The increase in the number of mobile users increases in the requirement of the spectrum. When effective and efficient channel allocation procedures are introduced, the requirement can be reduced. As the users move from one location to the other and wish to continue their communication without any interruption, handoff process needs to be handled transparently such that the user is not aware of the change in the control of base stations. Hence, a deep learning-based channel reservation mechanism is proposed in this paper along with a channel allocation procedure.
Millimeter wave (mmWave) and terahertz (THz) radio access technologies (RAT) are expected to become a critical part of the future cellular ecosystem providing an abundant amount of bandwidth in areas with high traffic demands. However, extremely directional antenna radiation patterns that need to be utilized at both transmit and receive sides of a link to overcome severe path losses, dynamic blockage of propagation paths by large static and small dynamic objects, macro- and micromobility of user equipment (UE) makes provisioning of reliable service over THz/mmWave RATs an extremely complex tas…
Accurate and highly-granular channel capacity telemetry of the cellular last hop is crucial for the effective operation of transport layer protocols and cutting-edge applications, such as video on demand and videotelephony. This paper presents the design, implementation, and experimental performance evaluation of NG-Scope, the first such telemetry tool able to fuse physical-layer channel occupancy readings from the cellular control channel with higher-layer packet arrival statistics and make accurate capacity estimates. NG-Scope handles the latest cellular innovations, such as when multiple ba…
Cellular networks, such as 5G systems, are becoming increasingly complex for supporting various deployment scenarios and applications. Embracing artificial intelligence (AI) in 5G evolution is critical to managing the complexity and fueling the next quantum leap in 6G cellular networks. In this article, we share our experience and best practices in applying AI in cellular networks. We first present a primer on the state of the art of AI in cellular networks, including basic concepts and recent key advances. Then we discuss 3GPP standardization aspects and share various design rationales influe…
Institute for the Wireless Internet of Things, Northeastern University（东北大学无线物联网研究所）
Next Generation (NextG) cellular networks will be natively cloud-based and built upon programmable, virtualized, and disaggregated architectures. The separation of control functions from the hardware fabric and the introduction of standardized control interfaces will enable the definition of custom closed-control loops, which will ultimately enable embedded intelligence and real-time analytics, thus effectively realizing the vision of autonomous and self-optimizing networks. This article explores the disaggregated network architecture proposed by the O-RAN Alliance as a key enabler of NextG ne…
In order to meet mobile cellular users' ever-increasing data demands, today's 4G and 5G networks are designed mainly with the goal of maximizing spectral efficiency. While they have made progress in this regard, controlling the carbon footprint and operational costs of such networks remains a long-standing problem among network designers. This paper takes a long view on this problem, envisioning a NextG scenario where the network leverages quantum annealing for cellular baseband processing. We gather and synthesize insights on power consumption, computational throughput and latency, spectral e…
The concept of Stock Options is used to address the scarcity of resources, not adequately addressed by the previous tools of our Prediction Mechanism. Using a Predictive Reservation Scheme, network and disk resources are being monitored through well-established techniques (Kernel Regression Estimators) in a given time frame. Next, an Secondary Market mechanism significantly improves the efficiency and robustness of our Predictive Reservation Scheme by allowing the fast exchange of unused (remaining) resources between the Origin Servers (CDN Clients). This exchange can happen, either by impleme…
Scheduling plays a pivotal role in multi-user wireless communications, since the quality of service of various users largely depends upon the allocated radio resources. In this paper, we propose a novel scheduling algorithm with contiguous frequency-domain resource allocation (FDRA) based on deep reinforcement learning (DRL) that jointly selects users and allocates resource blocks (RBs). The scheduling problem is modeled as a Markov decision process, and a DRL agent determines which user and how many consecutive RBs for that user should be scheduled at each RB allocation step. The state space,…
Massive machine type communications (mMTC) is one of the cornerstone services that have to be supported by 5G systems. 3GPP has already introduced LTE-M and NB-IoT, often referred to as cellular IoT, in 3GPP Releases 13, 14, and 15 and submitted these technologies as part of 3GPP IMT-2020 (i.e., 5G) technology submission to ITU-R. Even though NB-IoT and LTE-M have shown to satisfy 5G mMTC requirements defined by ITU-R, it is expected that these cellular IoT solutions will not address all aspects of IoT and ongoing digitalization, including the support for direct communication between "things" …
