Tutorials

Tutorial Description

Security of Digital Multimedia Data: Challenges and Solutions
Ahmet Eskicioglu, Brooklyn College, City University of New York

In recent years, advances in digital technologies have created significant changes in the way we reproduce, distribute and market intellectual property (IP). Digital media can now be exploited by the IP owners to develop new and innovative business models for their products and services. The lowered cost of reproduction, storage and distribution, however, also invites much motivation for large-scale commercial infringement. In a world where piracy is a growing potential threat, the rights of the IP owners can be protected using three complementary weapons: Technology, legislation, and business models. Because of the diversity of IP (ranging from ebooks to songs and movies), no single solution is applicable to the protection of multimedia products in distribution networks.

Ahmet M. Eskicioglu received the B.S. degree from the Middle East Technical University (METU), Ankara, Turkey, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST), England. He was with the Computer Engineering Department, METU from 1983 to 1992, the Department of Computer Sciences, University of North Texas from 1992 to 1995, and Thomson Multimedia Corporate Research, Indianapolis from 1996 to 2001. Dr. Eskicioglu is with the Department of Computer and Information Science, Brooklyn College of the City University of New York.

The Communications Satellite as a Microwave Repeater
Carlos Ramos, BAE Systems

This tutorial will provide an overview of the role of the communications satellite as a microwave repeater. Focus will be placed on the transponder model, basic EM propagation theory, and the key factors that affect performance of communications systems.
Topics to be covered:

- EM Wave Propagation
- Basic Antenna Theory
- Definition of EIRP, G/T, SFD, Polarization
- Nonlinear Transponder Model
- Design Tradeoffs for Satellite Communications
- Atmospheric Effects on EM Propagation

Carlos L. Ramos received a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Boston University in 1983, a M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Polytechnic Institute of New York in 1985, and a Ph.D. in Computational Electromagnetics from Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey in 2002. He has worked for Bell Laboratories in Middletown and Holmdel, New Jersey from 1988 until 1997, primarily in the field of satellite communications, developing requirements for new satellites, modeling antenna systems, and transmission planning. From 1997 to the present he has been employed by Loral Skynet. Now he is with BAE Systems.

Passive CMOS Sensors and RFID Tags
Kay Seeman, Robert Weigel, University of Erlangen

Over the past few years, there has been a growing demand for wireless short range communication devices which can be realized and maintained under extremely low costs. Beside several research activities concerning the high-integration of multi-standard communication nodes, a lot of work has been done to link devices together in inexpensive ubiquitous communication and sensor networks. Recently, radio frequency identification tagging (RFID tagging) has gained a lot of interest since it is a well known synonym for integrated low cost identification and sensor devices. The present work outlines general system considerations and aspects of the analogue integrated circuit design for the development of passive RFID tags. More precisely, this presentation deals with RFID tags which are based on the backscattering technology at UHF frequencies and above. At first the regulatory background and the existing standards are reviewed and summarized. Then, typical environmental parameters and properties are addressed and subsequent restrictions for common applications are exemplified. Furthermore, the challenges of ultra low-power integrated circuit design are discussed and the RFID specific analogue building blocks are enlightened. Concepts of energy scavenging and difficulties due to the passive power supply generation are investigated, too. Finally, future developments and research directions are discussed considering the given commercial and environmental requirements.

Robert Weigel received the Dr.-Ing. and the Dr.-Ing.habil. degrees, both in electrical engineering and computer science, from the Munich University of Technology in Germany, in 1989 and 1992, respectively. From 1982 to 1988, he was a Research Engineer, from 1988 to 1994 a Senior Research Engineer, and from 1994 to 1996 a Professor for RF Circuits and Systems at the Munich University of Technology. In winter 1994/95 he was a Guest Professor for SAW Technology at Vienna University of Technology in Austria. Since 1996, he has been Director of the Institute for Communications and Information Engineering at the University of Linz, Austria. In August 1999, he co-founded DICE – Danube Integrated Circuit Engineering, Linz, meanwhile an Infineon Technologies Development Center which is devoted to the design of mobile radio circuits and systems. In 2000, he has been appointed a Professor for RF Engineering at the Tongji University in Shanghai, China. In 2002, he has moved to Erlangen, Germany, to overtake the Directorship of the Institute for Electronics Engineering at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg.

