Special sessions
Why narrow the programme
A broad call finds unexpected connections. It can also leave a specialist audience with only one relevant talk in the whole programme. Special sessions solved that problem by giving a group of conveners a block of time around a defined subject.
The 2023 edition used four. Two dealt with rail, one with maritime transport and one with the reliability of vehicle networks. Each had its own conveners, its own review and its own dates.
The four sessions
Satellite positioning for railway operations
Conveners: Juliette Marais, IFSTTAR, France; Omar Garcia Crespillo, DLR, Germany; Cosimo Stallo, Radiolabs, Italy.
Rail already uses satellite positioning for services where a loss of accuracy is inconvenient rather than dangerous. The harder step is to use it where failure has safety consequences, especially in signalling.
The session looked at that transition: virtual balises, train integrity monitoring, hybrid localisation units, integrity schemes and the experimental work needed to characterise reception along a railway. The question was not whether satellite positioning works in the open, but whether it can be trusted in a cutting, a tunnel approach or a station canopy.
Wireless links for railway systems
Conveners: Marion Berbineau, IFSTTAR, France; Ke Guan, Beijing Jiaotong University, China; José Soler, Technical University of Denmark. Thomas Kürner, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany, was named in the source record pending confirmation.
Trains now carry and generate far more data than the systems around them were designed to move. Automation and driverless operation raise the requirement again: the link has to be reliable, fast and predictable, often in places where radio coverage is poor.
The session covered channel models across bands and environments, antenna placement, handover between heterogeneous networks, scheduling, software defined and virtualised network functions, energy use and cybersecurity. It treated the railway as a complete communications system rather than a collection of links.
Communications for shipping and ports
Convener: Michele Fiorini, The IET, United Kingdom.
Global trade moved onto the sea long before it moved onto the road, but the digital layer of shipping is changing quickly. Vessel size, traffic density, port coordination and the prospect of autonomous ships all put new demands on communication.
The session brought together researchers, startups, small firms, public bodies and established industry around systems and services: coastal surveillance, distress and safety communication, vessel traffic services, satellite monitoring, e navigation, drones and port information exchange. It also made room for the uncomfortable questions about safety and hype that follow every automation claim.
Reliability of vehicular communications
Convener: Jacek Rak, Gdansk University of Technology, Poland.
A vehicle network is judged by whether the right message reaches the right receiver in time. That simple sentence hides a difficult engineering problem, because conditions change by the second and a link that works in a queue may fail at a junction.
The session focused on delivery under unfavourable conditions and on matching the network to the requirements of the application. Participants compared methods for resilience, redundancy and recovery, and discussed what reliability means when the application itself has a deadline.
Submission rules and dates
Special session papers followed the main template and were limited to seven pages. Submissions went through the conference system and were reviewed for merit and novelty.
If a session could not go ahead, its accepted papers were treated as regular papers. That condition protected authors from losing a publication route because a conveners group withdrew.
- 1 July 2023Special session paper submission
- 27 July 2023Notification of acceptance
- 3 August 2023Camera ready version due
- 3 August 2023Author registration and payment due
Reference shelf
- International Union of RailwaysRail sector cooperation body
- European Union Agency for RailwaysInteroperability and safety authority
- International Maritime OrganizationGlobal shipping standards
- German Aerospace CenterAffiliation of a rail positioning convener
- Université Gustave EiffelSuccessor body of IFSTTAR
- Technical University of DenmarkAffiliation of a rail wireless convener
- Beijing Jiaotong UniversityAffiliation of a rail wireless convener
- Gdansk University of TechnologyAffiliation of a vehicle network convener
- University of BolognaAffiliation of a publicity chair
- Halmstad UniversityAffiliation of a programme chair
- EURECOMAffiliation of a steering committee member
- IEEETechnical cosponsorship of the edition
Institutional links are provided for readers who want to follow the research groups behind the sessions.