Conference Schedule Listings

Arunava Majumdar Panelist
Dr. Jeff Terry Panelist
Rahul Gupta Panelist

The goal of Cognitive Telescope Network (CTN) is to collect the data from a network of small telescopes, evaluate, and classify that data to identify the most likely candidates for the transient objects being hunted and deliver the results to the astronomical community for further analysis by larger telescopes for directed and focused observations. This would be a challenging task with an operator present at each telescope. Our goal is to develop a network that can operate remotely and safely without human intervention. This project has three components: Remote Command and Control from IBM Watson; Safety Analysis of the Commands; and Local Control of the Telescope and Ancillary Hardware. We have teams working in each of these areas. The Remote Command and Control Team is using the MQTT (Message Queue Telemetry Transport) protocol for IoT communication. to build the infrastructure necessary to have the IoT Platform communicate with Safety Analysis Software on the local server. The Safety Analysis Team has written software that determines whether the remote command is a valid request. If the command is a valid request the Safety Analysis program attempts to develop a safe pathway through which the telescope can move to conduct measurements on the requested object. If the Safety Analysis cannot move the telescope safely, it reports back to Watson that it is unavailable for that specific measurement. If it can, it commands the Local Control Software to move the telescope through the safest pathway to the requested object. The Local Control Software must be developed to work with the control protocols for any available vendor. Once measurements have commenced, the Safety Analysis program continues to monitor the telescope to make certain that no mechanical limits are reached. The data acquisition is halted when the limits are approached.

Travis Smith Single Presenter

Advancements in the affordability and availability of IoT devices have lead to incredible innovation in the field of speech-generating devices. The introduction of devices such as tablets, cellphones, and mobile computers have allowed for individuals with speech disorders to have a medium in which to easily communicate, without needing to purchase expensive and specialized medical equipment.Even though these devices increased overall access to this technology, it is still out of reach for many. Whether it is the cost of the device, cost of the speech generating software, or access to a reliable internet connection, this technology is inaccessible to some of the people who need it most.The research project, conducted in the Illinois Tech, Information Technology and Management department, along with Professor Billy Pappademetriou, focused on bringing this voice technology to the oppressed and disadvantaged by creating a device that is fully open-source, works without an internet connection, is assembled with off the shelf parts and is the fraction of the cost of similar alternatives. The goal was to accomplish this with minimal compromises to quality and usability.This presentation is about the research process, design methodologies, and implementation of the device, as well as plans for future improvement. I am proud to have had this research be promoted in the IIT News, as linked below.https://www.iit.edu/news/student-creates-free-open-source-app-people-speech-disorders

Dan Miller Moderator
Dana Shalev Panelist
Lisa Michaud Panelist
Matt Whipple Panelist
Roanne Levitt Panelist

As conversations prevail as the preferred engagement model between brands and their customers, voice biometrics have played an important role in supporting authentication, fraud detection and personalization. In this session, technology providers will describe use cases that call for voice biometric engines to be layered into solutions that incorporate AI-informed risk engines in real-time to stop fraudsters in their tracks while establishing trusted links to promote secure commerce.

Seiran Khaledian Single Presenter

5 G spectrum (mm wave 22-40 GHz) can give us much higher bandwidth. It is an unused spectrum which makes it much cheaper than the existing bandwidth. Due to ultra-wide bandwidth available, it can allow more IoT devices to connect (by dividing the wide bandwidth among many devices). It also enables ultra-high capacity and low latency.However, jumping to much higher frequency needs redesigning of hardware infrastructures such as antenna and active and passive RF components of IoT devices. For example, in term of antenna design at higher frequency the propagation loss (also known as path loss) increases dramatically, and we need to have high gain antenna which leads us to use array of antennas instead of one element antenna. I will be talking about some challenges in 5G hardware point of view..

Manjula Iyer Single Presenter

The Azure IoT portfolio of managed and platform services enables customers to quickly build and deploy secure and scalable IoT applications. IoT Plug and Play Preview enables solution developers to integrate smart devices with their solutions. These devices don’t require manual configuration when a customer connects them to IoT Plug and Play-enabled applications. In this talk, I will present the architecture, framework, and security of an IoT Plug and Play solution and demonstrate (with a Raspberry Pi) how you can use Node.js to connect to and control a device.

