IIT Roorkee organizes a high-end workshop on “Demystifying Cell-Free Communication for 6G and beyond Systems”

Dept. of ECE, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee (IIT Roorkee) is organizing a seven-day high-end workshop on “Demystifying Cell-Free Communication for 6G and beyond Systems” starting from 05th to 11th June under the SERB’s Accelerate Vigyan scheme. The workshop is being convened at the APJ Block in the campus by the ECE faculty members Prof. Abhay K. Sah, Prof. Ekant Sharma, Prof. Anshul Jaiswal, and Prof. M. Rawat. The workshop focuses on the cell-free systems being considered for 6G and beyond systems as a potential alternative to traditional multicell systems. In such systems, the base station antennas are distributed over a large geographical area through multiple access points (APs) and serve many users/devices. This leads to a scenario where a user is surrounded by multiple APs, rather than the conventional case of a BS being surrounded by users. Thus, the entire concept of cellular communication is being reinvented.

The workshop will be inaugurated by Prof. Ajit. K. Chaturvedi, Former Director, IIT Roorkee and Professor, IIT Kanpur, at 10 am on 5th June 2023 in the presence of Prof. Rajat Agarwal, Assoc. Dean Incubation and Innovation, IIT Roorkee, Prof. Sanjeev Manhas, Acting Head, ECE, and Prof. Abhay K. Sah, the event organizer and Assistant Professor, IIT Roorkee. In this workshop, 12 experts (2 from abroad, 5 from other IITs/IISc/CFI, 4 from IITR, and 1 from Industry) and 45+ participants are participating. Out of these 45 participants, 30 are sponsored by SERB, 10 are self-sponsored or supported by other projects, and the remaining are our internal students. The funding agencies for this workshop are SERB, New Delhi, IIITB COMET Foundation, and the IEEE Roorkee sub-section. Other prominent speakers in the workshop include Prof A.Chockalingam, IISC Bangalore; Prof Hein Ngo, Queens University, Belfast; Prof Luca Sanguinetti, University of Pisa, Italy; Prof Sandeep Kumar, IIT Delhi; Dr Satya k Vankayala, Samsung, R&D Institute; Prof Adarsh Patel, IIT Mandi; Prof. MohdSharique, AMU Aligarh; Prof Meenakshi Rawat, IIT Roorkee; Prof Ekant Sharma, IIT Roorkee; Prof. Anshul Jaiswal, IIT Roorkee. The workshop starts with the arrival of the guests and addresses by Prof. S. Manhas, Acting Head, ECE, IIT Roorkee, and Prof. Rajat Agarwal. Assoc. Dean Incubation and Innovation, IIT Roorkee.

The Karyashala or the workshop aims to demystify the building blocks of cell-free communication and cover topics ranging from the fundamentals of cellular communication to the industry/standard perspective on cell-free communication. This will also include the modelling of cell-free systems, a few relevant signal processing challenges, the issues of coexistence with IRS, VLC, etc., and the role of AI/ML. Apart from these, the participants will also implement the prototype algorithms to optimize and evaluate the performance.

Talking about the workshop, Prof K K Pant, Director IIT Roorkee, said, “I heartily welcome all the working professionals and faculties to this important workshop conducted by the department of ECE at IIT Roorkee. The department is leading in training, research and development activities in 5G/6G domains, and this workshop is an effort in the same direction. This type of digital economy requires “plug-and-play” architecture through which digital building blocks can help create solutions across diverse use cases over time. This program will not only help enhance but serve as a foundation which is being made available for the required research and development skills of promising PG/PhD students and the working professionals.”

In his address, Prof A K Chaturvedi, IIT Kanpur, said, “I would like to congratulate the Electronics and Communication Engineering department of IIT Roorkee on getting the approval and sponsorship of SERB for organizing this important Workshop. It always feels good to be back in IIT Roorkee, which is like my second home. The technical program of the Workshop is impressive and will immensely benefit the participants. Our country’s ability to harness technology is critically dependent on how fast we understand and deploy modern wireless technologies like 5G and beyond. Workshops such as this are necessary to disseminate the foundations and make it accessible to a wider audience. I hope the attendees will make the best use of this opportunity.”