Welcome from the Chairs

On behalf of the 6GNet Organizing Committee, we are delighted to warmly introduce you to the 3^rd International Conference on 6G Networking (6GNet 2024), that is taking place on October 21-24, 2024, in Châtillon, France, steps away to the fascinating city of Paris.

6G network research has already started with some initiatives like the 6G Flagship. Besides the (somewhat questionable) speed race, 6G networking is a tremendous opportunity to investigate and foster research in areas like the need for massive digital inclusion and stronger robustness against attacks of any kind, among other challenging topics like global network automation and cross-domain service/slice design, delivery and operation.

6G networking may also be seen as a true convergence point where the distinction between fixed and mobile infrastructures would not make sense anymore.

The research effort in this area of convergence has ignited for quite some time but dramatically progressed with 5G techniques, possibly combined with others like advanced forwarding schemes (multi-path communication designs) or AI/ML-fueled network automation.

This third 6GNet conference therefore aims at assessing the progress of the various research efforts in areas that will forge 6G networks. On top on the 8 technical sessions, 1 Demo session and 1 Poster session resulting from different calls for papers, its program comprises 3 Keynotes, 1 Panel, 2 Tutorials, and 1 Workshop.

The first keynote will be delivered by Meryem Simsek, Head of the Network Architecture Research (NAR) Lab, Nokia Bell Labs, USA, who will explore the transformative potential of advancements in networking, cloud, and AI that are set to redefine connectivity from current networks to the next generation networks with increased capabilities and a high level of autonomy. The second keynote will be presented by Mehdi Bennis, Full Professor at the Centre for Wireless Communications, University of Oulu, Finland. He will address the semantics-native communication and learning emergent communication protocols, sitting at the intersection of learning, reasoning and communication in terms of key enablers and mathematical tools. Finally, the third keynote will feature Jakob Hoydis, Principal Research Scientist, NVIDIA, France, who will develop a vision for 6G deployment, using two enablers namely differentiable ray racing for the creation of digital twin networks and machine learning.

The panel, entitled “AI-enhanced 6G: Hype or Reality?”, will focus on the role of AI into 6G promises, and will explore whether the promise of AI in 6G is truly achievable or if it remains a wishful thinking. The panel, moderated by Dragan Samardzija, Nokia Bell Labs, USA, will feature distinguished experts involved in the design of AI-enabled 6G: Jean-Claude Belfiore (Huawei France Research Center, France), Eric Hardouin (Orange Innovation, France), Jakob Hoydis (NVIDIA, France), Stefano Secci (Cnam, France) and Alvaro Valcarce Rial (Nokia Bell Labs, France).

On the first day, the two half-day tutorials will address on the one hand, Guessing Random Additive Noise Decoding (GRAND), a noise-centric approach using guesswork to create a universal decoding algorithm, by Muriel Médard (MIT, USA) and Ken R. Duffy (Northeastern University, USA). On the second hand, Antonio De Domenico and Nicola Piovesan (both at Huawei Technologies, France) will explore how data-driven modelling can sustain Green Future Mobile Networks.

We are also offering one workshop on an engaging topic, namely EN-IoT, a workshop on Energy Neutral and Sustainable IoT Devices and Infrastructure, that is drawing significant attention. In additional to technical sessions, this Workshop includes a keynote by Jeroen Famaey (University of Antwerp and imec, Belgium) who will address energy-aware computing and communications.

We would like to thank everyone who contributed to the organization of the conference. The Organizing Committee did an outstanding job in setting technical sessions, tutorials, keynotes and panels and for architecting a very attractive technical program, involving distinguished experts from Academia and Industry. We are indebted to the authors who contributed to the 6GNet 2024 program with their submissions on high-quality research works, as well as the members of the Technical Program Committee who made sure that contributions meet the highest expected quality. Special thanks go to Aziza Lounis and DNAC for setting up the logistics and following all aspects of the overall organization.

We are also grateful to IEEE and IEEE Comsoc, as continuous Technical Sponsors. We also acknowledge our Partners, namely 6G Flagship, 6G-Path, 6G-life and Paris Systematic for their endorsement of the conference.

Last but not least, we sincerely acknowledge the support of our Patrons: Orange that is once again hosting 6GNet 2024 in Orange Gardens, its Innovation campus, like for the inaugural 6GNet event in 2022. Huawei and Nokia have been continuously engaged at various levels in our event, and of course the Research Chair on Sustainable 6G (“6G Durable”) set up by Centrale Supelec, CNRS and Paris-Saclay University together with Orange.

We are looking forward to a successful and engaging conference on 6G Networking in Paris!

General Co-Chairs

TPC Co-Chairs

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