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The internet of today is evolving towards the highly dynamic, pervasive, environment of Future Networks, where the pace of new and emerging technologies, the numbers of users' devices, the traffic/information flows as well as the interconnected real and virtual resources accelerate at a fast rate with unmet scalability levels. The mastering of the underlying complexity driven by the heterogeneity of the technologies and the vast proliferation in the number and sophistication of communication services and applications has also dominated this complex environment. Such developments arise major challenges ranging from network performance, scalability, openness, automation and efficient resource utilisation to dynamic service provisioning.

In order to evolve towards profitable Future Networks, it is unevitable that Service and Network Operators need to counterbalance between solutions to ensure the abovementioned requirements and at the same time maximise their profits. To this end, the optimised network management solution and the provision of higher levels of broadband access to more demanding customers should be also materialised to reduced or at least constrained Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), and especially the Operational Expenditures (OPEX). The dominating trends will be the ones that will foster right synergies through complete fulfilment of needs and requirements, minimization of the [cost * complexity]/ [performance * functionality] ratio, and continuous innovation. Among them we should specifically point out the deeper introduction of intelligent, distributed network/service management algorithms and mechanisms - the so-called Network Empowerments features. The latter span from network monitoring, to learning schemes and knowledge generation, optimisation of network management actions as well as policy-based management functionalities. Such features are supported by novel open, cross-technology network management models and frameworks ensuring the convergence, interoperability and federation of heterogeneous mobile, wired and wireless network infrastructures and resources. Beyond pure technology, adoption by the industry will be driven by the availability and demonstration of standard, interoperable solutions through prototypes and large-scale testbeds.

This session looks into solutions to overcome the increasing complexity of managing communication networks and to enable their future growth by generating innovations in autonomic networking. This session aims to provide a forum for network and service operators, industry, researchers and practitioners to present and discuss their views for advances towards the Future Networks. The goal is to address immediate and mid-term manageability problems faced by service and network operators, towards concretely shaping future networking environments. To this end, this session is in-line with the scope of IEEE CAMAD 2012, offering the opportunity to elaborate on modelling Tools, network empowerment mechanisms and testbeds for Future Service- & Operator- oriented Internet.

Prospective authors are invited to submit original and unpublished works on the following research topics, but not limited to:

• Tools and algorithmic methods for network self-management.

• Policy-based models and policy-driven network management frameworks.

• Design and evaluation of learning techniques and knowledge-management frameworks.

• Algorithmic models for dynamic optimisation of network-management actions.

• Modelling and simulation techniques for future Service- & Operator Oriented Internet.

• Novel network/service management architectural frameworks.

• Network convergence, federation and virtualisation.

• Validation and benchmarking of future Service- & Operator Oriented Internet.

Paper Submission

Submission Perspective authors are invited to submit using the EDAS system under  Special track: UniverSelf Special Session on Modelling Tools, Network Empowerment Mechanisms, & Testbeds for Future Service- & Operator- oriented a full paper of not more than five (5) IEEE style pages including results, figures and references.

Papers will be reviewed with the standard reviewing procedure (with at least 3 independent anonymous reviews). Accepted papers will be published on IEEExplore (http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/ ).  All authors are required to attend and present their paper(s). According to IEEE policy: Conference organizers may indicate papers that are not to be included in Xplore (due to non-presentation at their conference) when submitting their content set to IEEE. Content must be submitted to IEEE within the established time requirements.

Detailed authors’ guidelines can be found under the following link: (http://camad2012.av.it.pt/author.html.).  

Important Dates
Paper submission:	June 8th, 2012	FINAL!
Notification of acceptance:	June 30th, 2012
Submission of camera-ready papers:	July 15th, 2012

Special Session Chair

Dr. Eleni Patouni, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Department of Informatics & Telecommunications (elenip@di.uoa.gr)

Dr. Eleni Patouni received the B.Sc. and M.Sc degrees (with honours, ranked 1st in her class) from the Department of Informatics and Telecommunications, NKUA in 2003 and 2005 respectively. In 2010, she received the phd degree from the same department. Since October 2004, she has been participating in the European IST-FP6 Integrated Projects ?E2R?, ?E2R II? (End-to-End Reconfigurability phase I and II), IST-FP7 E3 (End-to-End Efficiency) also leading sWP4.1 ?Self-management in autonomous system entities? & FP7 Self-NET. Starting on September 2010, she serves as senior researcher & Delegate Workpackage Leader in FP7 UniverSelf. Since 2009, she is also an adjunct lecturer in the Technological Educational Institute of Athens (TEI of Athens). She has more than 35 publications in the thematic areas of beyond 3G, cognitive networks and autonomic communication systems; she received the best paper award in the IFIP Autonomic Networking Conference, 2006. She has also contributed in OMA (contribution to the definition of OMA Management Objects). Her main research interests include network-management and decision-making mechanisms, load balancing algorithms, object-oriented design of mobile network systems, reconfigurable protocols and component-based models, as well as cognitive and autonomic networking issues.

