This first workshop, jointly organized by Shenzhen Research Institute (SZRI) of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) and DLR (German Aerospace Centre), brought together leading theoretical researchers, experimental researchers and practitioners to exchange on the theme of “Bridging Theory and Practice in Wireless Communications and Networking”. Thanks to intense research by various groups around the world, Network Coding has found applications in many communications systems. In particular, Physical-layer Network Coding (PNC), co-invented by Prof. LIEW, has the potential to significantly improve the throughput of wireless relay networks. DLR has been at the forefront of satellite communication and has pioneered the use of network coding and advanced multiple access techniques in satellite networks. A focus of this workshop was on how the many new techniques in wireless communications and coding can be implemented and deployed in future wireless networks. The workshop opening was officiated by Ms. WANG, Lixin (Division head of Science, Technology and Innovation Commission of Shenzhen Municipality), Prof. CHEN Lesheng (Director of Sino-German Center for research promotion), and Prof. CHING Pak-Chong (Director of Shenzhen Research Institute, CUHK), at SZRI on March 4. The program was packed with more than thirty technical talks, given by 11 German speakers, 17 Chinese speakers, a guest speaker from Denmark, and a speaker from the U. S., covering a wide range of topics from new advances and implementations in Network Coding (especially Physical-layer Network Coding), to new software-defined radio architectures and wireless communications techniques. All attendants enthusiastically participated to share their latest research results, provide constructive comments on others’ work, and explore future collaborations.
On March 7, the DLR team and two German speakers visited INC where a demo of Physical-layer Network Coding (PNC) was shown. After that, we held a round-table discussion, joined by several other participants in Shenzhen through teleconferencing, on the idea to deploy network coding and other advanced wireless communication techniques real satellite experiments.
Overall, we believe that this workshop has successfully paved the way for future collaborations between SZRI and DLR specifically, and between China and Germany in general. A consensus among the participants was to keep a mailing list to facilitate future collaboration and team forming, and to hold the second workshop in Germany.
We are grateful to the Sino-German Centre, National NSF project, and INC for their financial sponsorship and support of this event.
Workshop co-Chairs Professor LIEW Song-Chang, SZRI, CUHK
http://www.inc.cuhk.edu.hk/sino-german/