Highlights from IEEE LATINCOM 2022, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: 14th IEEE ComSoc Latin-American Conference on Communications

By Igor M. Moraes - IEEE LATINCOM 2022 General Chair, Luís Henrique M. K. Costa - IEEE LATINCOM TPC Chair, Miguel Elias M. Campista - IEEE LATINCOM 2022 General Chair and Yacine Ghamri-Doudane - IEEE LATINCOM TPC Chair

From November 30 to December 02 2022, the IEEE Latin-American Conference on Communications (LATINCOM) returned to Brazil for its fourteenth edition. LATINCOM was held in the wonderful city of Rio de Janeiro, which had the privilege to offer attendees all its fantastic beauties comprising landscapes with a series of green mountains cascading down to the coast. LATINCOM’s journey to Rio de Janeiro started in Medellín, Colombia, in 2009, Bogotá, also in Colombia, in 2010. It first appeared in Brazil, Belém, in 2011. Then it moved to Cuenca, Ecuador, in 2012, Santiago, Chile, in 2013, Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, in 2014, Arequipa, Peru, in 2015, Medellin, Colombia, in 2016, Guatemala City, Guatemala, in 2017, and Guadalajara, Mexico, in 2018. LATINCOM was held for a second time in Brazil, in Salvador, 2019. The conference was forced to go online in 2019, hybrid in 2021, in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and then finally returning to the face-to-face format in 2022, in Rio de Janeiro. This brought to the 14th edition a remarkable characteristic, as it represented the return to in-presence conferences after the Covid-19 outbreak. LATINCOM is held annually and attracts submissions and participants from around the globe. In 2022, the program was organized in three intensive days, including four keynote speeches, four tutorials, two workshops, and 16 technical sessions.

Renowned international researchers delivered keynotes: Prof. Fabrizio Granelli, University of Trento, Italy; Prof. Israat Haque, Dalhousie University, Canada; Prof. Tommaso Melodia, Northeastern University, United States of America; and Prof. Jussara Almeida, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil, enlightened the attendees with their inspiring talks. The four tutorials were presented by prestigious researchers, who shared with LATINCOM participants part of their expertise. Additionally, the workshops played a gratifying role in women’s (Women In Communications Engineering — WICE) and young professionals (Young Professionals — YP) inclusion and consolidation in the community. We are honored to have those research leaders as our guests since they could provide a rich combination of academic and industrial points of view.

Another highlight of LATINCOM was the technical sessions. In 2022, LATINCOM had 16 sessions resulting from a high-level reviewing process that selected the top-ranked 63 technical papers out of 146 submissions. The LATINCOM technical sessions could certainly contribute with cutting-edge technical content for participants and the research community. The large spectrum of the resulting program justified the 105 registrations, a record considering the last few years and the post-pandemic situation. It is worth mentioning that WICE and YP workshops had 25 additional registrations.

An IEEE LATINCOM 2022 technical session.

Many other people have contributed to the success of IEEE LATINCOM 2022. First, we would like to thank the authors who submitted their contributions to the conference and provided an exciting technical program. Very special thanks to our Keynote and Tutorial Chairs, Profs. Alberto Egon Schaeffer-Filho, from Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, and Antonio Cianfrani, from University of Rome Sapienza, Italy; our Finance Chair, Prof. Antonio Jorge G. Abelém, from Universidade Federal do Pará, Brazil; our Publication Chair, Prof. Marcelo G. Rubinstein, from Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; our Publicity Chairs, Profs. Cecilia Galarza, from Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Rodrigo S. Couto, from Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; our Student Travel Grant Chairs, Profs. Cesar Augusto Azurdia, from Universidad de Chile, Chile, Juliano Naves, from BairesDev, United States of America, and Sandra L. Céspedes, from Concordia University, Canada; our Web and Social Media Chairs, Profs. Rebeca Estrada, from Escuela Superior Politecnica del Litoral, Ecuador, and Dianne Scherly Varela de Medeiros, from Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil; our Local Arrangements Chairs, Profs. Diogo Menezes Ferrazani Mattos, from Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil; Célio Albuquerque, from Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil, and Débora Muchaluat-Saade, also from Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil.

We would like to congratulate the authors of the best paper award, N. Cameron Matson, Joseph Camp, and Dinesh Rajan, and the authors of the two other best paper award runners-up, who also received LATINCOM 2022 award certificates. Also, we would like to congratulate all students who have received a Student Travel Grant.

We would like to give special thanks to Mrs. Tina Gaerlan, our Senior Conference Planner from IEEE Communications Society, United States of America, and Mrs. Alessandra Leitão, our PCO, from Creacteve, Brazil. We would also like to thank IEEE Communications Society for the support and our sponsors NIC.br/CGI.br, FAPERJ, CNPq, IC/UFF, and NAVI, which are fundamental for the conference. With them, the conference is indeed possible.

Finally, we sincerely hope attendees could enjoy the 14th Latin-American Conference on Communications (LATINCOM 2022) technical activities. We really expect our conference could create a productive environment for sharing experiences and fostering cooperation. To the LATINCOM community and enthusiastic people, we are all very excited to 2023 edition and all new editions to come.

The IEEE LATINCOM 2022 organizing team.