Rupal Patel Single Presenter

For years, brands have been told that \\\"content is king!\\\" Words have become an endless flood of chatter across print, web and social platforms often drowning out the intended message. As we move from screens to speakers and from automated phone trees to conversational AI, the demand for voice content is undeniable. Brands now face a new challenge - how to craft a unique, recognizable brand voice that truly represents them and connects with their diverse audience. Gone are the days of uniform messaging and static messages; dynamic, adaptive spoken content are being table stakes. As AI-generated voices become more humanlike and engaging, there are new opportunities to rethink how companies connect with their audience, how they speak to different market segments and how they change the paradigm from scripted dialogues to truly interactive conversation. This talk will provide an overview of the latest developments in AI-voices, provide key insights based on use-cases and invite the audience to collectively brainstorm about new opportunities and whitespace in the landscape of telecommunications and virtual gatherings.

Alan Clark Single Presenter

This presentation describes an Edge Analytics agent that performs stream processing with a small CPU and memory footprint. Embiot is programmed using a declarative programming language and the program is run-time compiled into interconnected nodes forming a dataflow architecture. The agent incorporates run-time compiler, input data management, dataflow management, function library, alert/ report generation, a range of IoT input and output protocols and TLS security for input and output connections. The Embiot programming language is focused on extreme ease of use, with the goal of enabling non-computer scientists to be able to easily implement edge analytics. The function library includes the range of typical math, stats and string functions, neural net, fuzzy and probabilistic logic and a number of industrial IoT specific functions.

Paul Sweeney Single Presenter

Contact centres in the UK and Ireland Had to close overnight and open in the morning as work from home organisations. It was a case of “Instant Digital Transformation”. Customers rapidly moved to home delivery and click and collect but they used mobile apps and messaging to co-ordinate. Soon, every service is an appointment based service, and every product has to be delivered or collected. Messengers have done some lifting here, but maybe this is just an indication of what they will become capable of, and what the true communications transformation could end up being.

Lina He Single Presenter

Smart grid is a global effort to modernize the electric energy infrastructures with advanced information, communication, computing, control and power technologies to achieve high-level reliability, security, integration of renewables, and energy efficiency. This presentation is concerned with the integration challenges and solutions of inverter based renewable energy source (RESs) on both transmission and distribution levels of power systems. In order to meet the increasing energy demand while reducing the environment impact such as global climate change, a large number of RESs (including offshore/onshore wind turbines and solar PVs) have been dramatically integrated into power systems on both transmission and distribution levels. Power electronic devices are widely applied to serve as integration interfaces to match the characteristics of renewable energy sources with power system requirements, e.g., voltage, frequency, active and reactive power, and harmonics. The increasing complexity is bringing system operators the new challenges on the aspects of control, protection, security and operation of power systems. With the rapid development of information and communication technologies, numerous smart measurement devices (such as phasor measurement units (PMUs), micro-PMUs and smart meters) have been installed in power systems. This provides power system researchers with new opportunities to overcome the integration challenges of RESs, to achieve a smarter, securer, and more efficient power grid. This presentation will introduce our research across both transmission and distribution systems on the protection, security and restoration of future power electronics based power systems with renewable energy integration.

Nikhita Sharma Single Presenter

One of the biggest problems with smart-home devices currently, is the need to issue precise commands, or adapt your voice to be more mechanical, or use smaller voice commands so that an IoT device can understand you. One may also be limited to pressing a button or gesturing in order to get a response from an IoT device. HAL is a voice enabled conversational AI agent, that brings natural language understanding to industrial-scale IoT. It leverages machine learning, intent recognition and Natural Language Understanding (NLU) to think, act and respond to user queries, thereby providing a human-like interface to IoT devices. HAL is omni-channel and supports multiple channels of communication, including voice, webchat, Facebook Messenger, etc. It is context-aware and considers the current state of a user conversation, along with the incoming user message, to make an intelligent decision, based on a neural network model. HAL has a microservices architecture, making it highly scalable, resilient and easy to maintain. In this talk, we intend to show a live demo of HAL. We will talk to HAL in real-time, and show how it seamlessly integrates with smart-home IoT devices, while providing a natural conversational experience.

