On behalf of the Organizing Committee, it is a great pleasure to welcome you to the 2021 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (IEEE WCNC 2021), 29 March – 1 April 2021, Nanjing, China. The conference venue is Jinling Hotel Nanjing, which is located in the Central Business District and surrounded by shops and transportations nodes. While many IEEE conferences have gone fully virtual in this on-going COVID-19 pandemic period, we managed to keep WCNC 2021 in a hybrid format with a significant portion of the conference program physically taking place in Nanjing while the rest of the program being virtual.
IEEE WCNC 2021 features 77 technical sessions disseminating the latest research results in communications and networking as well as 6 panels in which industry leaders and academics will address technical and business challenges and give their vision on future trends. From the 77 technical sessions of the main conference, 44 sessions are physical sessions at the conference venue and 33 sessions are virtual sessions taking place in virtual zoom meeting rooms. The scheduling of the virtual sessions has been made so as to make it convenient for authors from different regions of the world to stay on line and answer questions from the audience after their pre-recorded presentations. Prior to the start of the technical sessions and panels, which are scheduled from Tuesday 30 March to Thursday 1 April, the program includes on Monday 29 March 9 tutorials by world-renowned experts and 10 workshops on hot and emerging topics, which nicely complement the main program of the conference. The tutorials are accessible on demand, while the workshops include both physical sessions and virtual sessions, the latter ones being accessible on demand like the tutorials.
The Opening Plenary on Tuesday features two keynotes, one by Dr. Peiying Zhu, Senior VP of Wireless Research at Huawei, and the other by Prof. Mathias Fink, George Charpak Professor at ESPCI Paris, France. Next, the plenary session on Wednesday features the keynotes of Prof. Muriel Medard, Cecil H. Green Professor at MIT, Boston, USA and Dr. Xinhui Wang, Director of Wireless Standardization and Industrial Relationship at ZTE. Finally, our keynote speakers on Thursday are Prof. Xianbin Wang from Western University, Ontario, Canada and Dr. Zhiqin Wang, Vice President of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology. We are delighted to have this set of prominent guests as keynote speakers. Their talks on 5G evolutions, 6G, low-latency communications, AI, and reconfigurable intelligent surfaces will add a special touch to the conference program.
It is a privilege to have Nanjing as the host city for IEEE WCNC 2021. Nanjing is the political, economic, and cultural center of the Jiangsu Province and it has a long history as well as a very rich cultural heritage, as it was the capital of 6 Chinese Dynasties. It is in this fantastic environment that IEEE WCNC 2021 will bring together researchers, developers, practitioners, and business executives from all over the world.
We look forward to meeting you physically in Nanjing or virtually at IEEE WCNC 2021.
Hikmet Sari
Professor, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications
General Chair, IEEE WCNC 2021
