The third edition of the Würzburg Workshop on Next-Generation Communication Networks (WueWoWAS) took place on September 30th and October 1st, 2024, in the beautiful city of Würzburg. About 50 participants from industry and academia discussed about recent advances in 6G Networks.
The scope of the WueWoWAS Workshop is to provide a platform for connecting young and senior researchers from industry and academia who are working on next-generation communication networks and their performance evaluation. The focus of this year was on 6G networks and invited speakers from industry presented their vision on 6G. Maciej Muehleisen (Ericsson) presented his view on the (radio) network concept for verticals. Christian Henke (Emnify) showed advances in converged cellular and non-terrestrial networks (NTN) with a particular focus on global coverage for IoT. Andra Lutu (Telefonica Reserach, Spain) presented key challenges to be addressed in 6G, like local breakouts for international mobile roaming in the presence of trust issues or viable global operator models for next-generation networks.
The program included 20 oral presentations, which were structured into five technical sessions. Session 1, chaired by Maciej Muehleisen, explored advancements in P4 and hardware, featuring dynamic eBPF integration, universal control plane development, and frameworks for multi-tenant P4 network devices. Other highlights included leveraging hybrid P4 solutions for 5G programmability and innovative approaches to energy measurement and traffic generation. Session 2, chaired by Christian Henke, focused on modeling advancements, including synchronization techniques for network digital twins and data-driven approaches for digital twins in microservice architectures. Additionally, the session introduced LRU-BottomUp, a caching strategy combining LRU-level performance with FIFO-like efficiency. Session 3, chaired by Prof. Stanislav Lange, highlighted critical issues in security and reliability. Topics included the impact of thermal effects on timestamping in high-speed 100G networking devices, an exploration of attack vectors in 5G and future networks, and real-time monitoring solutions in SDN to counter denial-of-service attacks. Session 4, chaired by Andra Lutu, explored innovations in 5G networks and beyond. Presentations covered frameworks for non-terrestrial networks and V2X, the impact of 5G New Radio on dataplane traffic, and energy consumption studies in converged networks like LTE-M and NB-IoT. Additional highlights included a generalizable fine-granular 5G resource model and adaptive traffic steering techniques using predictive QoS metrics for optimized application performance. Session 5, chaired by Prof. Andreas Kassler, discussed advancements in Wireless Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN). Key topics included P5G-TSN, a private 5G TSN simulation framework, and a review of deterministic communication demands in hybrid 5G-TSN networks. Furthermore, the integration of 5G with TSN was discussed for over-the-air communication and robust TSN scheduling models designed to handle wireless performance uncertainties. Razvan-Mihai Ursu has received the Best Paper Award for his contribution “Towards Data-Driven Approaches for Network Digital Twins of Microservice-Based Architectures”, authored by Razvan-Mihai Ursu, Navidreza Asadi, Leon Wong, Wolfgang Kellerer.
For the first time this year, we are organizing a speedmentoring session. Participants had the opportunity to book a speedmentoring slot to discuss with the experts about their own work, recent developments, or other professional matters. The workshop's mentoring sessions featured esteemed experts Andra Lutu (Telefonica Research), Wolfgang Kellerer (Technical University of Munich), Maciej Muehleisen (Ericsson), and Christian Mannweiler (Nokia), providing participants with valuable insights and guidance. The post-workshop survey indicated that the speed mentoring was well received by mentees and mentors. Due to the very positive feedback, we will integrate the speedmentoring again in the next WueWoWAS edition.
In the workshop, we also integrated a session on the VDE ITG expert group KT 2 “Communication networks and systems”. Thereby, Damian Dudek (Managing Director VDE ITG) gave an overview on the research topics, but also the role of VDE ITG in Germany. The discussion session showed that there is a strong interest in industry collaboration and industry perspectives for young but also senior researchers. In particular, conducting research, validating ideas, and comparing market needs with the current state of the art are crucial for aligning industry insights with real-world implications, use cases, and ongoing research activities. Effective technology collaboration involves leveraging shared platforms, accessing advanced hardware, and utilizing test beds to bridge the gap between innovation and market readiness. As key topics and interest for the next workshop, the participants mentioned the evolution of mobile networks (5G and 6G) wireless connectivity advancements, and emerging technologies like neuromorphic computing and large language models, since they are driving innovation in network programmability, energy efficiency, and AI integration. Key areas also include satellite communication, network testing tools, and digital twins to enhance network operations and performance.
We would like to thank all the authors and attendees for their contributions to the success of the workshop! We are looking forward to welcome you in Würzburg for the WueWOWAS’25, 6-8 October 2025.
Stefan Geißler (University of Würzburg)
Amr Rizk (University of Duisburg-Essen)
Tobias Hoßfeld (University of Würzburg)