We consider the capacity of noncoherent multiple-antenna selective-fading channels and establish that the capacity pre-log in the single-input multiple-output (SIMO) case can be larger than that in the single-input single-output (SISO) case. This result says that multiple antennas at the receiver only can increase the number of degrees of freedom for communication, a phenomenon that can not occur in the coherent case or in the non-coherent flat-fading case. We then provide a geometrical interpretation of this surprising finding and present a new set of techniques for establishing lower bounds on the nonocherent capacity of (multi-antenna) selective-fading channels.


Helmut Bölcskei was born in Mödling, Austria on May 29, 1970, and received the Dipl.-Ing. and Dr. techn. degrees in electrical engineering from Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria, in 1994 and 1997, respectively. In 1998 he was with Vienna University of Technology. From 1999 to 2001 he was a postdoctoral researcher in the Information Systems Laboratory, Department of Electrical Engineering, and in the Department of Statistics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA. He was in the founding team of Iospan Wireless Inc., a Silicon Valley-based startup company (acquired by Intel Corporation in 2002) specialized in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless systems for high-speed Internet access, and was a co-founder of Celestrius AG, Zurich, Switzerland. From 2001 to 2002 he was an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has been with ETH Zurich since 2002, where he is Professor of Electrical Engineering. He was a visiting researcher at Philips Research Laboratories Eindhoven, The Netherlands, ENST Paris, France, and the Heinrich Hertz Institute Berlin, Germany. His research interests are in information theory, statistics, mathematical signal processing, and applied and computational harmonic analysis.


He received the 2001 IEEE Signal Processing Society Young Author Best Paper Award, the 2006 IEEE Communications Society Leonard G. Abraham Best Paper Award, the 2010 Vodafone Innovations Award, the ETH "Golden Owl" Teaching Award, is a Fellow of the IEEE, and was an Erwin Schrödinger Fellow (1999-2001) of the Austrian National Science Foundation (FWF). He was a plenary speaker at several IEEE conferences and served as an associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, and the EURASIP Journal on Applied Signal Processing. He is currently editor-in-chief of the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory and serves on the editorial board of "Foundations and Trends in Networking". He was TPC co-chair of the 2008 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory and serves on the Board of Governors of the IEEE Information Theory Society.

Abstracts of Keynote Presentations

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Wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) has been the workhorse of data networks since the early 1990s, enabling ubiquitous and affordable data services with unabated exponential traffic growth. Today, commercial WDM systems can carry close to 10 Tbit/s over a single fiber, and research experiments have reached the 100-Tbit/s mark. Up until ~2002, scaling WDM capacities was mostly a physics discipline, dominated by progress in high-speed electronics and opto-electronics as well as by advances in optical component technologies. During that period, optical transmission systems were almost exclusively using on/off keying with square-law detection and very modest (if any) digital signal processing. Spurred by the need for increased spectral efficiencies, this situation has changed dramatically with the introduction of more advanced modulation formats (starting in ~2002) and coherent detection (starting in ~2006). The most advanced 100-Gb/s optical transport systems available or in development today are using coherent detection, polarization-division multiplexing (PDM), soft-decision forward error control, and 2x2 MIMO digital signal processing with 70+ million-gate ASICs processing an more than 1 Tb/s of raw data. With these developments, optical communications has shifted significantly towards communications engineering. However, despite the use of these advanced technologies, progress in WDM capacity research has noticeably slowed down. Recent fundamental information theoretic studies have pointed at the Shannon limits of (nonlinear) optical fiber transmission, and concluded that current experimental results have reached those limits to within a factor of 2 to 3. In order to further scale network capacities, “space” is the only known dimension yet unexploited. Space-division multiplexing (SDM) may use parallel strands of single-mode fiber, uncoupled or coupled cores of multi-core fiber, or individual modes of multi-mode waveguides, together with MIMO digital signal processing to address modal crosstalk. At the beginning of an exciting new era in optical communications, which will be equally physics-driven as it will be driven by advanced communication engineering, this talk will review the current state of WDM and address some of the key challenges that SDM research will have to address over the coming decade in order to prevent the looming optical transport “capacity crunch”.


Peter J. Winzer received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the Vienna University of Technology, Austria, in 1998. Supported by the European Space Agency, he investigated space-borne Doppler lidar and laser communications using high-sensitivity digital modulation and detection. In 2000 he joined Bell Labs, focusing on many aspects of fiber-optic networks from 10 to 100 Gb/s and beyond, and setting several high-speed and high-capacity optical transmission records. He has widely published and patented and is actively involved in technical and organizational tasks within the IEEE Photonics Society and the Optical Society of America. He was promoted to Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at Bell Labs in 2007, and since 2010 heads the Optical Transmission Systems and Networks Research Department. He is a Member of the OSA and a Fellow of the IEEE.

