ventures. It serves to showcase the capabilities and inter- them. Network capacity will have to increase by three operation of pre-commercial 5G equipment, services and orders of magnitude, as 5G networks will carry a volume applications by leading global companies in the 5G arena. of data 1,000 larger than 4G networks being deployed today. Energy consumption will also play a key role: if we We are very proud of this initiative, which is being a great increased capacity by a factor of 1,000 with current tech- success. It already counts a number of major stakehold- nology, energy consumption would be unaffordable. At the ers (Ericsson, Intel, Commscope, Cohere, Artesyn and same time, 5G will have to satisfy extremely demanding UC3M, in addition of the two founding members men- service requirements. Massive uptake of machine-type tioned before), covering all the key roles of the future 5G traffic requires an unprecedented level of availability and ecosystem. We are currently working on the deployment reliability, of up to five nines (i.e., 99,999%). Further- of pioneering experimental platforms that build on 5G to more, applications such as tactile Internet and vehicular showcase the potential of this technology through some communications require extremely low latencies and high groundbreaking services. The initiative is contributing data rates, several orders of magnitude beyond those pro- to make Spain become one of the leading sites in the vided by today’s network. development of the 5G technology. The ultimate goal is to secure for Spain a substantial fraction of the huge rev- To satisfy all these requirements while providing the nec- enues expected for 5G, estimated to be of around $247 essary levels of flexibility and efficiency, control plane billion/year worldwide and €113.1 billion/year in Europe. functions (beyond traditional radio-centric functions) will play a key role in 5G. In the 5G network architecture, In addition to the above, 2016 has also been a great computing and networking will converge to single frame- success on many other fronts including the quality and work that virtualizes the control, management and even international recognition of the publications authored by the data plane functionality while building on cloud, edge our researchers, the attraction of new talent to the team, and fog computing. In this new architecture, software will the launch of new research projects and grants, as well play a much more relevant role than in current networks, as the effective transfer of technology, amongst others. and a substantial part of today’s hardware will be replaced All these achievements contribute to make the Institute by general purpose platforms that provide communica- one of the leading networking research laboratories in tions services through software. The flexibility gained the world. through the new, software-based, architecture will allow for a much more fine-grained control, drastically reduc- As every year, my gratitude goes to the Regional Govern- ing the deployment time of a new service and enabling ment of Madrid for its continued support to our economy- much more dynamic services that can be customized to transforming initiative, as well as to all those who are satisfy the user needs (including the extreme requirements contributing to make this exciting project a great inter- mentioned above). national success. table of contents annual report 0 annual report annual report 2 1. Executive summary [6] 2. About us [11] 3. Research areas [15] 4. Research projects, grants and fellowships [21] 5. Scientific activities [45] 6. Impact and technology transfer [91] 7. Personnel [101] 8. Headquarters and research laboratories infrastructure [141] 9. Organization [147] executive summary annual report IMDEA Networks Institute is a top international research centre in the area of computer networks. 2016 has been a great year for us in a number of ways. Our strategy to 7 transfer scientific and technological developments to industry has led to various new collaborations in addition to strengthening the existing partnerships with some of our key industrial collaborators. We have also been very successful in several highly competitive public calls for funding to conduct new research projects. Through a very selective recruitment process we have continued to strengthen our research team. Our 0 annual report annual report research work - focused on innovative technological solutions to real-world problems 2 - has been published in the most prestigious venues in our field. All these achieve- ments have received the recognition of the international scientific community along with other stakeholders. networks The research team of IMDEA Networks consists of preeminent technical leaders. All IMDEA Networks researchers have a meritorious research record that includes publications in the most influential venues in our area of research, and they have graduated from, or worked for, top-level international universities, such as MIT, UC Berkeley, Columbia University, ETHZ, EPFL, Politecnico di Torino or Rice University. Additionally, many of our researchers have received important awards and prizes for their research work and achievements. Our scientists not only have an excellent research record, they also possess an extensive industry background. Most of them have been employed at leading industry research laboratories, such as NEC, Telefónica, AT&T, Cisco, Alcatel, Philips, NTT Docomo or Disney Research Labs. What is more, they have been granted over 50 patents during their professional careers. This background is essential to carry out research that can be transferred to companies and in turn be transformed into profitable products that will stimulate economic growth and job creation. In addition to experienced world-renowned researchers, an essential part of the Institute’s research team is composed of highly motivated pre-doctoral researchers, keen to explore new ideas, who are pursuing their Ph.D. theses at IMDEA Networks. These researchers form the life-blood of any research team and are essential to conduct many project-related research tasks, such as the development of prototypes. We are proud that in 2016 the Institute graduated 9 new PhD Students: Angelos Chatzipapas, Elli Zavou, Syed Anwar Ul Hasan, Qing Wang, Juan Camilo Cardona, Pablo Salvador, M. Isabel Sánchez, Gek Hong Sim and Arash Asadi. It is worth highlighting that many of our PhD Students have received important distinctions and have been awarded very selective scholarships. For instance, this year Vincenzo Sciancalepore received the award for the best PhD Thesis in the field of Communication Technologies, granted by the Association of Telecommu- nications and Information Technology in Italy and awarded only to the best three PhD thesis in the field across the whole Italy. In 2016, the Institute has continued to reinforce its research team. This year we incorporated 8 to the Institute one of the most promising researchers in the area of network measure- ments, Narseo Vallina, who got his PhD at the University of Cambridge and was previously at ICSI, UC Berkeley. Narseo does not only bring to the Institute substantial industrial experience (having worked in Vodafone Research and interned in industrial research labs such as Deutsche Telekom and Telefonica), but also a very exciting research line focused 0 on Internet measurements, as he is the Principal Investigator for the NSF-funded ICSI annual report annual report 2 Haystack project.