Multicast Networking
Kim Chin, The Australian Catholic University

The different aspects of multicast networking will be discussed such as:
• what is multicast and what is it used for?
• why does it take so long for it to be ubiquitously deployed in the Internet?
• its current deployment status;
• what has it evolved into?
• the characteristics of some real multicast audio traffic traces, and
• what can be done to alleviate the negative impact of such loss characteristics?

Dr Kim Chin is with the Australian Catholic University. He has seven years of research experience in Internet Technology and Applied Mathematics (1995-2002 in University of NSW and University of Technology, NSW) and six years academic experience (5 years as an academic intern while working as a researcher in multicast networking and its applications) (1998-2004 in University of Technology (1998-2003) and the Australian Catholic University (2004-now))

UWB and Impulse Radio for Wireless Communications
Huseyin Arslan, University of South Florida

In this presentation, ultra-wideband technology for low power and high data rate wireless communication systems will be discussed. First, an overview of the technology along with applications, advantages, and research issues will be covered. Then, more focus on UWB digital receiver design including synchronization, channel estimation, correlator and rake reception, narrowband and multi-user interference cancellation as well as multi-access code design will be discussed.

Dr. Arslan has received his PhD. degree in 1998 from Southern Methodist University (SMU), Dallas, Tx. From January 1998 to August 2002, he was with the research group of Ericsson Inc., NC, USA, where he was involved with several project related to 2G and 3G wireless cellular communication systems . Since August 2002, he has been with the Electrical Engineering Dept. of University of South Florida. His research interests are related to advanced signal processing techniques at the physical layer, with cross-layer design for networking adaptivity and Quality of Service (QoS) control. More specifically, he is interested in signal processing techniques for wireless communication systems including modulation and coding, interference cancellation and multi-user signal detection, channel estimation and tracking, equalization, soft information generation, adaptive receiver and transmission technologies etc. He is interested in many forms of wireless technologies including cellular, wireless PAN/LAN/MANs, fixed wireless access, and specialized wireless data networks like wireless sensors networks and wireless telemetry. He has served as technical program committee member, session and symposium organizer in several IEEE conferences. He is editorial board member for Wireless Communication and Mobile Computing journal, and was technical program co-chair of IEEE wireless and microwave conference 2004. Dr. Arslan is a senior member of IEEE. Dr. Arslan has worked in UWB significantly. He has several publications and editing a book on UWB for Wiley publishing. He is also organizing a special issue on UWB for wireless communications and mobile computing journal.

Programming Compound Wireless Services
Thaddeus Kobylarz, Wireless Telecommunications Consulting

This tutorial will describe how wireless telecommunications users/subscribers will be able to build elaborate services that satisfy their particular needs. Facilities within wireless terminals (e.g., advanced cell phones), accessible service provider resources, and third party service providers will provide the components for users/subscribers to build these elaborate services. User/subscribers will link component services from these three sources and program service sequences to achieve new and specialized elaborate services that can be invoked when desired. These linked service sequences are termed “Compound Wireless Services”.

Thaddeus Kobylarz has earned his BSEE degree from the New Jersey Institute of Technology, a MSEE from the University of Vermont, and a Ph.D. in EE and Computer Science from the North Carolina State University. The first part of his career was in academia as an Assistant Professor at Princeton University, an Associate Professor at Stevens Institute of Technology, and the EE Department Chairman at the University of Petroleum &Minerals (Dhahran, Saudi Arabia). The second part of his career encompassed over 20 years at Bell Laboratories, principally as an (hardware/software) architect. In his final five years he represented Lucent Technologies at wireless standards committees. The TIA wireless standard IS-813 was published while he was chairman of TR-45.7. After retiring from Bell Laboratories in 2001, he was a consultant to AT&T Wireless Services also as a standards representative. Four GSM standards were published (TS32.200, TS32.205, TS32,215, and TS32.235) while he was rapporteur of the “Charging & Billing” group in 3GPP. Besides numerous technical reports, he has published over 40 papers and co-authored a book. His research has been on various topics relating to computers and communications, with an emphasis on wireless services.

