Wireless virtual reality (VR) imposes new visual and haptic requirements that are directly linked to the quality-of-experience (QoE) of VR users. These QoE requirements can only be met by wireless connectivity that offers high-rate and high-reliability low latency communications (HRLLC), unlike the low rates usually considered in vanilla ultra-reliable low latency communication scenarios. The high rates for VR over short distances can only be supported by an enormous bandwidth, which is available in terahertz (THz) frequency bands. Guaranteeing HRLLC requires dealing with the uncertainty that is specific to the THz channel. To explore the potential of THz for meeting HRLLC requirements, a quantification of the risk for an unreliable VR performance is conducted through a novel and rigorous characterization of the tail of the end-to-end (E2E) delay. Then, a thorough analysis of the tail-value-atrisk (TVaR) is performed to concretely characterize the behavior of extreme wireless events crucial to the real-time VR experience. System reliability for scenarios with guaranteed line-of-sight (LoS) is then derived as a function of THz network parameters after deriving a novel expression for the probability distribution function of the THz transmission delay. Numerical results show that abundant bandwidth and low molecular absorption are necessary to improve the reliability. However, their effect remains secondary compared to the availability of LoS, which significantly affects the THz HRLLC performance. In particular, for scenarios with guaranteed LoS, a reliability of 99.999% (with an E2E delay threshold of 20 ms) for a bandwidth of 15 GHz along with data rates of 18.3 Gbps can be achieved by the THz network (operating at a frequency of 1 THz), compared to a reliability of 96% for twice the bandwidth, when blockages are considered.
This paper demonstrates how spectrum up to 1 THz will support mobile communications beyond 5G in the coming decades. Results of rooftop surrogate satellite/tower base station measurements at 140 GHz show the natural isolation between terrestrial networks and surrogate satellite systems, as well as between terrestrial mobile users and co-channel fixed backhaul links. These first-of-their-kind measurements and accompanying analysis show that by keeping the energy radiated by terrestrial emitters on the horizon (e.g., elevation angles $\leq$15\textdegree), there will not likely be interference in…
Wireless communication at the terahertz (THz) frequency bands (0.1-10THz) is viewed as one of the cornerstones of tomorrow's 6G wireless systems. Owing to the large amount of available bandwidth, THz frequencies can potentially provide wireless capacity performance gains and enable high-resolution sensing. However, operating a wireless system at the THz-band is limited by a highly uncertain channel. Effectively, these channel limitations lead to unreliable intermittent links as a result of a short communication range, and a high susceptibility to blockage and molecular absorption. Consequently…
Terahertz communications are envisioned as a key technology for 6G, which requires 100+ Gbps data rates, 1-millisecond latency, among other performance metrics. As a fundamental wireless infrastructure, the THz communication can boost abundant promising applications, including next-generation WLAN systems like Tera-WiFi, THz wireless backhaul, as well as other long-awaited novel communication paradigms. Serving as a basis of efficient wireless communication and networking design, this paper highlights the key THz channel features and recent advancements in device technologies. In light of thes…
Terahertz (0.1-10 THz) communications are envisioned as a key technology for sixth generation (6G) wireless systems. The study of underlying THz wireless propagation channels provides the foundations for the development of reliable THz communication systems and their applications. This article provides a comprehensive overview of the study of THz wireless channels. First, the three most popular THz channel measurement methodologies, namely, frequency-domain channel measurement based on a vector network analyzer (VNA), time-domain channel measurement based on sliding correlation, and time-domai…
Mitigating channel fading and transceiver impairments are desirable for high-speed terahertz (THz) wireless links. This paper analyzes the performance of a multi-antenna THz wireless system by considering the combined effect of pointing errors and fluctuating two-ray (FTR) fading model. We provide a statistical characterization of the maximal ratio combining (MRC) receiver over independent and nonidentical (i.ni.d.) channel conditions in terms of multi-variate Fox's H by deriving density and distribution functions of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of a single-link THz link using incomplete Ga…
With the standardization of 5G, commercial millimeter wave (mmWave) communications has become a reality despite all the concerns about the unfavorable propagation characteristics of these frequencies. Even though the 5G systems are still being rolled out, it is argued that their gigabits per second rates may fall short in supporting many emerging applications, such as 3D gaming and extended reality. Such applications will require several hundreds of gigabits per second to several terabits per second data rates with low latency and high reliability, which are expected to be the design goals of …
Future wireless cellular networks will utilize millimeter-wave and sub-THz frequencies and deploy small-cell base stations to achieve data rates on the order of hundreds of Gigabits per second per user. The move to sub-THz frequencies will require attention to sustainability and reduction of power whenever possible to reduce the carbon footprint while maintaining adequate battery life for the massive number of resource-constrained devices to be deployed. This article analyzes power consumption of future wireless networks using a new metric, the power waste factor ($ W $), which shows promise f…