Lorenzo Miniero Single Presenter

When talking about videoconferencing, there are usually two different roads you can take: you can either use an SFU (Selective Forwarding Unit) and have all media relayed as it is with no transcoding, or use an MCU (Multipoint Control Unit) instead to decode all streams and encode a composed mix of all the contributions. Both approaches have pros and cons, so picking one over the other is usually a matter of trade-off.It\\\\\\\'s not always a binary matter, though: as a matter of fact, there are actually many cases where using both in an orthogonal way may make a lot of sense, in order to have one complement the shortcomings of the other, or extend the functionality you can get out of either when used on their own. This presentation will try to present some of these use cases, to show how SFUs and MCUs can actually be good friends, rather than strict and exclusive alternatives.

Kevin Kito Single Presenter

Despite the fact that 240 million calls to 911 occur each year, when made from an MLTS phone system residing on an intelligent data network with massive information, all of this must be distilled to a 20 character ASCII field in an E911 ALI record. Adding insult to injury, this record must exist PRIOR TO THE 911 CALL. As unthinkable as it is, we are stuck with this today. We will discuss a new innovative \\\"over-the-top\\\" solution that will enables data to pass seamlessly using common modalities in use today to deliver a multimedia experience to E911.

Dan Jenkins Single Presenter

The problem with great WebRTC projects is always the lack of great front-end projects to show off their capabilities. Jitsi has Jitsi Meet, but other projects are usually lacking when it comes to showing off what they can do to others. Asterisk had this problem with their SFU; with their"Cyber Mega Phone 2000" project being a little bit of an eyesore, with users unable to go build off it. In comes"Dana - The Stream Gatekeeper" project - something to show off Asterisk's capabilities - not just a WebRTC front-end; but a complete application to help show off Open Source comms - including live Transcription. In this session I'll show you the project and how you can take it and build off it.

Cody GrandPre Single Presenter

NG911 is being deployed today, both natively, as well as in and over the top model. Enterprises and their vast networks of IOT devices, will be contributing robust data into public safety. However, the connection does not have to be limited to a one-way feed. And intelligent two-way communications channel is easily established between Public Safety first responders in the enterprise in a secure environment that allows interactive control of facility resources from door locks, to video cameras to environmental sensors. This session will demonstrate how that is deployable today and in the future.

Dr Alex Gouaillard Single Presenter

For a very long time, WebRTC has mainly been used in the Video conferencing industry and for p2p applications. It was missing some of the features the streaming industry had become accustomed to: ABR, high-resolution (4k@60fps, HDR, 4:4:4 chroma sampling, 12bits colors, no bandwidth limit.In comparison, the implementation of the webrtc protocol in browsers, which was used as a base for comparison was limited to 2 Mbps per stream, leading to compromises on quality: 1080p@30, 4:2:0, 8bits colors. ABR was not available, DRM or content protection was not available, and so on and so for.This talk will show how real-time AV1 is bridging the gap with usual streaming while keeping the real-time latency profile. ABR 2.0, E2EE for finer granularity DRM, 4k 4:4:4 HDR 10bits streams encodable in real-time on commodity consumer-grade PCs and laptop, everything will be presented, and comparison with other codecs all run in the same condition (i.e.) real-time mode over RTP media transport, will be provided, answering the usual questions: how much bandwidth can I save for same-resolution/same-quality? How much more taxing is the encoding compared to VP9, H264 software, and H264 Hardware?Finally an update on the status of HW support for AV1 will be presented.

David Furth Single Presenter

David Furth, Deputy Chief of the PSHSB will provide his annual update on legislative and regulatory actions that have taken place over the last year at the FCC that affect the E911 and NG 911 services.

Mike Hooker Single Presenter

NG9-1-1 planning, and implementation is increasing Nationwide. As NG9-1-1 service provider core networks and call handling systems mature, commercial originating service providers (OSPs) can deliver emergency calls, location information, and additional call data over enhanced NG9-1-1 interfaces. The migration of commercial OSP network connectivity from legacy E911 systems and gateways towards end state NG9-1-1 emergency service network interfaces is a critical step towards realizing the potential of NG9-1-1. Session initiation protocol (SIP) Interconnectivity, location-based routing, legacy E911 call data equivalency, and media negotiation all play key roles in a seamless transition towards end state NG911 and provide a foundation for emergency services to evolve in the future.

