The IEEE ComSoc Regional Conference for the Europe, Middle-East, Africa (EMEA) Region, named the International Mediterranean Conference on Communications and Networking (IEEE MeditCom), was founded at the beginning of 2019.

At that time, the IEEE ComSoc President Khaled Letaief started the project of launching this new Regional Conference and, at the end of the same year, announced it to the ComSoc Board of Governors. The preparation of the 1st MeditCom started under the leadership of Khaled Letaief and Stefano Bregni, ComSoc Vice President for Conferences, and took nearly two years to be completed, thanks to the hard work and commitment of many volunteers.

A strategic goal of ComSoc on Portfolio Conferences is to ensure the highest geographical diversity and maximum coverage for all Regions, aiming at giving all Members in all Regions the opportunity to attend highly relevant technical conferences nearby, regardless in what Region they live. As Stefano Bregni has been always used to repeat in his capacity of Vice President for Conferences: “If members cannot travel to good conferences, let’s bring good conferences to the members!”

A key role in this strategy is played by Regional Conferences, which are ComSoc Portfolio Conferences organized each in a specific Region, drawing involvement from the local IEEE Sections, ComSoc Chapters, and Sister Societies. They have extensive coverage of the whole ComSoc technical scope. Their goal in the ComSoc overall strategy is to reach out all countries by paying extra attention to disadvantaged areas, and ultimately to drive membership development. Currently, there are five ComSoc Regional Conferences:

• IEEE Latin American Conference on Communications (IEEE LATINCOM);

• IEEE International Black Sea Conference on Communications and Networking (IEEE BLACKSEACOM);

• IEEE/CIC International Conference on Communications in China (IEEE ICCC);

• IEEE International Conference on Advanced Networks and Telecommunications Systems (IEEE ANTS) in India;

• IEEE International Mediterranean Conference on Communications and Networking (IEEE MeditCom) for the Region surrounding the Mediterranean Sea.

More Regional Conferences are now being considered under the current ComSoc Conference Leadership (Nelson Fonseca, Vice President for Conferences 2022-23) to cover additional areas of the world.

IEEE MeditCom has been launched to be the reference conference on communications serving the whole Mediterranean Region, which consists of over 20 countries and around 480 million people living across three continents: Africa, Asia and Europe. The MeditCom series of conferences is organized every year, with an international stature and broad coverage of topics, bringing together visionaries in academia, research labs and industry from all over the world to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, featuring a technical program of outstanding challenges in the areas of communications and networking.

MeditCom 2022: Again in Athens!

The second edition of IEEE MeditCom took place on 5-8 September 2022 in Athens, Greece, in the same venue as the first edition in 2021: the Electra Palace Hotel, which is located in the heart of the city, just a few minutes away from the Acropolis.

Athens has been really a fantastic location for the first two editions of MeditCom! Known as the “cradle of Western civilization,” Athens and Greece are famous for their history, art master pieces and natural beauty.

While the first edition of MeditCom was hybrid, with only few participants attending in person due to the travel restrictions that were in place, IEEE MeditCom 2022 has been prevailingly in presence, with most participants traveling to Athens to attend the conference, meet their fellow colleagues, and enjoy this marvelous city.

Before and after technical sessions, many attendees made the most of the tourism opportunity given by the conference. In Athens, one could not really miss to visit at least the Acropolis, the Ancient Agora and other main archeological sites, as well as the Acropolis Museum and the National Archaeological Museum. Moreover, Athens is the natural gateway for visitors to continental Greece as well as to the numerous Greek Islands, which attract tenths of millions of visitors each year, and early September is an ideal period to visit this city.

Organizing Committee

• General Co-Chairs
  Stefano Bregni, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
  Hikmet Sari, Nanjing Univ. Posts and Telecommun., China

• Executive Co-Chairs
  Christos Verikoukis, University of Patras, Greece
  Symeon Papavassiliou, National Technical Univ. Athens, Greece

• Technical Program Co-Chairs
  Octavia Dobre, Memorial University, Canada
  Jalel Ben Othman, Centrale Supelec, France

• Tutorial Program Co-Chairs
  Dania Marabissi, Università di Firenze, Italy
  Shenghui Song, Hong Kong Univ. Science and Tech., China

• Workshop Program Co-Chairs
  Yacine Ghamri-Doudane, University of La Rochelle, France
  Harilaos Koumaras, National Centre “Demokritos,” Greece

• Demo Co-Chairs
  Christos Tranoris, University of Patras, Greece
  Nathalie Mitton, INRIA, France

• Panels Co-Chairs
  Narcis Cardona, Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain
  Riccardo Trivisonno, Huawei, Germany

• Finance Chair
  Rolland Vida, Budapest University of T&E, Hungary

• Publication Chair
  John Vardakas, Iquadrat, Spain

• Publicity Co-Chairs
  Hyunbum Kim, Incheon National University, South Korea
  Fatima Domingues, Inst. de Tel. and Univ. of Aveiro, Portugal
  Miriam Lucero Tenorio, DICOEL, Ecuador
  Telex Ngatched, Memorial Univ. Newfoundland, Canada
  Eirini Eleni Tsiropoulou, University of New Mexico, USA

• Student Travel Grant Chair
  Safa Otoum, Zayed University, UAE

• Web and Social Media Chair
  Ejder Bastug, Nokia Bell Labs, France

• Young Professionals Panels Chair
  Periklis Chatzimisios, IEEE ComSoc YP Committee Chair, International Hellenic University, Greece

• WICE Panels Chair
  Nury Gabriela Ramirez Cely, HCL Technologies, Mexico

• ComSoc Staff
  Bruce Worthman, IEEE Communications Society, USA
  Tina Gaerlan, IEEE Communications Society, USA

Some Conference Facts

IEEE MeditCom 2022 attracted high interest from the international technical community. It received 100 submissions just to the Main Technical Track, of which 49 were accepted for presentation and then publication in the Conference Proceedings on IEEE Xplore. Authors were 368 in total, from 42 countries from all 5 continents. As expected and confirming the regional focus of MeditCom, 70% of authors were from Europe, Middle East and Africa.