Organizing Commitee

Prof. Nancy Alonistioti, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Department of Informatics & Telecommunications (nancy@di.uoa.gr )

Prof. Nancy Alonistioti has a B.Sc. degree and a PhD degree in Informatics and Telecommunications (Dept. of Informatics and Telecommunications, University of Athens). She has working experience as senior researcher and project manager in the Dept. of Informatics and Telecommunications at University of Athens. She has participated in several national and European projects, (CTS, SS#7, ACTS RAINBOW, EURESCOM, MOBIVAS, ANWIRE, E2R, LIAISON, E3, SELFNET, SACRA, CONSERN, UNIVERSELF etc) and has experience as Project and Technical manager of the IST-MOBIVAS, IST-ANWIRE, ICT-SELFNET projects, which had a focus on reconfigurable mobile systems, cognitive mobile networks and FI. She has served as PMT member and WP Leader of the FP6 IST- E2R project. She is co-editor and author in “Software defined radio, Architectures, Systems and Functions”, published by John Wiley in May 2003. She has served as lecturer in University of Piraeus and she has recently joined the faculty of Dept. Informatics and Telecommunications of Univ. of Athens. She is TPC member in many conferences in the area of mobile communications and mobile applications for systems and networks beyond 3G. She has over 55 publications in the area of mobile communications, reconfigurable, cognitive and autonomic systems and networks and Future Internet .

Mr. Laurent Ciavaglia, Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs France (Laurent.Ciavaglia@alcatel-lucent.com )

Laurent Ciavaglia is currently research manager at Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs France, in the Networking Technologies research domain, where he coordinates a team specialized in autonomic and distributed systems. Since 2010, Laurent is also leading the FP7-UNIVERSELF project (www.univerself-project.eu). In recent years, he has been working on the design, specification and evaluation of carrier-grade networks including several European research projects dealing with network control and management. Laurent is also member of the Industry Advisory Board of the FP7-Network of Excellence NESSOS. Laurent is vice-chair of the ETSI Industry Specification Group on Autonomics for Future Internet (AFI), working on the definition of standards for self-managing networks. Laurent is also participating to the IETF/IRTF as part of his activities in standardization. Laurent has co-authored more than 30 publications and holds around 30 patents in the field of telecommunication networks. Laurent also acts as member of the technical committee of several IEEE, ACM and IFIP conferences and sessions, and as reviewers of referenced international journals and magazines.

Ms. Beatriz Fuentes, Telefonica I+D (fuentes@tid.es )

Ms. Beatriz Fuentes received her Degree in Physical Science from the University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain, and her Degree in Technical Engineering in Computing from the Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia (UNED). She also holds a MBA from UNED. After a period of research in the Particle and Nuclear Physics Department of the University of Santiago de Compostela, in 2000 she moved to the telecommunication industry, where she was first involved in the Network and Services Management Systems area. She has been working for more than 10 years in diagnosis and fault management systems, but has also participated in different innovation and European projects. Currently, at the Operations Automation Initiative in Telefonica I+D, she is involved in the development of an approach around Autonomic Networks as a key technology for the future evolution of Operation Supports Systems.

Dr. Markus Gruber, Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs Germany (Markus.Gruber@ALCATEL-LUCENT.COM )

Markus Gruber received a diploma degree in electrical engineering and information technology from the University of Stuttgart and a diploma degree in telecommunications from the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Telecommunications, Paris, in 2002. He then joined the Max Planck Society and received a PhD in computer science from the University of Tuebingen in 2006. Since 2006 he has been with Alcatel-Lucent as a research engineer for wireless communications systems with a focus on network topology, broadcast technologies, mobility, energy efficiency, and self-optimization in the wireless access domain of Bell Labs, Stuttgart. Markus Gruber is currently a work package leader in the European project UniverSelf.

Mr. Antonio Manzalini, Telecom Italia (antonio.manzalini@telecomitalia.it )

Antonio Manzalini received the M. Sc. Degree in Electronic Engineering from the Politecnico of Turin. In '90 he joined CSELT, which became Telecom Italia Lab. He started his activities on research and development of technologies and architectures of future optical networks. He has been awarded 5 patents on network and systems. He was author of a book on Network Synchronization (for SDH) and his research results have been published in several papers. He has been active in the ITU as Chairman of two ITU-T Questions on transport networks. He has been actively involved in leading positions in several EURESCOM and European Projects. In 2003 he was appointed as member of the Scientific Committee of Centre Tecnologic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya. In 2008 he has been awarded with the International Certification of Project Manager by PMI. At the Strategy Dept. of Telecom Italia (Future Centre) he mainly addresses mainly related to future networks and services technologies, and new business models.