With the explosive growth of mobile traffic demand, densely deployed small cells underlying macrocells have great potential for 5G and beyond wireless networks. In this paper, we consider the problem of supporting traffic flows with diverse QoS requirements by exploiting three high frequency bands, i.e., the 28GHz band, the E-band, and the Terahertz (THz) band. The cooperation of the three bands is helpful for maximizing the number of flows with their QoS requirements satisfied. To solve the formulated nonlinear integer programming problem, we propose a triple-band scheduling scheme which can …
Small-cell cellular base stations are going to be used for mmWave and sub-THz communication systems to provide multi-Gbps data rates and reliable coverage to mobile users. This paper analyzes the base station coverage of sub-THz communication systems and the system performance in terms of spectral efficiency through Monte Carlo simulations for both single-cell and multi-cell cases. The simulations are based on realistic channel models derived from outdoor field measurements at 142 GHz in urban microcell (UMi) environments conducted in downtown Brooklyn, New York. The single-cell base station c…
Although Terahertz communication systems can provide high data rates, it needs high directional beamforming at transmitters and receivers to achieve such rates over a long distance. Therefore, an efficient beam training method is vital to accelerate the link establishment. In this study, we propose a low-complexity beam training scheme of terahertz communication system which uses a low-cost small-scale hybrid architecture to assist a large-scale array for data transmission. The proposed scheme includes two key stages: (1) coarse AoAs/AoDs estimation for beam subset optimization in auxiliary ar…
Wireless communications over Terahertz (THz)-band frequencies are vital enablers of ultra-high rate applications and services in sixth-generation (6G) networks. However, THz communications suffer from poor coverage because of inherent THz features such as high penetration losses, severe path loss, and significant molecular absorption. To surmount these critical challenges and fully exploit the THz band, we explore a coexisting radio frequency (RF) and THz finite indoor network in which THz small cells are deployed to provide high data rates, and RF macrocells are deployed to satisfy coverage r…
This paper provides an analysis of radio wave scattering for frequencies ranging from the microwave to the Terahertz band (e.g., 1 GHz - 1 THz), by studying the scattering power reradiated from various types of materials with different surface roughnesses. First, fundamentals of scattering and reflection are developed and explained for use in wireless mobile radio, and the effect of scattering on the reflection coefficient for rough surfaces is investigated. Received power is derived using two popular scattering models - the directive scattering (DS) model and the radar cross section (RCS) mod…
Guaranteeing ultra reliable low latency communications (URLLC) with high data rates for virtual reality (VR) services is a key challenge to enable a dual VR perception: visual and haptic. In this paper, a terahertz (THz) cellular network is considered to provide high-rate VR services, thus enabling a successful visual perception. For this network, guaranteeing URLLC with high rates requires overcoming the uncertainty stemming from the THz channel. To this end, the achievable reliability and latency of VR services over THz links are characterized. In particular, a novel expression for the proba…
This paper is concerned with the scaling of the number of hops in a large scale wireless ad-hoc network (WANET), a quantity we call network latency. A large network latency affects all aspects of data communication in a WANET, including an increase in delay, packet loss, required processing power and memory. We consider network management and data routing challenges in WANETs with scalable network latency. On the physical side, reducing network latency imposes a significantly higher power and bandwidth demand on nodes, as is reflected in a set of new bounds. On the protocol front, designing di…
Communications in the terahertz band (THz) (0.1--10~THz) have been regarded as a promising technology for future 6G and beyond wireless systems, to overcome the challenges of evergrowing wireless data traffic and crowded spectrum. As the frequency increases from the microwave band to the THz band, new spectrum features pose unprecedented challenges to wireless communication system design. The molecular absorption effect is one of the new THz spectrum properties, which enlarges the path loss and noise at specific frequencies. This brings in a double-edged sword for THz wireless communication sy…
Using tools from stochastic geometry, this paper develops a tractable framework to analyze the performance of a mobile user in a two-tier wireless network operating on sub-6GHz and terahertz (THz) transmission frequencies. Specifically, using an equivalence distance approach, we characterize the overall handoff (HO) probability in terms of the horizontal and vertical HO and mobility-aware coverage probability. In addition, we characterize novel coverage probability expressions for THz network in the presence of molecular absorption noise and highlight its significant impact on the users' perfo…
Future wireless services, such as the metaverse require high information rate, reliability, and low latency. Multi-user wireless systems can meet such requirements by utilizing the abundant terahertz bandwidth with a massive number of antennas, creating narrow beamforming solutions. However, existing solutions lack proper modeling of channel dynamics, resulting in inaccurate beamforming solutions in high-mobility scenarios. Herein, a dynamic, semantically aware beamforming solution is proposed for the first time, utilizing novel artificial intelligence algorithms in variational causal inferenc…
