Rafael F. Schaefer (Technische Universität Dresden, Germany); Christian Deppe (Technical University of Munich, Germany); Holger Boche (Technical University Munich, Germany); Frank H.P. Fitzek (Technische Universität Dresden & ComNets - Communication Networks Group, Germany)
Abstract:
Current communication systems are designed following the Shannon paradigm. This goes back to Shannon's seminal paper in 1948, and since then researchers have worked on codes and techniques that approach the fundamental limits of message transmission. Here, the maximum number of possible messages that can be transmitted scales exponentially with the blocklength of the codewords. For future communication systems, we advocate a paradigm change towards Post-Shannon communication that allows the encoding of messages whose maximum number scales double-exponentially with the blocklength! In addition, secrecy comes "for free" in the sense that it can be incorporated without penalizing the transmission rate! This paradigm shift is the study of semantic communication instead of message only transmission. It involves a shift from the traditional design of message transmission to a new Post-Shannon design that takes the semantics of the communication into account going beyond the transmission of pure message bits. This paradigm change can bring not only marginal but also exponential gains in the efficiency of communication. Further key enabler for future communication systems are molecular communication with the identification capacity as an alternative metric and also joint communication and sensing that enables a tight integration of communication and sensing. Accordingly, within the Post-Shannon framework, this tutorial explores identification codes, molecular communication, and the concept of joint communication and sensing.
Short bios:
Rafael F. Schaefer is a Professor and head of the Chair of Information Theory and Machine Learning at Technische Universität Dresden. He received the Dipl.-Ing. degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the Technische Universität Berlin, Germany, in 2007, and the Dr.-Ing. degree in electrical engineering from the Technische Universität München, Germany, in 2012. From 2013 to 2015, he was a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow with Princeton University. From 2015 to 2020, he was an Assistant Professor with the Technische Universität Berlin, Germany, and from 2021 to 2022 a Professor with the Universität Siegen, Germany. Among his publications is the recent book Information Theoretic Security and Privacy of Information Systems (Cambridge University Press, 2017). He was a recipient of the VDE Johann-Philipp-Reis Award in 2013. He received the best paper award of the German Information Technology Society (ITG-Preis) in 2016. He is currently an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security and of the IEEE Transactions on Communications.
Christian Deppe received the Dipl.-Math. degree in mathematics from the Universität Bielefeld, Germany, in 1996, and the Dr.-Math. degree in mathematics from the Universität Bielefeld, Germany, in 1998. He was a Research and Teaching Assistant with the Fakultät für Mathematik, Universität Bielefeld, from 1998 to 2010. From 2011 to 2013 he was project leader of the project ``Sicherheit und Robustheit des Quanten-Repeaters ́ ́of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research at Fakultät für Mathematik, Universität Bielefeld. In 2014 he was supported by a DFG project at the Institute of Theoretical Information Technology, Technische Universität München. In 2015 he had a temporary professorship at the Fakultät für Mathematik und Informatik, FriedrichSchiller Universität Jena. Since 2018 he is at the Department of Communications Engineering at the Technische Universität München, Germany. He is project leader of several projects funded by BMBF, DFG, state of Bavaria and industry partners. He is involved in the BMBF Research Hub 6G-life. His current research interests are in the areas of Post-Shannon theory, quantum communication networks, and error-correcting codes with feedback.
Holger Boche received the Dipl.-Ing. degree in electrical engineering, Graduate degree in mathematics, and the Dr.-Ing. degree in electrical engineering from the Technische Universität Dresden, Germany, in 1990, 1992, and 1994, respectively. In 1998, he received the Dr. rer. nat. degree in pure mathematics from the Technische Universität Berlin, Germany. From 2002 to 2010, he was Full Professor in mobile communication networks with the Institute for Communications Systems, Technische Universität Berlin, Germany. In 2004, he became the Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications (HHI). He is currently Full Professor at the Institute of Theoretical Information Technology, Technische Universität München, Germany, which he joined in October 2010. Since 2014, Prof. Boche has been a member and Honorary Fellow of the TUM Institute for Advanced Study, Munich, Germany, and since 2018, a Founding Director of the Center for Quantum Engineering, Technische Universität München, Germany. Since 2021, he has been leading jointly with Frank Fitzek the BMBF Research Hub 6G-life. He was a co-recipient of the 2006 IEEE Signal Processing Society Best Paper Award and a recipient of the 2007 IEEE Signal Processing Society Best Paper Award. He was General Chair of the Symposium on Information Theoretic Approaches to Security and Privacy at IEEE GlobalSIP 2016.
Frank H. P. Fitzek is a Professor and chair of the communication networks group at Technische Universität Dresden, Germany, coordinating the 5G Lab Germany. Since 2021, he has been leading jointly with Holger Boche the BMBF Research Hub 6G-life. He received his diploma (Dipl.-Ing.) degree in electrical engineering from the University of Technology - Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule (RWTH) - Aachen, Germany, in 1997 and his Ph.D. (Dr.-Ing.) in Electrical Engineering from the Technical University Berlin, Germany in 2002 and became Adjunct Professor at the University of Ferrara, Italy in the same year. In 2003 he joined Aalborg University as Associate Professor and later became Professor. He co-founded several start-up companies starting with acticom GmbH in Berlin in 1999. He has visited various research institutes including Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), VTT, and Arizona State University. In 2011 he received the SAPERE AUDE research grant from the Danish government and in 2012 he received the Vodafone Innovation price. His current research interests are in the areas of wireless and mobile 5G communication networks, mobile phone programming, network coding, cross layer as well as energy efficient protocol design and cooperative networking.