Wireless for Space and Extreme Environments

2016 IEEE International Conference

ICT cubes, Aachen, Germany, September 26 - 29, 2016

Transportation

Travelling to Aachen by plane

The most important airports around Aachen are the german airports Cologne and Düsseldorf, which are well accessible by local trains of the german railway company Deutsche Bahn. The airports of Brussels (Belgium) and the international airport of Frankfurt (Germany) offer further possibilities to travel to Aachen by airplane. Both airports offer good direct connections to Aachen by the high-speed trains THALYS and ICE, respectively. Smaller airports are the ones of Liège (Belgium) and Maastricht (Netherlands). These are close to Aachen, both around 50 kilometres from the city. They offer the possibility to either rent a car or take a train and continue your travel to Aachen.

Travelling to Aachen by train

Aachen is connected to the international railway network by german trains from Deutsche Bahn (http://www.bahn.de/i/view/DEU/en) and by the high-speed train THALYS, which travels between Cologne and Paris and stops at the train station Aachen Hauptbahnhof every two hours. Additionally, the high-speed train ICE operates between Frankfurt and Brussels via Aachen Hauptbahnhof. Furthermore the cities of Cologne, Dusseldorf, Dortmund, Siegen, and Hamm are directly connected to Aachen Hauptbahnhof. Via an hourly connection to Heerlen (Netherlands), Aachen is also connected to the Dutch railway system. Aachen Hauptbahnhof is the main station of Aachen. From here, busses or taxis bring you to your accommodation and to the Eurogress congress centre within a few minutes.

Travelling to Aachen by car

Aachen can be reached by car via several major highways. The german autobahn A4 connects Aachen via Olpe-Cologne and the A44/A46 provides a direct connection between Dusseldorf and Aachen via Neuss. Additionally Aachen can be reached via the E314, which presents a connection between Antwerp (Belgium) and Aachen via the Dutch cities of Hasselt and Heerlen. Furthermore there is the possibility of reaching Aachen via Belgium by travelling on the E40, which runs from Brussels over Liège to Aachen. The connection over Brussels also offers the opportunity of travelling from London to Belgium and then to continue further to Aachen by car.

Accomodation

The accommodation in Aachen is highly divers in both quality and price. Since Aachen is like a museum we suggest to stay around the old town in order to discover the main attractions of the town by foot. But it is up to you to select an appropriate accommodation for your stay in Aachen. Nevertheless, we have the following recommendations for you:

  1. Novotel Aachen City is a high quality hotel and is close to the bus terminal as well as to the shopping malls,
  2. Hotel Garni Baccara is located close to the conference venue (15 min by foot) and a good choice for discovering the nightlife in the student region,
  3. Mercure Hotel Aachen am Dom is the best located hotel in the old town,
  4. A&O Hotel und Hostel Aachen has the shortest distance to the main train station and is also good connected by bus to both the conference venue (10-15 min) and the old town (5-10 min).

About Aachen

Aachen is sit­u­ated di­rectly on the bor­der with Bel­gium and the Nether­lands. It is Ger­many’s most west­erly city, with a pop­u­la­tion of nearly 260,000. Nearly 40,000 stu­dents at­tend Aachen’s four major col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties (Rhineland-West­phalian Tech­ni­cal Uni­ver­sity [RWTH], Uni­ver­sity of Ap­plied Sci­ences, Catholic Uni­ver­sity of Ap­plied Sci­ences and Acad­emy of Music).

Aachen unites tra­di­tion with progress. Charle­magne has left his mark through­out the city. The cathe­dral - the first mon­u­ment in Ger­many to be in­cluded in the UN­ESCO Cul­tural Her­itage list - and the gothic City Hall in which 32 Ger­man kings cel­e­brated their coro­na­tions still form the heart of Aachen’s old city cen­tre. And Charle­magne has lent his name to a prize awarded by Aachen’s cit­i­zens to per­son­al­i­ties who have ren­dered out­stand­ing ser­vices to Eu­ro­pean unity: the In­ter­na­tional Charle­magne Prize of Aachen. This award has been pre­sented on As­cen­sion Day every year since 1950.

But Aachen is by no means just a museum; it is a modern city, open to the world, with political, economic and cultural contacts that reach far beyond Germany’s borders. One example is Europe’s first transnational industrial estate with the name Avantis, which was developed in cooperation with the Dutch town of Heerlen. At EXPO 2000 in Hanover, Aachen was presented as a European model region, as a fine example of successful structural change and a remarkable instance of a region’s departure from mining and conventional industry to become one of Europe’s major high-tech locations.

This suc­cess story is a re­sult of co­op­er­a­tion be­tween the uni­ver­si­ties and the cham­bers of in­dus­try, re­search in­sti­tu­tions, com­pa­nies, busi­ness es­tab­lish­ment cen­tres and the city’s ad­min­is­tra­tion. The sci­en­tific com­pe­tence avail­able in Aachen has at­tracted fa­mous in­ter­na­tional en­ter­prises and re­search in­sti­tu­tions in­clud­ing Er­ic­s­son, Ford, Philips, Takeda Pharma and Mi­crosoft, and en­abled the suc­cess­ful plac­ing of up-and-com­ing tech­nol­ogy com­pa­nies such as Aix­tron and Parsytec on the Neuer Markt in Frank­furt. Some 500 new, for­ward-look­ing com­pa­nies pro­vid­ing over 10,000 jobs have grown up since 1985. Aachen’s col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties de­velop top tech­nolo­gies for the sun­rise in­dus­tries such as in­for­ma­tion and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion en­gi­neer­ing, plas­tics en­gi­neer­ing, com­puter sci­ence, ma­te­ri­als sci­ence and biotech­nol­ogy.

But Aachen has much to offer in re­spect of qual­ity of life, too. The city has a flair and at­mos­phere of its own. The at­trac­tive lay­out of the old city cen­tre, the im­por­tant his­toric mon­u­ments, the wells and baths over the hottest nat­ural springs in Eu­rope, the bustling ac­tiv­ity in the streets and squares, the cul­tural di­ver­sity and qual­ity (Lud­wig Forum for In­ter­na­tional Art, Suer­mondt-Lud­wig Mu­seum, Cou­ven Mu­seum, Burg Franken­berg Mu­seum, In­ter­na­tional News­pa­per Mu­seum) and the many recre­ational and leisure ac­tiv­i­ties make Aachen an ex­cit­ing and pleas­ing whole. The Car­o­lus-Therme is one of the most mod­ern and at­trac­tive ther­mal baths in Eu­rope.

Be­sides the pre­sen­ta­tion of the In­ter­na­tional Charle­magne Prize, the major an­nual events in­clude the pre­sen­ta­tion of the Car­ni­val Award "The An­ti­dote to Deadly Earnest", the Aachen Peace Prize and the Aachen In­no­va­tion Award. Nor should we for­get the CHIO World Eques­trian Fes­ti­val in the Soers re­gion and the events of the AachenSep­tem­ber­Spe­cial.

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