Terahertz (THz) communications are regarded as a pillar technology for the sixth generation (6G) wireless systems, by offering multi-ten-GHz bandwidth. To overcome the short transmission distance and huge propagation loss, ultra-massive (UM) MIMO systems that employ sub-millimeter wavelength antennas array are proposed to enable an enticingly high array gain. In the UM-MIMO systems, hybrid beamforming stands out for its great potential in promisingly high data rate and reduced power consumption. In this paper, challenges and features of the THz hybrid beamforming design are investigated, in li…
We investigate the fundamental information theoretic limits of cache-aided wireless networks, in which edge nodes (or transmitters) are endowed with caches that can store popular content, such as multimedia files. This architecture aims to localize popular multimedia content by proactively pushing it closer to the edge of the wireless network, thereby alleviating backhaul load. An information theoretic model of such networks is presented, that includes the introduction of a new metric, namely normalized delivery time (NDT), which captures the worst case time to deliver any requested content to…
Tri-Band Channel Measurement-Enabled Multi-Layer Digital Twin for Terahertz Wireless Data Centers
Terahertz Wireless Communications (TWC) Interdisciplinary Research Center, Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学太赫兹无线通信（TWC）跨学科研究中心）；Huawei Technologies Company Ltd.（华为技术有限公司）；School of Information Science and Electronic Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学信息科学与工程学院）
Next-generation wireless networks will provide users ubiquitous low-latency computing services using devices at the network edge, called mobile edge computing (MEC). The key operation of MEC, mobile computation offloading (MCO), is to offload computation intensive tasks from users. Since each edge device comprises an access point (AP) and a computer server (CS), a MEC network can be decomposed as a radio access network (RAN) cascaded with a CS network (CSN). Based on the architecture, we investigate network constrained latency performance, namely communication latency (comm-latency) and comput…
In this paper, we propose a novel deep reinforcement learning framework to maximize user fairness in terms of delay. To this end, we devise a new version of the modified largest weighted delay first (M-LWDF) algorithm, which is called $β$-M-LWDF, aiming to fulfill an appropriate balance between user fairness and average delay. This balance is defined as a feasible region on the cumulative distribution function (CDF) of the user delay that allows identifying unfair states, feasible-fair states, and over-fair states. Simulation results reveal that our proposed framework outperforms traditional r…
Interactive, immersive and critical applications demand ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC). To build wireless communication systems that can support these applications, understanding the characteristics of the wireless medium is paramount. Although wireless channel characteristics and dynamics have been extensively studied, it is important to revisit these concepts in the context of the strict demands of low latency and ultra-reliability. In this paper, we bring a modeling approach from robust control to wireless communication -- the wireless channel characteristics are given a n…
In this letter, we analyze the achievable rate of ultra-reliable low-latency communications (URLLC) in a randomly modeled wireless network. We use two mathematical tools to properly characterize the considered system: i) stochastic geometry to model spatial locations of the transmitters in a network, and ii) finite block-length analysis to reflect the features of the short-packets. Exploiting these tools, we derive an integral-form expression of the decoding error probability as a function of the target rate, the path-loss exponent, the communication range, the density, and the channel coding …
Ultra-high bandwidth, negligible latency and seamless communication for devices and applications are envisioned as major milestones that will revolutionize the way by which societies create, distribute and consume information. The remarkable expansion of wireless data traffic that we are witnessing recently has advocated the investigation of suitable regimes in the radio spectrum to satisfy users' escalating requirements and allow the development and exploitation of both massive capacity and massive connectivity of heterogeneous infrastructures. To this end, the Terahertz (THz) frequency band …
Immersive social interactions of mobile users are soon to be enabled within a virtual space, by means of virtual reality (VR) technologies and wireless cellular systems. In a VR mobile social network, the states of all interacting users should be updated synchronously and with low latency via two-way communications with edge computing servers. The resulting end-to-end latency depends on the relationship between the virtual and physical locations of the wireless VR users and of the edge servers. In this work, the problem of analyzing and optimizing the end-to-end latency is investigated for a s…
In this paper, we consider an information update system where wireless sensor sends timely updates to the destination over a random blocking terahertz channel with the supply of harvested energy and reliable energy backup. The paper aims to find the optimal information updating policy that minimize the time-average weighted sum of the Age of information(AoI) and the reliable energy costs by formulating an infinite state Markov decision process(MDP). With the derivation of the monotonicity of value function on each component, the optimal information updating policy is proved to have a threshold…
This paper proposes interference mitigation techniques for provisioning ultrareliable low-latency wireless communication in an industrial automation setting, where multiple transmissions from controllers to actuators interfere with each other. Channel fading and interference are key impairments in wireless communication. This paper leverages the recently proposed ``Occupy CoW'' protocol that efficiently exploits the broadcast opportunity and spatial diversity through a two-hop cooperative communication strategy among distributed receivers to combat deep fading, but points out that because this…