Alan Quayle Single Presenter

The weekend before the IIT RTC Conference is the largest Real Time Communications hackathon in the world. For 7 years straight the IIT and the Chicago developer community have been part of TADHack. This year we\\\'ll share the results of interesting hacks from Chicago and beyond. Showing how real time communications can solve problems across our home, work and community lives.

Nick Horelik Single Presenter

Next Generation emergency services and the multimedia that accompanies it requires a very different infrastructure than what exists today for legacy E911. Nick Horelik, CTO of RapidSOS, will discuss their role in the evolution of delivering additional data services from the origination of the emergency, to the 9-1-1 call takers and delivering to them the actionable data when they critically need.

Sean DuBois Single Presenter

Pion is used for all the traditional RTC problems (SFUs, Protocol Bridging, Clients). Instead lets talk about the unique production problems it is solving. Come learn why Pion is the software for large scale broadcasting, self driving cars and robots. This is what developers do when real world constraints hit. We are going to talk about problems like * Modifying ICE so you can massively scale servers * Replacing DTLS (without any code modifications) to pass security reviews * Using Go code on Android/iOS/Servers/Desktops and Web with one code base * Attempting to build the first \\\\\\\'Cloud Native\\\\\\\' WebRTC deployment * Integrating with other great Go libraries with zero glue code.At the end we will have a tour of popular Open Source projects using Pion to let people * Live gaming stream * Synchronized browsing sessions to watch videos with friends * Sharing files across Native/Web with no backend * seed and download WebTorrents

Brian Anderson Panelist
Cody GrandPre Panelist
Kevin Kito Panelist
Mark Fletcher, ENP Moderator
Nick Horelik Panelist

NG911 services, and the capabilities that they allow, require a modern IP network. While that has been accepted, and Is currently being built, the intelligent data that 240 million calls to 911 each year could carry, lays fallow by the wayside hidden from those who are clamoring for that information. Work around technologies Or not a replacement for the requirements of an NG911 network, however they can help bridge the gap on a temporary basis. This panel of industry experts will discuss what has been done, what needs to happen, and what the end state will be, as well as the transition to a pure NG911 ecosystem.

Bernard Aboba Single Presenter

This talk will go over new developments in realtime communications for the Web, including the QuicTransport, Insertable Streams, WebRTC-SVC and Content-Hints APIs.

Vito Vytautas Tumas Single Presenter

Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs) have re- cently been faced with increased compliance costs as both na- tional and international bodies bring their due diligence compli- ance requirements inline with that of traditional financial entities. The ’travel rule’, as defined by the Financial International Task Force (FATF) is prominent amongst these and has created a need for efficient compliance solutions for VASPs. In this paper we improve upon current travel rule compliance solutions by utilising a mixed centralised and decentralised approach to provide trust and reduce the compliance burden on VASPs. Moreover, we provide a generic system capable of ensuring compliance with FATF recommendations as well other sanctions and embargoes that impact a VASP’s trading relationships.

Anita Nikolich Single Presenter

FABRIC creates a unique research infrastructure to enable cutting-edge, at-scale research in networking, cybersecurity, distributed computing and storage, machine learning and AI. We are crafting a rich tapestry of ‘everywhere-programmable’ global nodes equipped with large amounts of network, compute and storage, interconnected by high speed, dedicated optical links connecting FABRIC to specialized network and security testbeds (5G/IoT PAWR, NSF Clouds), High Performance Computing (HPC), science facilities and the Internet. I’ll give a high-level introduction to FABRIC and some thoughts about the types of ‘out of the box’ experiments in networking, censorship evasion, privacy and security we’d like the community to consider.

