Currently, the telecom industry is facing a tremendous paradigm shift because of mainly two important trends: the ever increasing need for capacity and the increased usage of cloud infrastructure. Future demands in terms of capacity will be so high that it is imperative to look into alternatives to increasing spectrum efficiency. One such alternative is the densification of networks by using massive amounts of small cells, which is currently a very hot topic also in various 5G forums.
Moreover, we currently see many efforts to virtualize telecommunication services and deploy them on commodity servers inside modern datacenters. This raises several scalability concerns when massive amounts of small cells should be operated and managed, also from the Network Function Virtualization perspective. Clearly, backhaul networks, which connect the small cells to the core infrastructure and to the operator cloud need to be designed in a flexible way, coping with rapid demand fluctuations and optimizations need to be found that jointly optimize fronthaul and backhaul networks to avoid bottlenecks. As such small cell backhaul networks may also be based on wireless technology using mmWave bands because of the high capacity need, a better understanding of such technology will be needed.
The focus of this workshop is on technical issues that must be tackled in order to make ubiquitous deployment of small cells a reality. We aim to bring together technologists and researchers who share interest in the area of Small Cell Networks. The main purpose is to promote discussions on recent advances in the analysis, design and implementation of systems, protocols and services that enable the massive deployment of small cell networking solutions for the next generation of mobile networks. It also aims at increasing the synergy between academic and industry professionals working in this area. We solicit papers that address theoretical, experimental, and work in-progress at all layers of Small Cell Networks.
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