IEEE International 5G Summit, March 2017, Kolkata, India

By Iti Saha Misra - Kolkata Chapter Chair, India

The IEEE International 5G Summit and 28th GISFI Standardization Series Meeting (GSSM) was held March 17–18, 2017 at the SENSES Hotel, Sector V, Salt Lake, Kolkata-700091, India, focused on the theme of Digital India. The program was organized by the IEEE ComSoc Kolkata Chapter jointly with the IEEE CAS Kolkata Chapter. ComSoc Kolkata Chapter Chair Prof. Iti Saha Misra of Jadavpur University assumed entire responsibility as the General Chair for hosting the Summit. Prof. Suvra Sekhar Das from IIT Kharagpur was the Program Co-Chair, Mr. Pallab Ganguly of CESC Pvt. Ltd did an excellent job as an Industry Interface, and Prof. Salil Kumar Sanyal, CAS Chair of the Kolkata Section, was the Finance Chair.

Mr. Tallen Kumar, Principal Secretary Consumer Affairs, Govt of West Bengal addressing at the Inaugural Session , In the Dais ComSoc Chairperspn –Iti Saha Misra, Prof. Ramjee Prasad and Dr. Ashutosh Dutta.

It was our pleasure to work with Dr. Ashutosh Dutta, IEEE 5G Initiative Co-Chair, Lead Member of Technical Staff, AT&T, USA, and Prof. Ramjee Prasad, Founder Chair–GISFI, Founder President–CTIF Global Capsule (CGC), and Professor of FT4BI, Aarhus University, Denmark, without whom the program would not have been so successful. The IEEE 5G summit in Kolkata was the fourth summit in India. It was attended by many high-ranking industry personnel and sponsored by CISCO, Ericsson, Webel, the Government of West Bengal, Qualcomm, Polaris Network, RS Software, ISOAH, and BSH, among others.

In the first Keynote session, Mr. Prakash Suthar, the Principal Architect at Cisco based in the United States, delivered a presentation on “5G Transforming Service Providers’ Business.” Mr. Indrajit Sanyal, Senior Director, Ericsson Global Services, delivered a presentation on “5G–Out of the Labs and into the Neighborhood.” Mr. Vinosh Babu James, Qualcomm India, delivered a presentation on “System Aspects of Digital India– Requirements, Architecture and Standardization Status.”

The other notable presentation were made by Mr. Vinoy Gupta, CTO of Polaris Networks, who spoke about “Innovations in Cellular Core Network for IoT and Machine Type Communications”; Mr. Tarun Gupta, Business Development Manager, RF, National Instrument, India, who spoke about “Platform Based Approach for Prototyping 5G Research”; and Mr. Sumit Misra, General Manager and Head of Technology Innovation, RS Software, who spoke about “Digital Payments.”

Several other Invited talks included: “Spectrum Requirements for IoT Applications” by Dr. Ashok Chandra, Former Wireless Advisor, Government of India; “Applications 5.0–Riding the 5G Wave” by Mr. Ravikiran Annaswamy, CEO, Innohabit Technologies Pvt Ltd Education, and Co-Chair of the IEEE 5G Initiative; and “MIMO in 5G” by M Chandrasekaran, Senior Research Engineer, Centre of Excellence in Wireless Technology (CEWiT).

There was a very interesting panel discussion session on “Security Challenges with 5G Technology–A Cross Industry View” moderated by Mr. Sandeep Sengupta, ISOAH Data Securities Pvt. Ltd. Among the panelists were Dr. Ashutosh Dutta, Mr. Sumit Poddar from CESC Kolkata, Dr. Sourav Dutta from IBM Kolkata, Mr. Rana Pratap Sircar, Director, GSI SDU IT & C, Head of Information at Ericsson Global Services, Gurgaon, and Nirupam Sen, Business Head (East), BSI Group India Pvt. Ltd.

The present Ph.D. researchers were also the part of presentation, and drew the attention of the participants in which the leading Ph.D. scholars presented their thoughts on various aspects of 5G research, including intelligent transport systems, cognitive radio aspects for 5G, and network densification in 5G. The first day of the IEEE 5G Summit ended at 9.00 pm with a cultural program followed by a gala dinner. A total 170 participants attended, of which 100 were registered attendees, mostly engineering students and young faculty.