Nanotechnology is enabling the development of devices in a scale ranging from one to a few one hundred nanometers. Nanonetworks, i.e., the interconnection of nano-scale devices, are expected to expand the capabilities of single nano-machines by allowing them to cooperate and share information. Traditional communication technologies are not directly suitable for nanonetworks mainly due to the size and power consumption of existing transmitters, receivers and additional processing components. All these define a new communication paradigm that demands novel solutions such as nano-transceivers, channel models for the nano-scale, and protocols and architectures for nanonetworks. In this talk, first the state-of-the-art in nano-machines, including architectural aspects, expected features of future nano-machines, and current developments are presented for a better understanding of the nanonetwork scenarios. Moreover, nanonetworks features and components are explained and compared with traditional communication networks. Novel nano-antennas based on nano-materials as well as the terahertz band are investigated for electromagnetic communication in nanonetworks. Furthermore, molecular communication mechanisms are presented for short-range networking based on ion signaling and molecular motors, for medium-range networking based on flagellated bacteria and nanorods, as well as for long-range networking based on pheromones and capillaries. Finally, open research challenges such as the development of network components, molecular communication theory, and new architectures and protocols, which need to be solved in order to pave the way for the development and deployment of nanonetworks within the next couple of decades are presented.


Ian F. Akyildiz received his BS, MS, and PhD degrees in Computer Engineering from the University of Erlangen-Nuernberg, Germany, in 1978, 1981 and 1984, respectively. Currently, he is the Ken Byers Distinguished Chair Professor with the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Director of Broadband Wireless Networking Laboratory, Chair of the Telecommunication Group at Georgia Tech. Dr. Akyildiz is an Honorary Professor with School of Electrical Engineering at the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, and  Director of  N3Cat (NaNoNetworking Center in Catalunya) in Barcelona, Spain, since June 2008. He is also an Honorary Professor with University of Pretoria, South Africa since March 2009 and a Visiting Professor with King Saud University in Saudi Arabia since January 2010. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Computer Networks (Elsevier) Journal, the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Ad Hoc Networks Journal (Elsevier) launched in 2003, of the Physical Communication (PHYCOM) Journal (Elsevier) launched in 2008 and of the Nano Communication Networks (NanoComnet) Journal (Elsevier) in launched 2010.  Dr. Akyildiz serves on the advisory boards of several research centers, journals, conferences and publication companies.. Dr. Akyildiz is an IEEE FELLOW (1996) and an ACM FELLOW (1997). He received numerous awards from IEEE and ACM. His current research interests are in Cognitive Radio Networks, Wireless Sensor Networks, Wireless Mesh Networks, Nanonetworks.

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Helmut Bölcskei

ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland


“The SIMO pre-log can be larger than the SISO pre-log” (PDF)


Ian F. Akyildiz

Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA / Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona , Catalunya, Spain


“Nanonetworks: a new frontier in information theory”

Home2011_IEEE_Communication_Theory_Workshop.htmlshapeimage_5_link_0


Peter J. Winzer

Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs, New Jersey, USA


“Information theory and digital signal processing in optical communications”


Moe Win

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Massachusetts, USA


“Network localization”

The availability of positional information is of great importance in numerous commercial, health-care, public safety, and military applications. The coming years will see the emergence of high-definition location-aware (HDLA) networks with sub-meter accuracy, minimal infrastructure, and robustness in harsh environments. We propose to realize this ambitious goal using a combination of wide bandwidth transmission and peer-to-peer cooperation. This talk will present a brief technical overview of our recent activities with particular emphasis on cooperative network localization employing wideband wireless technology from three points of view: fundamental performance bounds, cooperative algorithms, and experimentation. Fundamental bounds serve as performance benchmarks and as guidelines for network design. Cooperative algorithms will be designed to approach these bounds, resulting in dramatic performance improvements over traditional techniques. Experimentation will be used to determine important attributes of physical environments; these realistic models are necessary to obtain accurate bounds, to develop robust algorithms, and to validate their performance in harsh environments.