This high response from the research community allowed to strive for quality in planning the technical program, but also called for a demanding paper evaluation process. The 226 members of the Technical Program Committee worked responsibly and efficiently under tight time constraints to produce a total of 316 reviews for the 100 papers submitted to the Main Track, which provided the basis for the final technical paper selection.

The IEEE MeditCom 2022 program featured 6 keynote talks and 3 panels, in which industry leaders and prominent academics presented their visions on the future of wireless communications networks, 10 technical sessions presenting the latest research results, and 1 demo session. Prior to the start of the main conference, the program began with 2 tutorials and 2 workshops in parallel. In conjunction with the conference, panels were organized by the IEEE ComSoc Young Professionals (YP) and Women in Communications Engineering (WICE) Committees.

The Venue

Athens is a modern, vibrant metropolis and the principal centre of Greece for business and foreign trade. More than 30% of the overall Greece population resides in the Athens metropolitan area. Regenerated to hold the Olympic Games in 2004, it has the facilities, services and infrastructure to host the most demanding events.

Athens is the oldest new destination, fascinating visitors with its history, heritage and the contemporary experiences that it offers. It is an open-air museum of world-class cultural heritage attractions and a city with urban personality. 3000 years of history can be seen within 5 km walking distance.

Acropolis is one of the heritage monuments that date back to the prehistoric era, with the emblematic Parthenon being one of the most widely recognized monuments of the world. A visit is also recommended to the emblematic Ancient Roman Agora, the Temple of Olimpian Zeus and a plethora of other monuments.

A visit to Athens would not be complete without visiting some of its amazing museums, showcasing the city’s incredible history and its relationship with art and archaeology, beginning with the Acropolis Museum and the National Archeological Museum, which feature a number of unique master pieces of Classic Greek Art.

Several notable places can be visited starting from Athens for half or full-day tours: for example, the Meteora monasteries, on the UNESCO World Heritage list, built on immense natural pillars and hill-like rounded boulders that dominate the local area, the Ancient Olympia, that is the birthplace of the Olimpic Games, and the Temple of Poseidon, that is one of the major monuments of the Golden Age of Athens. Other popular activities are cruises in the Argosaronikos Islands, for example to Poros, a.k.a the “little Venice” of Argosaronic, with its pine trees, tranquility and nobility, to Hydra, the beauty of a lilliputian Greek island that seduced the international jet set and artists, and to Spetses, one of the top travel destinations for summer holidays.

IEEE MeditCom 2022 took place in the aristocratic Electra Palace hotel in the heart of the city, at the footsteps of the Acropolis. Classical in its architecture and design, blending beautifully with the noble historical buildings of the Plaka area, the hotel’s elegant luxury is complemented by the majestic views of the Acropolis that can be enjoyed from the rooftop restaurant, pool, rooms and suites.

Technical Program

This year’s conference continues its tradition of being a stimulating forum for researchers from both academia and industry to share and exchange their experiences, discuss challenges, and report the state-of-the-art and in-progress research on all aspects of Quality of Service (QoS) and security for networks. The Technical Program Chairs have done their best to set up a solid technical program to foster discussion and research cross-fertilization.

The program committee accepted 50 full papers among 100 submissions covering a variety of topics in the fields of Propagation, QoS and security for networks. The TPC was composed of 226 experts. Each paper was evaluated with at least three reviews. We are confident that the conference proceedings will serve as a valuable reference for researchers and developers. All the accepted papers were presented either in person or remotely in ten technical sessions,

The technical program featured 6 exceptional keynote speeches, the first one being by Gunnar Peters, Senior Expert, Huawei, Sweden, the title of the presentation was Large Antenna Systems in Real Life. The second one given by Yonina Eldar, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel. The talk was on Communication and Sensing: From Compressed Sampling to Model-based Deep Learning. The third one was given by Marco Di Renzo, L2S-CentraleSupelec, Paris-Saclay University, France. His presentation was on Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces for Wireless Communications. The fourth one was given by Thierry Lestable, Technology Innovation Institute, Abu Dhabi, UAE, on Sustainability & Climate Change: Ask Not What 6G Can Do for You, But What You Can Do for 6G, while the fifth was given by Julien Colafrancesco, Director of Engineering, Qorvo, France. The topic of the presentation was on Expanding UWB Potential Through AI. The last one but not the least was presented by George C. Alexandropoulos, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA), Greece. The given talk was on Full-Duplex MIMO Radios: From Efficient Spectrum Usage to Integrated Communications and Sensing.

Moreover, the program included two workshops, one demo session, YP and EMEA Joint Industry Fireside session, and YP and WICE Joint Mentoring Session.