Six pre-conference workshops and FP6/FP7 Cluster Meetings for RAS, CaON and Future Internet Technologies will take place on Tuesday 09 June at the Palacio de la Magdelena, Santander:

- Dynamic Spectrum Management in Cognitive Radio Networks (09:00 - 17:00)

- Channel Coding and Cooperation in Wireless Communications (09:00 - 17:00)

- Self-organisation for Beyond 3G Wireless Networks (09:00 - 17:00)

- Carrier Grade Wireless Mesh Networks (09:00 - 17:00)

- Putting Mobile Services into Context (09:00 - 13:00)

- Future Internet - Cluster Meeting and Workshop (09:00 - 17:00)

- CaON - Cluster meeting (14:00 - 18:00)

- RAS plenary cluster meeting (17:15 - 18:45)

It is necessary for participants to pre-register for either the workshop or the cluster meeting as part of online registration. Participants will each pay one contribution of €50 towards the cost of two coffee breaks, lunch and a name badge for the day.

Participation in the Cluster meetings is restricted to participants in running projects. Participation in Workshops is open to all participants.

Cognition in the wireless world is one of the most exciting areas in modern telecommunications. Objectives and motivation are to increase efficiency and to address the complexity in wireless systems. The technical approach for developing cognitive radio networks is the design, development, validation and standardization of dynamic spectrum management schemes. These schemes constitute a particular set of management actions that can revolutionize wireless communications in general. The actions enable the dynamic and flexible management and allocation of spectrum to different (Radio Access Technologies) RATs, geographical regions and time periods. This functionality can be applied at various time scales (long to short term). The functionality relies on techno-economic optimization methods, often involving multiple business entities (e.g., a set of network operators, regulators, users, etc.).

The Dynamic Spectrum Management in Cognitive Radio and Networks workshop will highlight several initiatives from around the world, which strive in parallel to contribute to the development of cognitive radio networks. The workshop will provide a forum for discussion on all the pertinent developments, bringing together industry and academia, engineers, scientists and researchers. The discussions will cover achievements and open issues in research, standards, regulation, business models and products. This workshop is organised by members of Spectrum and Enablers Group (SEG) under RAS cluster with Contributions from E3, EUWB, SENDORA, NEWCOM++ and PHYDYAS. For more details please contract Wolfgang Koenig

The main objective of this one-day Workshop is just to attract all those people, as well as researchers from the non-EC-projects-related scientific community to build a temporary forum at the European level and give an opportunity for a thorough coordinated discussion. At a first glance the subject may appear as dedicated to specialists only. On the contrary, the workshop aims at involving a broader audience since the techniques that will be discussed are included in any of the forthcoming standards for the (wireless) Internet of the future, and have a large impact on the design of user terminals. This is particular relevant since it is relatively difficult to find such an occasion in large International conferences, and/or EC-generated meetings.

This Workshop aim is twofold: on one hand it intends to review what we may call now the "classical" techniques (channel coding and modulation), especially trying to sum up about their myths and realities. On the other, the latest research trends in the field will be showcased: non-binary LDPC codes, rateless and fountain codes, efficient/parallel decoding algorithms for VLSI implementation, joint iterative decoding and parameter estimation, just to mention a few. Particular attention will be devoted to cooperative coding techniques that may play a key role in future scenarios for wireless information interchange such as sensor and vehicular networks.

This workshop is organised by DaVinci FP7 STREP in cooperation with NEWCOM++ FP7 Network of Excellence and the Radio Access & Spectrum RAS cluster. The workshop co-chairs are Marco Luise, University of Pisa and David Decoercg, ENSEA Cergy-Pontoise, France. Click here to download the Workshop Programme.

The goal of this open workshop on self-organisation for beyond 3G wireless networks is to disseminate the first results of the SOCRATES and E3 FP7 projects. The program comprises presentations on the results of both projects, three invited talks and a presentation from the FP7 project EFIPSANS that will place the topic self-organisation in a broader networking perspective. The aim of the workshop is to stimulate discussions and feedback. Through interactions with the participants and the invited speakers, the consortia want to validate their views and approaches on self-organising methods for beyond 3G wireless networks.

Please click here to download the workshop Call for Participation.

Recent advances in Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) provide promising opportunities in communication paradigms. WMNs do not depend on wired communication infrastructure and their mesh connectivity provides inherent built-in redundancy. This also makes them good candidates for providing an alternative communication mechanism e.g. in the face of disasters when normal communication infrastructure is destroyed or for covering large rural areas. WMNs inherit many properties from Mobile Ad-Hoc networks. However, several assumptions on e.g. mobility of nodes can be relaxed, which enables the design of more robust and efficient protocols and the provisioning of higher quality services for WMNs. Several research problems still remain, though, and it is not clear whether WMNs are really beneficial as compared to other alternatives such as long-range wireless or wireless relay networks (e.g. based on 802.16j). This workshop will focus on the research challenges in WMNs, with a special focus on the mechanisms needed for "carrier class" service provisioning (architectures, network components, QoS mechanisms, etc.) in Wireless Mesh Networks.

This workshop is organized by the CARMEN project with the support of the EU-MESH project, the CONTENT Network of Excellence and BIOGRIDNET Regional Project. For more information, please contact Albert Banchs

The ubiquity of mobile devices and proliferation of wireless networks will allow everyone permanent access to the Internet at all times and all places. The increased computational power of these devices has the potential to empower people to generate their own applications for innovative social and cognitive activities in any situation and anywhere. This wireless connection is not limited to user devices, almost any artefact from clothing to buildings can be connected and collaborate. Furthermore new sensor technologies and wireless sensor networks provides environmental intelligence and the capability to sense, reason and actuate. This leads to the exciting vision of the interconnection of artefacts embedded in our real environment, forming a society of "intelligent things" and "smart spaces". This workshop discusses the main concepts and role that context-awareness and context aware systems will play in this vision and the significance for future networks and future Internet. This workshop aims to bring together researchers and practitioners in academia and industry to share recent results on context-awareness, as well as to foster collaboration and coordination in future EU research efforts. This workshop is being jointly organised by C-Cast and SENSEI FP7 projects. Click here to download the Workshop Programme. For more information, please contact Prof. Ralf Tönjes

Limitations and shortcomings of current networks are subject to the Future Internet research area. Novel challenges such as security, scalability, resilience, interoperability, and adaptability have risen. The architecture of the Future Internet must consider emerging network paradigms.

The workshop provides a visionary forum for novel research challenges in the design and evaluation of network paradigms for the Future Internet with a particular focus on access networks. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:New network approaches and protocols, Wireless mesh networks, Self-organization, Internet of things, Virtualization, Delay-tolerant networks and satellite communications, Opportunistic networks and Context awareness

This workshop is being organized by Euro-NF under a Call for Papers. Selected high-quality papers will be published within a post workshop special issue of the Telecommunication Systems Journal (ISSN 1018-4864, Springer).

Click here to download the Workshop Programme. For more information, please visit www.net.fim.uni-passau.de/future2009/

The RAS plenary meeting will take place on Tuesday, 9 June 2009 following the workshops from 17:15 until 18:45 in Sala Riancho, Palacio de la Magdalena, Santander, Spain

1) Workshop summaries (each workshop organizer is requested to provide a 5-minute summary of the pre-conference workshop)

2) Overview of cluster activities and status of projects

3) Status and coordination of Standardization initiatives

4) Planning of the RAS Workshop in September: selection of topics for "Hot Topic Panel Sessions"

5) Constitution and confirmation of the Editorial Board for the RAS Position Paper

6) AOB