Francesco Caturano Single Presenter

Increasing security awareness is a popular defense strategy adopted by companies against cyber attacks. Testbeds that support the so called cybersecurity exercises, strongly rely on virtualization technologies to faithfully reproduce real world scenarios. OS virtualization has proved to be a good solution to improve scalability, but it draws the line on the categories of reproducible vulnerabilities. In this paper, we tackle the challenges arising from the introduction of OS virtualization. We propose a solution that allows to rely as much as possible on the use of containers, as well as integrate them with legacy virtualization approaches when the vulnerabilities to be emulated do not lend themselves to a container-based implementation. We use the Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) paradigm to enable automation of both provisioning and configuration of the emulated scenarios, as well as integrate heterogeneous virtualization technologies. After showing the design and implementation of the proposed solution, we discuss how our approach leverages a cyber range instantiation platform, that can be designed and tested on a single laptop, before being deployed on an enterprise system infrastructure.

Amol Chobe Panelist
Arvinder Anand Panelist
Chris Mayer Moderator
Paul Norkus Panelist

In this panel, our speakers from both the carrier and solution-provider sides of the business will share their thoughts and insights on how we get to 5G/prepare for 6G and optimize the services, networks and user experiences. For context, we will briefly contrast the notable differences to the process of building and scaling 4G/LTE wireless networks emphasizing key improvements and acceleration opportunities.

Ludovic Roux Single Presenter

With COVID-19, the interest for digital interaction has raised, putting in turn real-time or low-latency codecs into a new light. Most of the codec ecosystem, including AV1, has been focusing on coding efficiency which is the main sought after improvement for Video On Demand (VOD) use case. Very little literature exist on real-time codecs. This work focuses on explaining the differences between the VOD and the interactive use cases from the codec point of view. It makes the difference between latency and throughput, and show that reducing the former to achieve interactive latency is orthogonal to achieving maximum coding efficiency. Measurements are made on encoding of Full HD video sequences from the literature to compare the respective performances of H.264, H.265, VP8, VP9 and AV1 all in real-time mode.

Chad Wallace Hart Moderator
Fernando Lapa Panelist
Ole Eichhorn Panelist
Tsahi Levent-Levi Panelist

The global coronavirus pandemic of 2020 has changed so much in our world, and the WebRTC ecosystem is no exception. In this panel, our industry experts will discuss how WebRTC development and use cases have changed in 2020, what changes are temporary, and what\\\'s going to stay with us indefinitely as part of the new normal.

Bill Mertka Moderator
Brandon Abley Panelist
Brian Beckwith Panelist
Fabricio Velez Panelist
Mike Hooker Panelist

This panel discussion will address some of the challenges we face as we move emergency services from circuit switched to Internet-based networks. Conformance testing and Interoperability testing are needed as the different components of the IP-based solution are introduced. Cyber Security standards for the network elements and the information they store and rely on are needed. And the carrier networks themselves face operations and connectivity challenges as they move to implement the new paradigm.This panel of experts from the areas of standards, carriers and element providers will discuss how these issues are being addressed and the obstacles and challenges associated with making NG9-1-1 a reality.

Natalie Silvanovich Single Presenter

Recently, there have been attacks against video conferencing systems that have allowed access to calls, user data and even users\\\' entire systems. This presentation explores the technical aspects of these attacks and how to avoid them. It will discuss vulnerabilities in WebRTC, and how integrators can protect against them, as well as common design mistakes made in video conferencing applications. Attendees will learn how to make applications that integrate WebRTC more secure.

Dr. Suresh Borkar Single Presenter

One of the key innovations in 5G Wireless is advanced Network Slicing capability. This enables flexible and dynamic adaptation of end to end network resources allowing network operators to split the physical infrastructure into multiple logical networks. Each slice is orchestrated according to specific application characteristics. Network Slicing is based on the foundation provided by dynamic topology capabilities of Software Defined Networking (SDN), virtualization capabilities of Network Functions (NFs) augmented by orchestration and network analytics. This presentation covers the overall cloud based structure, architecture, and implementation aspects of Network Slicing. Major advantages over comparatively limited 4G wireless approach and flexibility as compared to Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are highlighted. How the Radio network and the User Equipment (UE) fit into the overall end to end Network Slicing capabilities is identified. Phased implementation in terms of instantiation, configuration, activation, and assignment of a network slice to the device is covered. How the Network Slice Manager (NSM) allows programmability at three different layers - application, control and data is mentioned. The powerful approach of use of flexible slicing templates consistent with the three standardized 5G offers – enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB), massive Machine Type Communication (mMTC), and Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communications (UR-LLC) - is highlighted.