The 11th edition of the IEEE Latin-American Conference on Communications (LATINCOM) returned to Brasil for in 2019. (LATINCOM 2011 was held in Belém, Brasil). The conference goal is to provide a platform for researchers and practitioners in Latin America to share R&D results, to meet, and to network.
The technical program received 114 submissions which were reviewed by 65 technical program committee members. Fifty-four of the submissions were accepted for presentation at LATINCOM 2019 in 15 technical sessions. These papers were also included in the conference proceedings which is now available on IEEE Xplore. The authors of the accepted papers are from 12 countries (six in Latin America and six beyond Latin America). This is a healthy international mix that allowed those from outside Latin America to learn what is happening in Latin America and for Latin Americans to interact with fellow researchers from outside the region.
The quality of this year’s technical program was quite good and included papers on diverse topics ranging from vehicle- to-everything networks (two sessions) to a variety of issues on Internet of Things (two sessions) to an interesting variety of applications that help people, such as location-based services, multimedia, and healthcare. The quality of this program would not be possible without the diligent efforts of the technical program committee. This truly international committee devoted many hours to reviewing and obtaining reviews for the submissions.
The Best Paper Award was given to the paper entitled “Second Order Statistics and BER Performance Analysis of a non-WSSUS V2X Channel Model that Considers Velocity Variations” by Nicolás Ortega, Cesar Azurdia-Meza, Carlos Gutiérrez, and Carlos Gómez-Vega. The Award was given during the cocktail reception on the evening of 12 November 2019.
As a complement to the technical program, four keynote speakers addressed the conference attendees: Prof. Arun Venkataramani, University of Massachusetts at Amhurst; Prof. Joel J. P. C. Rodrigues, Federal University of Piauí, Brasil; Prof. Nelson Luis Saldanha da Fonseca, Institute of Computing, The State University of Campinas, Campinas, Brasil; and Prof. Pablo Serrano Yáñez-Mingot, Telematics Department, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.
Three tutorials were also available to all conference attendees: “eHealth Technologies with Mobility Support” by Joel J. P. C. Rodrigues, Federal University of Piauí, Brasil; “Aspects of AI-based applications in 5G networks” by Silvia Lins and Pedro Henrique Gomes, Ericsson Research, Indaiatuba, Brasil; “Applications of Multi-User Technologies on IEEE 802.11ac (Wi-Fi 5), 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6) and 802.11be (Extremely High Throughput) Amendments” by Roger Pierre Fabris Hoefel, Department of Electrical Engineering of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil.
A large contingent of student volunteers staffed the registration desk, handed out conference gifts, and supplied lunch tickets. This gave the conference a young and vibrant face to the attendees. Most of these students participated in a well-organized young professionals program the evening of 12 November 2019.
LATINCOM 2019 succeeded in serving as a vehicle for ComSoc to reach out to its members in Latin America. The conference gave attendees an opportunity to experience first-hand the culture, food, tourist attractions, and lifestyle of Brasil.