Security Assessment: Tools and Challenges
Bhagyavati, Columbus State University

Because of increasing security threats and vulnerabilities, today’s network administrators must ensure the security of their infrastructure and systems. In several industries such as healthcare, security requirements are more stringent because of newly imposed governmental regulations. Periodic and independent assessments of the security and health of organizational computer networks assure that administrators are cognizant and capable of maintaining security standards. This tutorial will briefly discuss the challenges facing security assessors and the tools that can be useful in such audits. Passive monitoring tools such as whois and active monitoring tools such as nmap will be explored. It is often difficult to determine the extent to which independent external auditors must be allowed to penetrate in order to obtain a true picture of the inherent system vulnerabilities; the tutorial will briefly discuss resolutions to these issues

As an Assistant Professor in Computer Science at Columbus State University, Bhagyavati is interested in information assurance, infrastructure security and grid computing. Having obtained her doctoral degree from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in 2001, she has remained active in her areas of interest by obtaining grants and authoring several papers in refereed conferences and journals. Bhagyavati has also written book chapters and organized workshops, panels, special sessions and conference tracks. Graduate and undergraduate students directed by her have published their research in regional and national conferences. Bhagyavati is a member of the IEEE, ACM, Sigma Xi and Upsilon Pi Epsilon organizations.

Video Delivery over Next-generation DSL Networks
Anurag Srivastava, Lucent Technologies

In this tutorial, various technical issues will be reviewed such as choice of DSL technology, leading access/metro network architectures, trade offs involved in video head-end design, choice of set-top boxes, last mile delivery model (FTTN vs. FTTH), and several other parameters involved in cost effective delivery of video.The presenter will also review the competition from cable MSOs and shed some light on the possible service differentiations, which could enable telcos to make inroads into the cable customer base.

Anurag Srivastava received his B.E (E.E) degree from University of Gorakhpur, India and M.S (Comp Sc.) from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in 1997 and 1999 respectively. He has been working as Member of Technical Staff at Integrated Networks Research department of Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies since 2000. His research interests are in the area of Ethernet/SONET/MPLS networking protocols, broadband access architectures, routing and optimization problems in communication networks. He has 11 patents issued or pending and several research papers to his credit.

Some Practical Implementations of Information Theory
Irving Kalet, Technion, Haifa

Shannon Information Theory is probably the most important topic in modern communications. Information theory essentially tells us what are the performance bounds on communication systems. In this tutorial we will try to cut through the mathematical proofs involved in much of information theory, to present as heuristically as possible, the Shannon Theory background for some of the major practical developments in the field of communications, in the past fifty years. We will begin with an overview of the practical implications of classic Shannon Theory for the additive white gaussian noise (AWGN) channel. The work done in information theory for the AWGN channel, has led to the field of coding, trellis coding, analog modems for the telephone line (e.g., V.34, V.90 and the V.92 modems), the very important xDSL (e.g., ADSL, VDSL) systems and the use of multitone (or DMT) systems in ADSL and VDSL. We will then continue with an overview of results in information theory for the wireless Rayleigh fading channel. These results have led to major breakthroughs, in the past ten years, which may allow a great increase in bandwidth efficiency for wireless channels. These breakthroughs include BLAST and general Multiple-Input – Multiple-Output (MIMO) systems, and the use of advanced OFDM systems for wireless communications. We will conclude with some old, and some new, results for analog modulations. Analog modulation techniques have been out of the communications spotlight for many years. We believe, based on results from information theory, that there should be some renewed interest in this area. We hope that this tutorial will lead to greater insight, as to what is possible, and what is not possible in the field of communications.

Professor Kalet received his BEE from the City College of New York, in 1962, and the MS (EE) and Dr. Eng. Sc., from Columbia University, in New York, respectively, in 1964 and 1969. He has been living in Israel since 1970. He has worked and consulted at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, where he worked on analog telephone-line modems, xDSL systems and cellular communications. He also worked in the field of satellite communications, at MIT Lincoln Laboratories, Lexington, Massachusetts. He has taught at the City College of New York and Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Israel. He is presently teaching at the Technion, Haifa, Israel and is also an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University, in New York. His present research interests are in the fields of digital and analog modulation techniques for wireless and wireline communications.