About us

To handle the unprecedented demand for mobile data traffic, different vendors, operators and research have aimed to develop radio access technologies (RATs) that boost physical-layer link capacity, utilize millimeter wave radio, or further densify network topology. Notable steps have also been made towards shifting baseband processing from the (currently) ultra dense network edge to a central location where coordinated resource management will be performed. Nonetheless, the today’s mobile network ecosystem includes vastly heterogeneous, evidently overlapping (in coverage) and fully isolated (in operation) attachment points that still handle most of the functions necessary for mobile data communications independently. Aiming to meet and surpass the requirements set for the 5G and Beyond mobile data network, in SPOTLIGHT we will create a fully-integrated and multi-disciplinary network of Early Stage Researchers (ESRs)
that will analyze, design, and optimize the performance of a disruptive new mobile network architecture: the SPOTLIGHT architecture. This architecture promises to break performance limitations present to the currently loosely inter-connected, resource-fragmented and isolated in operation mobile network ecosystem, by transforming the currently loosely-coupled multitude of heterogeneous and multi-layered RATs to a flat coalition of massively distributed antenna sub-systems that are optimally orchestrated by a cloud-empowered network core. Our primary aim will be to support for the first time self-including yet ultra-reliable radio communications at the edge network. To further reduce response time and enhance network resilience, all functions necessary for mobile communications will be subject of i) massive parallelization in cloud platforms at the network core and ii) big data analysis running on-top of a virtual pool of shared energy, radio, computing and storage resources at the network.

Early Stage Researchers

Following the call for job positions as ESR in February 2017, all participating partners of the consortium have been recruiting applicants from all over the world. The recruitment process finished lately. All recruited ESRs have attended the first plenary meeting, except three with Skype. The short biography of ESR is presented here

Placido Mursia

ESR1


He obtained his B.Sc. in “Telecommunications Engineering” from Politecnico di Torino in 2015 and his M.Sc. (with honors) in “Communications and Computer Networks Engineering”, and “Mobile Communications” (Erasmus+, double degree program) from Politecnico di Torino and Eurecom in 2018, respectively. He carried out a research internship in the iCDG Department at Intel, Munich on channel estimation for 4G+/5G systems. Currently, he is an ESR within the Marie-Curie project SPOTLIGHT and a PhD candidate at the “Communication Systems” department of Eurecom. His research interests are massive MIMO networks, wireless communications and signal processing

Roya Gholami

ESR2


She was born in Shiraz,Iran, in 1992. She obtained BSc. degree in electrical engineering(communication)and MSc. degree in electrical engineering(communication systems) from shiraz university, Department of Communication and Electronics Engineering, in 2014 and 2017 respectively. Currently she is an ESR in SPOTLIGHT and a PhD candidate at the "Communication Systems" department of Eurecom. Her research interests include wireless communication systems with special emphasis on massive MIMO Communications and MIMO-OFDM Systems, Stochastic Geometry, Signal Processing and Coding Theory.

Sumaila Mahama

ESR3


He received B.Sc. degree in telecommunications engineering from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana, the M.S. degree in electronic engineering from Hanbat National University, South Korea, in 2013 and 2016 respectively. During 2017, he was assistant lecturer in department of electrical and electronic engineering, KAAF University College, Ghana. He is currently a Marie-Curie ESR and PhD student at the department of electronic engineering, University of York, UK. His research interests are in wireless communications, particularly, physical layer network coding, relaying networks, multicarrier modulation for 5G and beyond systems, and wireless-powered communication networks.

Michalis Eliodorou

ESR4


He was born in Nicosia, Cyprus, in 1990. He obtained a degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, in 2016. He also received an M.Sc degree in Embedded Systems from the University of Southampton, UK, in 2017. He is currently an Early Stage Researcher under the SPOTLIGHT project at MTN Cyprus and studying towards a Ph.D in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Cyprus. His research interests focus on wireless communications and include massively distributed MIMO transmissions, distance and angle of arrival estimation, game theory on communication systems and transmission profile selection techniques.

Behnam Ojaghi Kahjogh

ESR5


He is an ESR in this SPOTLIGHT project in WINE research group of Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), Spain. Before, he did a master thesis in Department of Computer Architecture at UPC (February – August, 2017). He was both a teaching assistant and research assistant at TOBB University of Economics and Technology, Ankara, Turkey (2014-2017). His research interests include wireless sensor networks, network slicing, 5G, and network optimization.

Shammi Farhana Islam

ESR6


She obtained BSc and MSc. from department of Applied Physics and Electronic Engineering, University of Rajshahi, Bangladesh. Since graduation, she was lecturer in the department. She was doing research in the field of signal processing and wireless communications. Her research interests are signal processing and Wireless communication, with special emphasis on 5G compatible mmWave communications, advanced Radio Access technology, massive MIMO communications.

Armin Okic

ESR7


He re- ceived his BSc and MSc degrees from the University of Sarajevo, Faculty of Electrical Engineering Sarajevo, Department of Telecommunications. He was working in BS Telecom Solutions company in which he cooperated with network operators maintaining different telecommunication’s platforms. Currently, he is a Ph.D. student at the Polytechnic University of Milan, Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering in the area of Telecommunications and Early Stage Researcher at the European Marie Curie Innovative Training Network in the SPOTLIGHT project. His research area is covering Resource Management in Heterogeneous networks as well as an appliance of Machine learning and Big data analytics in the future 5G networks and beyond.

