Critical Communications is an emerging 5G vertical which presents us with unique technological challenges distinguishing it from conventional commercial communication. For example, the communication to support public safety operations such as disaster recovery or anti-terror operations, the requirements of railway mobile communication system or communication in military settings deal with vastly different set of problems viz-a-viz the commercial communication systems used in our daily life. The need for resilience, reliability, availability and security of communication in such settings gives rise to new research problems quite distinct from the commercial settings.

In this track, we will learn and dwell upon some of these problems and reveal how the global administrations, industry and research community is trying to address them, and prepare the path for India’s journey into establishing a robust critical communications infrastructure.

Session Co-Chairs: Suresh Chitturi (Samsung, 3GPP SA6 Chair); Pranav Jha (IIT Bombay)
Session Convener: Vijay Madan
Session Coordinator: Akash Malik
Session Schedule: 25 October 2021, 17:00-19:15 IST

TSDSI has initiated the 6G work that broadly encompasses the following key areas:

• Enablement of a Ubiquitous Intelligent Mobile Connected Society, bridging the digital divide, personalization and localization of services and addressing the issues around data privacy and ownership enforcement.

The emerging 6G networks should not only address the issues around enhanced connectivity but address ease of service enablement, lower cost of network ownership so that medium / small enterprises could afford private networks and security / trust models for interaction across disparate networks and network components. The TSDSI tech deep dive 6G track hopes to provide a platform to discuss the above and related issues like:

• 6G Requirements and Key Indicators
• Potential use cases for 6G
• Technology Trends

We have brought together prominent stakeholders from the telecom industry and some greatly knowledgeable global speakers to aid our deliberations.

Session Co-Chairs: Kiran Kuchi (IIT Hyderabad); Satish Jamadagni (Reliance Jio)
Session Convener: A K Mittal
Session Coordinator: Akansha Arora

Session Schedule: 26 October 2021, 10:30 - 12:45 IST

Rural and Remote areas lack the connectivity required to effectively bridge the digital divide even as we enter the age of 5G and beyond. However, there is increasing focus on this topic around the world and this is one of the pillars of digital initiatives. This session focuses on case studies from around the world on providing effective rural and remote connectivity and the initiatives in standardisation to address this challenge.

In a context of complementarity between these networks infrastructure, Keynotes will cover at first policy support for enabling connectivity in India and similar regions (e.g., NE and Andaman/Lakshadweep islands), mainly with terrestrial networks technologies and applications, then it will be explained how Submarine Optical Fibre Cable and at last non-terrestrial space and satellite technologies can be leveraged for serving rural and remote use cases through transmission back-up, backhaul and relay support to connect the unconnected.

A panel discussion will follow those presentations and give an overview of best practices from developed and developing/emerging regions (e.g., case studies from Africa, Pacific Islands and South-East Asia), and will suggest possible solutions for the Indian ecosystem in delivering high speed mobile broadband to the un-connected.

Session Co-Chairs: Jishnu Aravindakshan (Tejas Networks); V K Sanjeevi (BSNL)
Session Convener: Jean-Pierre Bienaimé
Session Coordinator: Sonia Sachdeva Sharma
Session Schedule: 26 October 2021, 14:00 - 16:15 IST

Session Sponsor:

The rapid developments and proliferation in the domains of Internet of Things, Smart Cities, Private Networks and 5G have all put security at the centre of the public policy, industry priority and the standardization agenda. Whilst many SDO’s, SSO’s and Industry bodies are actively creating Technical Reports, Specifications and Standards it is very important to track emerging best practices and implementation benchmarks that showcase successful adoption at scale. This session will present contributions for such at scale design and deployments of security infrastructure and practices in various domains, including the test and certification infrastructure created for the purpose.

Session Co-Chairs: Sharad Arora (Sensorise Digital Services); G. Narendra Nath (National Security Council Secretariat- NSCS)
Session Convener: Vijay Madan
Session Coordinator: Akash Malik
Session Schedule: 26 October 2021, 17:00 - 19:15 IST

A good spectrum policy is at the heart of supporting a successful telecom industry in the country. India has the second largest telecom sector in the world and the majority of its population has now access to mobile communication. This is a tremendous achievement which has been possible due to synergy among all the stakeholders and encouraging policies of the government and the regulator.  We are on the cusp of deployment of 5G networks in the country. This will call for availability of globally harmonized spectrum in sufficient quantities. The world has already started looking at the technologies beyond 5G for which spectrum needs will also have to be kept in view.

In this session, we will deliberate upon some very important aspects like:

• access spectrum for 5G and beyond,
• backhaul spectrum, and
• co-existence of satellite and terrestrial services

We have brought together prominent stakeholders from the Indian telecom & satcom industry and some greatly knowledgeable global speakers to aid our deliberations.

