Source: School of Electronics and Information Technology
Written by: Li Congduan
Edited by: Wang Dongmei

From November 25 to 29, the 2018 IEEE Information Theory Workshop (ITW), which was hosted by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Information Theory Society (IT Society) and organized by Sun Yat-sen University, was held on the South campus of Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou. About 200 scholars from 23 countries and regions around the world, including some Shannon Award winners, Professor Erdal Arikan, Professor David Tse, Professor Richard Blahut, and Professor Shlomo Shitz, as well as many technical experts from high-tech companies such as Huawei, gathered at Sun Yat-sen University and discussed the most cutting-edge progress in the field of information theory and coding.
 

 Photo of attendees of this conference
 

Before the opening of the conference, two tutorial lectures were presented in the afternoon of November 25.

On November 26, after an opening speech by Professor Fan Pingzhi, the co-Chair of the conference, the conference officially opened. Then, Professor Erdal Arikan, winner of the Shannon Award in 2018, gave a wonderful presentation on polar codes. Later on, several scholars reported their research progresses on channel capacity, information security, LDPC codes and Shannon Theory.

On November 27, the conference was chaired by Professor Pascal Vontobel, co-Chair of the Technical Program Committee (TPC). The winner of the 2017 Shannon Award, Professor David Tse, gave an impressive talk on blockchain and information theory. Afterwards, some other scholars reported their research results in Coding for Memories and Locally Repairable Codes.

On November 28, the conference was chaired by Professor Daniela Tuninetti, another TPC co-Chair. Professor Raymond W. Yeung, the founder of the network coding, presented the information diagram of the Markov random fields. Then, several scholars were invited to present some other topics in information theory and network coding.

On November 29, the conference was chaired by Professor Chen Li, co-Chair of the conference. Dr. Zhu Peiying, the leader of Huawei 5G technology, gave a detailed introduction and demonstration on the application of polar codes in 5G technology. Following that, some experts presented interesting findings in Lattice Codes and NOMA.

The ITW conference is one of the flagship conferences of the IEEE Information Theory Society. This is the third time that the conference has been held in Chinese mainland after Beijing (1988) and Chengdu (2006). Information theory and coding theory are the basis for the development of wireless communication technology. Every technological innovation in wireless communication networks is driven by breakthroughs in coded transmission technologies. The success of this conference in our university enhanced our influence in the subject of Information and Communication Engineering, and pushed Sun Yat-sen University further on the way to a world-class university.