Mario Di Dio

Growing customer demand for seamless wireless connectivity together with advancements in wireless technologies are enabling new ways to improve user experience. Users rely on wireless devices for accessing services that allow them to collaborate at work, stay in touch with friends and family, share and access knowledge and be entertained. Wireless devices have become a natural extension of the user and has accelerated the efforts for optimizing user experience creating technologies that enable beyond “best-effort” performance by tailoring network performance to specific user needs. Historically wireless operators have used aggregation techniques to increase throughput but those alone have proved insufficient to improve the user experience. In fact, the scarce nature of spectrum coupled with new emerging use cases and business models have shifted the focus towards advanced traffic management.

In this presentation we will walk you through the critical role that spectrum holdings and spectral efficiency play in defining the capacity and coverage the wireless operator’s network can provide. We will introduce advanced traffic management techniques and illustrate how traffic splitting, switching and steering techniques can potentially provide an overall low latency, increased reliability and seamless connectivity enhancing the user experience. The presentation will also outline how the focus on advanced traffic management techniques has resulted in several non-standardized solutions being developed with no dependency on network or end-devices. We will conclude with our vision of the future of advanced traffic management techniques and the role they will play in the ongoing efforts for continued enhancements of the user experience.

Biography:

Dr. Mario Di Dio is a Principal Architect at CableLabs; a non-profit research and development organization funded by the global cable industry for the development of technologies for the secure delivery of high-speed data, video, voice and next generation services.

Mario is responsible for researching, conceptualizing and leading the development of new CableLabs technology innovations that will become part of the cable industry’s future wired and wireless network infrastructures. These innovations relate to a range of communication standards (DOCSIS® technology, LTE, 5G, Wi-Fi) and the deployments often aim at changing and augmenting the way end users experience their network connectivity, while offering operators opportunities for increased efficiency and reliability.

Most recently, Mario has been focused on leading projects related to mobile and Wi-Fi network architecture and traffic management techniques, in-home connectivity and virtualization.

Prior to joining CableLabs, Mario was a Principal Engineer at Artemis Networks where he co-created one of the first commercial SDR platforms for efficient and flexible LTE mobile network deployment. He also worked as Research Engineer on several research projects funded by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Union (EU) for future satellite and aeronautical communication standards. As co-founder of the project SIICAT at INPG, Mario was responsible for creating, developing and facilitating the deployment of a cost-disruptive emergency communications system that was successfully deployed and it is currently in use by several municipalities in Northern Italy.

Mario holds a Bachelor of Science in Engineering, a Master of Science in Engineering and a PhD in telecommunications engineering from the University of Pisa, Italy. He authored several scientific papers and book chapters and he has multiple patents pending.

Mario enjoys presenting and public speaking, especially around the topics of mobile network architectures, network virtualization and efficient traffic management.

Omkar Dharmadhikari

Growing customer demand for seamless wireless connectivity together with advancements in wireless technologies are enabling new ways to improve user experience. Users rely on wireless devices for accessing services that allow them to collaborate at work, stay in touch with friends and family, share and access knowledge and be entertained. Wireless devices have become a natural extension of the user and has accelerated the efforts for optimizing user experience creating technologies that enable beyond “best-effort” performance by tailoring network performance to specific user needs. Historically wireless operators have used aggregation techniques to increase throughput but those alone have proved insufficient to improve the user experience. In fact, the scarce nature of spectrum coupled with new emerging use cases and business models have shifted the focus towards advanced traffic management.

In this presentation we will walk you through the critical role that spectrum holdings and spectral efficiency play in defining the capacity and coverage the wireless operator’s network can provide. We will introduce advanced traffic management techniques and illustrate how traffic splitting, switching and steering techniques can potentially provide an overall low latency, increased reliability and seamless connectivity enhancing the user experience. The presentation will also outline how the focus on advanced traffic management techniques has resulted in several non-standardized solutions being developed with no dependency on network or end-devices. We will conclude with our vision of the future of advanced traffic management techniques and the role they will play in the ongoing efforts for continued enhancements of the user experience.

Biography:

Omkar Dharmadhikari is a Lead Wireless Architect at CableLabs, a non-profit research and development lab funded by the global cable industry. He is responsible for spectrum technology and strategy, end-to-end technology development, standards development and new technology innovation. With over 10 years of experience in wireless industry, he is a subject matter expert on mobile wireless (4G/5G), cellular-Wi-Fi convergence, wireless traffic management and Citizen’s Broadband Radio Service (CBRS).

Instrumental in developing the mobility lab at CableLabs, Omkar leads multiple testing efforts and hosts technical webinars including lab demos. He has authored several blogs on technical topics including Multipath TCP, Edge Computing, Network Slicing, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence highlighting his expertise in wireless field.

Prior to joining CableLabs, Omkar worked for Samsung and Ericsson leading feature development, lab and field interoperability testing, network deployment and network maintenance support.

Omkar actively participates in several standards organizations including 3GPP SA2 and at multiple working groups in the CBRS Alliance. He is the vice-chair of the “Test and Certification Working Group” within the CBRS Alliance. Omkar has more than 10 patents pending. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electronics and Telecommunication from Mumbai University and a Master of Science degree in Telecommunications from the University of Maryland.