NSLab at IEEE IS2 2026: Cell-Free Massive MIMO for large-scale networked media events

This week Alex Piccioni is in Cannes, 28–30 October, at the 7th IEEE International Symposium on the Internet of Sounds (IEEE IS2 2026), presenting Enabling Large-Scale Networked Media Events through Cell-Free Massive MIMO.

At a concert or in a stadium, tens of thousands of phones compete for the same radio resources as the wireless microphones, cameras and immersive-audio capture nodes that feed the live production. Spectators mostly download; production devices need a stable, guaranteed uplink. We compared a conventional cellular deployment with Cell-Free massive MIMO under the same antenna budget, including crowd-induced blockage: both sustain the guaranteed-rate uplink, but Cell-Free delivers a far more uniform uplink across the venue while keeping spectators connected.

Work by Alex Piccioni, Claudia Rinaldi, Carlo Centofanti, Roberto Valentini and Andrea Marotta, supported by the VITALITY Spoke 1 – UnivAQ Innovation Ecosystem (NextGenerationEU, MUR).

If you are in Cannes, come and find us: Friday 30 October, 12:45, Amphitheatre 38, Main Track Session 1 on wireless systems.