Session Co-Chairs: U K Srivastava (NTIPRIT, DOT, Government of India); Neha Satak (Astrome Technologies Private Limited)
Session Convener: A K Mittal
Session Coordinator: Akansha Arora
Session Schedule: 27 October 2021, 10:30 - 12:45 IST

Aspirations for digital transformation for emerging India needs to align rural ecosystem on one side and industry stakeholders, enterprises and advanced academia research on the other. As we are looking to usher in new use cases which need high-speed, low latency coverage for its users/devices, empowering the micro-entrepreneurs would lead to a truly super charged and inclusive ecosystem. The rise of 5G has enabled adoption of Industry 4.0 techniques in verticals like manufacturing, utilities, mines, health and automotive etc. Private 5G networks presents an opportunity for network operators to grow but needs analysis of the challenges in addressing the multi-faceted use cases and adapting the solutions to the huge but divergent market opportunity. Emergence of AI/ML, federated learning, transfer learning, disaggregated architecture patterns such as open radio access networks and edge cloud systems act as enabling technologies, presenting interesting solutions to these problems. However further analysis of practical concerns such as interoperability and privacy would drive the Digital Transformation riding on private networks.

This session describes the vision, challenges, potential solutions and enabling technologies for digital transformation using private networks. It also debates the opportunities and challenges facing India in this journey.

Session Co-Chairs: Viswanathan Ramaswamy (Tata Communications); D. Janakiram (IDRBT)
Session Convener: Vishnu Ram
Session Coordinator: Akash Malik
Session Schedule: 27 October 2021, 14:00 - 16:15 IST

Session Sponsor: 

Deploying and managing virtualized 5G access networks will be radically different from the way the networks are being managed currently. Interconnecting billions of heterogeneous objects while delivering a substantial improvement in speed poses several performance related challenges. 

Issues at the network architecture level cannot be solved without enabling the broader ecosystem of equipment providers and operators first.

This session will bring out the various challenges and solutions in transforming networks into cloud native architecture through NFV and SDN initiatives, while enabling disaggregation and openness in the Radio Access Networks through adoption of open networking principles.  It will also delve into challenges that are specifically associated with enabling the ecosystem to make everything happen.

Session Co-Chairs: Rajesh Gangadhar (STL Access Solutions); Ambarish Anjaneyareddy (Sooktha Consulting Pvt Ltd)
Session Convener: Guna S Bala
Session Coordinator: Niwedita Pathak
Session Schedule: 27 October 2021, 17:00 - 19:15 IST

Rapid advancements in Quantum computers and Quantum algorithms have the potential to bring about transformational changes. Telecom industry is also expected to feel the strong impact of rapidly developing technologies in the Quantum domain.

This session will explore two areas of Quantum technologies that are expected to have a major impact on Telecom Networks. These are related to Cryptography Security and Machine Learning. On one hand, advancements in Quantum Computers and Quantum Algorithms are a potential threat to cryptographic security in our legacy as well as upcoming telecom networks. The session will discuss efforts of public & private sector R&D as well as international standardization bodies to ensure that our Telecom Networks remain safe & secure from this emerging threat. On the other hand, capabilities of machine learning are expected to be greatly enhanced by use of Quantum Computers. This has the potential to significantly increase the capabilities & performance of our future telecom networks.

Session Co-Chairs: Prashant Chugh (C-DoT); Prof Brejesh Lall (IITD)
Session Convener: P K Jaswal
Session Coordinator: Niwedita Pathak
Session Schedule: 28 October 2021, 10:30 - 12:45 IST

This session focuses on showcasing the local ecosystem and its readiness in 5G and m2m solutions. In this session, the journey of engaging the people and technologies to stitch together the 5G and M2M ecosystem in India will be discussed by the speakers. In addition, the panel discussion will touch upon the issues in creating a robust eco-system and engage the global ecosystem in creating awareness of the local capabilities and work towards inclusive and interoperable standards.

Session Co-Chairs: Akhilesh Srivastava (TCS); Radhakrishna Ganti (IIT Madras)
Session Convener: Anurag Vibhuti
Session Coordinator: Sonia Sachdeva Sharma
Session Schedule: 28 October 2021, 14:00 - 16:15 IST

Session Sponsor:  

The nonlinear explosion in consumption of media and content and the change from fixed time to on-demand services is creating the need to revolutionize the traditional cellular network infrastructure. This session addresses the 2 important disruptions that will enable this revolution:

1. Broadcast – broadband convergence: The role of broadcast needs a relook in the post Covid era especially for countries like India to enable cost effective service delivery while collaboratively working with emerging broadband technologies like 5G. Broadcast services are also diversifying to offer services like Public protection and Emergency/Disaster management emphasizing the need to accelerate the convergence.
2. Unification of Non-Terrestrial and Terrestrial Networks: The evolution of telecommunication technologies, the ever-increasing demand for new services, and the exponential growth of smart devices fuel the development of Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTNs) as an effective solution to complement terrestrial networks in providing services over uncovered or under-served geographical areas. NTNs promise an order of magnitude improvement in wide-area coverage, scalability, service continuity, and availability. This is driving the rapid integration of the terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks.

This session brings together global stalwarts from the Broadcast and Satellite industries to highlight the technological innovations that are enabling these disruptions. Global Deployment case studies and the roadmap for deployments in India will also be discussed.

Session Co-Chairs: Anindya Saha (Saankhya Labs Pvt Ltd); Anuradha Agarwal (Prasar Bharati)
Session Convener: Pamela Kumar
Session Coordinator: Niwedita Pathak
Session Schedule: 28 October 2021, 17:00 - 19:15 IST