Bin Xiang

ESR8


He did his BSc in Southwest Jiaotong University, China, and graduate study in Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, China. Currently, he is a PhD student in department of electronics, information and bioengineering, Politecnico di Milano, Italy. His research interests focus on mobile edge computing, radio resource management and data analysis.

Ioannis Sarrigiannis

ESR9


He was born in Athens, Greece, in 1989. He obtained his five-year diploma (MSc equivalent) in Information and Communication Systems Engineering in 2015 at the University of the Aegean. Currently he is an ESR at Iquadrat Informatica, in Barcelona, Spain. His current research interests include Software Defined Networks, Virtual Network Functions and Network Slicing, in the scope of Cloud Radio Access Networks towards 5G.

Umberto Fattore

ESR10


Umberto was born in Naples (Italy), in 1993. He received both his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Computer Engineering from University of Naples "Federico II", respectively in 2015 and 2018. During his master studies, he joined NEC Laboratories Europe in Heidelberg (Germany) for a sixmonths internship period, within the European Erasmus+ Trainee ship project. In February 2018, he has been enrolled by NEC as an Early Stage Researcher, within the European ITN Spotlight project. Currently, he is part of the 5GN group of the lab, focusing on enhanced routing for mobile core networks and other next generation mobile networks related research topics.

George Datseris

ESR11


He received his BSc in "Computer Network Management And Design" from the University of Portsmouth and he did his MSc in "Mobile and Personal communications" in Kings College London. He has many years of industrial experience as he has worked as a telecommunications consultant for various network operators around the globe. He is currently an ESR within SPOTLIGHT through the partner NESSOS. His research interests focus on the SotA platforms, programming tools and prediction models to enable high-performance computing at the network edge.

Pedro Batista

ESR12


He is an ESR at Ericsson and a Ph.D. candidate in the Electrical Engineering Graduate Program at Federal University of Pará, Brazil. From where he also received his B.S. and M.S. degrees. His research interests are in the optimization of future mobile networks, mainly involving machine learning, network function virtualization, and cloud radio access network functional split.

Santiago Sánchez Correa

ESR13


He graduated from the Universidad Nacional of Colombia from my bachelor’s and master’s degree both in electrical engineering, in these I gained knowledge in Machine Learning (ML), now hosted by the Open University of Catalonia for the SPOTLIGHT project, at this time of the project we are evaluating strategies of "Caching" for apply ML, due to this we have studied issues such as mobility and popularity of content, which are challenges for the Heterogeneous 5G networks.

Tadege M. Ayenew

ESR14


He obtained his BSc degree in electrical engineering from Arba Minch University, Ethiopia, in 2009 and MSc degree in telecommunication engineering from Universita degnli Studi Di Brescia, Italy, late 2016. He also attended a postgraduate MTech in 2012 from IIT-Delhi & Addis Ababa University. Currently, he is an ESR in this SPOTLIGHT project at UOA. From 2009 to 2013, he has been working as electrical engineer and network specialist in Ethio Telecom. In 2016, he was intern researcher at TNO, The Netherlands. He founded Tadom Technology Solutions Ltd. Now, he is working on popular content placement and delivery techniques mainly on using fountain codes for massively distributed systems in the 5G and beyond mobile networks.

Subin Narayanan

ESR15


He obtained his BSc degree in electronics and communication engineering and MSc degree in wireless technology from Cochin University of Science and Technology, India, in 2012 and 2015 respectively. He pursued a professional doctorate (PDEng) in antenna engineering from Electromagnetic group, TU Eindhoven in 2017. Currently, he is a Marie Curie ESR in the SPOTLIGHT project and a PhD student at UOA. His area of research is massive machine type communication (mMTC) in 5G and beyond cellular networks.

Seminars and Courses

After the meeting, the management and supervisory team went home on the next day but all ESRs remained in Athens to attend the seminar and the first transferable course, which was delivered by invited guests. This course is part of the transferable skill training, as a pivotal point of the ESRs career prospects. The SPOTLIGHT structures this training aspect through 4 courses.

The first course, Scientific Writing and Communication Skills, was delivered on 6th and 7th March, 2018. The first part of the course covered aspects on writing of scientific papers, that the course allows ESRs to learn the basic structure of scientific papers and understand the differences between conference papers, journals, and magazines based on practical examples. The second part, which had strong practical examples and ESRs‘ practice, was focusing on techniques of effective communication to different target audiences. Three speakers, Prof.Lazaros Merakos, Dr. Ferran A. Freixer, and Prof. Luciano Baresi (out of the consortium) have participated in the speech.

Following the course, the first seminar of the consortium, 5G networks and beyond, took place on 8th and 9th March 2018. In the seminar, four invited guests participated where the roadmap of the 5G standardization process and existing architecture, and the evolution was delivered. The capabilities and challenges for core-driven DSP in 5G and beyond systems were thoroughly investigated and promising research directions were drawn, with practical deliverable examples.