Moe Win is an Associate Professor at the Laboratory for Information & Decision Systems (LIDS), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Prior to joining MIT, he was at AT&T Research Laboratories for five years and at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for seven years. His research encompasses developing fundamental theories, designing algorithms, and conducting experimentation for a broad range of real-world problems. His current research topics include location-aware networks, intrinsically secure wireless networks, aggregate interference in heterogeneous networks, ultra-wide bandwidth systems, multiple antenna systems, time-varying channels, optical transmission systems, and space communications systems.

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Werner Mohr

Nokia Siemens Networks GmbH & Co. KG, Munich, Germany


What is coming next after LTE and IMT-Advanced – An industry perspective” (PDF)

Mobile and wireless communications is the main global communication means today. More than 5 billion people are already connected globally. Data traffic is increasing continuously in particular with the deployment of broadband mobile communication systems such as LTE (Long-Term Evolution). Video applications are driving the growth in data traffic. Several applications are requiring low latency, which are a challenge for the system design. The availability of sufficient frequency spectrum is a precondition for the provision of such communication services. Therefore, on one hand the research community is working to increase the performance on cell level by improved interference management, advanced antenna concepts and cooperative base stations. Increased spectral efficiency of the physical layer results in increased energy consumption of the radio system. On the other hand discussions are being prepared for the WRC 2016 (World Radiocommunications Conference) to identify additional frequency spectrum for mobile and wireless communications. Therefore, the system design with respect to increased traffic, higher spectral efficiency and reduced energy consumption results in conflicting requirements. Increased throughput values per base station lead to reduced covered range. In addition, also increased required cell capacity result in smaller cells and more dense network deployments. Improved link- and system-level performance, additional frequency spectrum and smaller cells are the main means to meet future requirements for excellent user experience. Therefore, macro cells will increasingly be complemented by small cells (pico and femto cells), which is associated by offloading of traffic to other systems like WLANs in a cooperative manner. Moore’s law is still valid for the next years, which enables more complex signal processing on link- and system-level and wider carrier bandwidth. The integration of different cell layers and different radio systems in the sense of heterogeneous networks will be implemented and deployed as self-organizing networks with unified radio resource management to manage the increased complexity. Cognitive networks are complementing future systems in order to reduce errors, improve quality and to reduce operational and energy cost. In addition to cellular-based networks, machine-to-machine communications and sensor-based networks with tens of billions of connected devices will support solutions for societal challenges like traffic, health, elderly society, climate change and smart energy systems. Such systems will be part of global communication networks in the Future Internet. Scalability and radio systems for low data rates with potentially very low latency will be needed in particular for mission-critical applications. In summary future systems will be based on an optimized integration of the major building blocks:

  1. multicarrier radio systems, multi-standard networks, heterogeneous and self-organized networks,

  2. active antennas, wideband radio systems and liquid radio,

  3. unified radio resource management and cognitive networks, which will provide ubiquitous connectivity.


The Net!Works European Technology Platform is identifying respective research topics for collaborative framework research programs in the Net!Works Strategic Research Agenda. This presentation will provide an overview about these developments.


Werner Mohr was graduated from the University of Hannover, Germany, with the Master Degree in electrical engineering in 1981 and with the Ph.D. degree in 1987. Dr. Werner Mohr joined Siemens AG, Mobile Network Division in Munich, Germany in 1991. He was involved in several EU funded projects and ETSI standardization groups on UMTS and systems beyond 3G. Since December 1996 he was project manager of the European ACTS FRAMES Project until the project finished in August 1999. This project developed the basic concepts of the UMTS radio interface. Since April 2007 he is with Nokia Siemens Networks GmbH & Co. KG in Munich Germany, where he is Head of Research Alliances. He was the coordinator of the WINNER Project in Framework Program 6 of the European Commission, chairman of WWI (Wireless World Initiative) and of the Eureka Celtic project WINNER+. The WINNER project laid the foundation for the radio interface for IMT-Advanced and provided the starting point for the 3GPP LTE standardization. In addition, he was vice chair of the eMobility European Technology Platform in the period 2008 – 2009 and he is now eMobility (now called Net!works) chairperson for the period 2010 – 2011. Werner Mohr was chair of the "Wireless World Research Forum – WWRF" from its launch in August 2001 up to December 2003. He is member of VDE (Association for Electrical, Electronic & Information Technologies, Germany) and Senior Member of IEEE. 1990 he received the Award of the ITG (Information Technology Society) in VDE. He is board member of ITG in VDE, Germany for the term 2006 to 2008 and was re-elected for the term 2009 to 2011. Werner Mohr is co-author of a book on "Third Generation Mobile Communication Systems" and a book on "Radio Technologies and Concepts for IMT-Advanced."

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