Dr. Dorin PANAITOPOL holds a Joint-PhD Degree in Telecommunications and Signal Processing from both Ecole Supérieure d'Electricité (SUPELEC) and National University of Singapore (NUS). Since 2010 Dorin has been involved in several FP7 projects (such as QoSMOS, SACRA, OneFIT, Concerto, EMPhAtiC), CELTIC-Plus (SHARING), ANR (CORRIDOR) and H2020 projects (COHERENT). He is currently following 3GPP standard meetings as a standard delegate for THALES. His research interests are covering different domains from PHY to MAC and network layers, in the fields of: Mobile Communications (e.g. Professional Mobile Radio, LTE Advanced Pro, 5G NR), Cognitive Radio and UWB ad-hoc Sensor Networks, including system architecture, protocol, algorithms and signal processing.

Jean-Luc PERON graduated from ENSEEIHT in 1992. Specializing in signal processing dedicated to digital communications, from 1994 to 1999 he worked with Alcatel Telspace by developing modems dedicated to satellite communications and LOS links. From 1999 to 2003, he joined Sony Semiconductors Europe where he worked on the development of embedded signal processing algorithms in ASICs compliant with Bluetooth, DVB-T and ISDB-T (Japanese version of DVB-T). He joined THALES in 2003 working on Satcom modems and developing multi-carrier waveforms for TCS software radio product line. Since 2012, Jean-Luc is the head of WaveForm Design (WFD) department, responsible for defining innovative PHY and MAC layers for new TCS products.

Dr. Antonio Cipriano received the Laurea degree in telecommunications engineering from the University of Padova, Italy, in 2000. In 2001, he spent eight months working as a Young Engineer at Eutelsat, France. He received Ph.D. degree in digital communications from, jointly, the University of Padova, and the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications (ENST) Paris, France, in 2005. He held two post-doctoral positions at ENST Paris and at France Telecom Research and Development, from 2005 to 2007. In 2007 he joined Thales Communication and Security as a digital communication engineer and was involved in several national and international research projects. His main research interests are in PHY layer abstractions, PHY layer frame design, HARQ protocols, cooperative relaying, advanced receiver design.

During the past few years 5G has been presented more as an evolution from 4G rather than a revolution. Despite that, the revolution comes from the introduction of new use cases and vertical markets which in turn introduced more system flexibility not only at the Core Network (CN) side but also at the Radio Access Network (RAN) side. The combination of these two aspects created new business opportunities and brought ideas which are currently continuously evolving with the standardization work. The presentation will focus on few selected 3GPP Study Items and Work Items from Release-15 and Release-16, providing insights with respect to latest 3GPP advancements, potential applications and further 5G challenges.