This letter demonstrates the use of unsupervised machine learning to enable performance self-diagnosis of next-generation cellular networks. We propose two simplified applications of unsupervised learning that can enable real-time performance self-diagnosis on edge nodes such as the radio access network intelligent controller (RIC). The first application detects anomalous performance and finds its root cause of faults, configuration, or network procedure failures. The second application uses clustering to learn the relationship between two performance measures. Our proposed applications run in…
Beyond 5G networks are expected to support massive traffic through decentralized solutions and advanced networking mechanisms. This paper aims at contributing towards this vision through the integration of device-centric wireless networks, including Device-to-Device (D2D) communications, and the Next Generation of Opportunistic networking (NGO). This integration offers multiple communication modes such as opportunistic cellular and opportunistic D2D-aided communications. Previous studies have demonstrated the potential and benefits of this integration in terms of energy efficiency, spectral ef…
Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) assisted cellular communication is gaining significant interest recently. Although it offers several advantages over terrestrial communication, UAV communication suffers from two main shortcomings. The typical untethered UAV (uUAV) has a limited battery power supply and therefore limited flying time, and it needs an extra wireless backhaul link to connect users to the core network. In this paper, we propose the utilization of the tethered UAV (tUAV) to assist the cellular network, where the tether provides power supply and connects the tUAV to the core network thr…
Drone-Enabled Load Management for Solar Small Cell Networks in Next-Gen Communications Optimization for Solar Small Cells
Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani（比拉理工科学技术学院皮拉尼分校）；Sardar Patel Institute of Technology（萨达尔·帕特尔技术学院）；Ajay Kumar Garg College of Engineering（阿贾伊·库马尔·加工程技术学院）
The amalgamation of different generations of mobile cellular networks around the globe has resulted in diverse data speed experiences for end users. At present there are no defined mechanisms in place for a subscriber of one mobile network operator (MNO) to use the services of a WiFi provider. Cellular and Data Service providers also have no standardized procedures to securely interact with each other, and to allow their subscribers to use third party services on a pay-as-you-go basis. This paper proposes a blockchain-based offloading framework that allows a subscriber of a mobile operator to …
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can provide an effective solution for improving the coverage, capacity, and the overall performance of terrestrial wireless cellular networks. In particular, UAV-assisted cellular networks can meet the stringent performance requirements of the fifth generation new radio (5G NR) applications. In this paper, the problem of energy-efficient resource allocation in UAV-assisted cellular networks is studied under the reliability and latency constraints of 5G NR applications. The framework of ruin theory is employed to allow solar-powered UAVs to capture the dynamics o…
Despite coverage enhancement in rural areas is one of the main requirements in next generations of wireless networks (i.e., 5G and 6G), the low expected profit prevents telecommunication providers from investing in such sparsely populated areas. Hence, it is required to design and deploy cost efficient alternatives for extending the cellular infrastructure to these regions. A concrete mathematical model that characterizes and clearly captures the aforementioned problem might be a key-enabler for studying the efficiency of any potential solution. Unfortunately, the commonly used mathematical to…
What will the future of UAV cellular communications be? In this tutorial article, we address such a compelling yet difficult question by embarking on a journey from 5G to 6G and sharing a large number of realistic case studies supported by original results. We start by overviewing the status quo on UAV communications from an industrial standpoint, providing fresh updates from the 3GPP and detailing new 5G NR features in support of aerial devices. We then show the potential and the limitations of such features. In particular, we demonstrate how sub-6 GHz massive MIMO can successfully tackle cel…
With 5G mobile communication systems been commercially rolled out, research discussions on next generation mobile systems, i.e., 6G, have started. On the other hand, vehicular technologies are also evolving rapidly, from connected vehicles as coined by V2X (vehicle to everything) to autonomous vehicles to the combination of the two, i.e., the networks of connected autonomous vehicles (CAV). How fast the evolution of these two areas will go head-in-head is of great importance, which is the focus of this paper. Based on a brief overview on the technological evolution of V2X to CAV and 6G key tec…