The future connectivity landscape and, notably, the 5G wireless systems will feature Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communication (URLLC). The coupling of high reliability and low latency requirements in URLLC use cases makes the wireless access design very challenging, in terms of both the protocol design and of the associated transmission techniques. This paper aims to provide a broad perspective on the fundamental tradeoffs in URLLC as well as the principles used in building access protocols. Two specific technologies are considered in the context of URLLC: massive MIMO and multi-connectivity, …
Terahertz (THz) communication is a topic of much research in the context of high-capacity next-generation wireless networks. Quantum communication is also a topic of intensive research, most recently in the context of space-based deployments. In this work we explore the use of THz frequencies as a means to achieve quantum communication within a constellation of micro-satellites in Low-Earth-Orbit (LEO). Quantum communication between the micro-satellite constellation and high-altitude terrestrial stations is also investigated. Our work demonstrates that THz quantum entanglement distribution and…
The 5G Phase-2 and beyond wireless systems will focus more on vertical applications such as autonomous driving and industrial Internet-of-things, many of which are categorized as ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communications (uRLLC). In this article, an alternative view on uRLLC is presented, that information latency, which measures the distortion of information resulted from time lag of its acquisition process, is more relevant than conventional communication latency of uRLLC in wireless networked control systems. An AI-assisted Situationally-aware Multi-Agent Reinforcement learning framework for…
Guaranteeing fresh and reliable information for augmented reality (AR) services is a key challenge to enable a real-time experience and sustain a high quality of physical experience (QoPE) for the users. In this paper, a terahertz (THz) cellular network is used to exchange rate-hungry AR content. For this network, guaranteeing an instantaneous low peak age of information (PAoI) is necessary to overcome the uncertainty stemming from the THz channel. In particular, a novel economic concept, namely, the risk of ruin is proposed to examine the probability of occurrence of rare, but extremely high …
This paper studies the decentralized coded caching for a Fog Radio Access Network (F-RAN), whereby two edge-nodes (ENs) connected to a cloud server via fronthaul links with limited capacity are serving the requests of $K_r$ users. We consider all ENs and users are equipped with caches. A decentralized content placement is proposed to independently store contents at each network node during the off-peak hours. After that, we design a coded delivery scheme in order to deliver the user demands during the peak-hours under the objective of minimizing the normalized delivery time (NDT), which refers…
Ensuring ultra-reliable and low-latency communication (URLLC) for 5G wireless networks and beyond is of capital importance and is currently receiving tremendous attention in academia and industry. At its core, URLLC mandates a departure from expected utility-based network design approaches, in which relying on average quantities (e.g., average throughput, average delay and average response time) is no longer an option but a necessity. Instead, a principled and scalable framework which takes into account delay, reliability, packet size, network architecture, and topology (across access, edge, a…
Device-to-Device (D2D) communication can support the operation of cellular systems by reducing the traffic in the network infrastructure. In this paper, the benefits of D2D communication are investigated in the context of a Fog-Radio Access Network (F-RAN) that leverages edge caching and fronthaul connectivity for the purpose of content delivery. Assuming offline caching, out-of-band D2D communication, and an F-RAN with two edge nodes and two user equipments, an information-theoretically optimal caching and delivery strategy is presented that minimizes the delivery time in the high signal-to-n…
Terahertz (THz) communications have emerged as a promising candidate to support the heavy data traffic and exploding network capacity in the future 6G wireless networks. However, THz communications are facing many challenges for practical implementation, such as propagation loss, signal blockage, and hardware cost. In this article, an emerging paradigm of intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) assisted THz communications is analyzed, to address the above issues, by leveraging the joint active and passive beamforming to enhance the communication quality and reduce overheads. Aiming at practical i…
The aim of this paper is to study the effect of cooperation on system delay, quantified as the number of retransmissions required to deliver a broadcast message to all intended receivers. Unlike existing works on broadcast scenarios, where distance between nodes is not explicitly considered, we examine the joint effect of small scale fading and propagation path loss. Also, we study cooperation in application to finite networks, i.e. when the number of cooperating nodes is small. Stochastic geometry and order statistics are used to develop analytical models that tightly match the simulation res…
The wireless research community has expressed major interest in the sub-terahertz band for enabling mobile communications in future wireless networks. The sub-terahertz band offers a large amount of available bandwidth and, therefore, the promise to realize wireless communications at optical speeds. At such high frequency bands, the transceivers need to have larger apertures and need to be deployed more densely than at lower frequency bands. These factors proportionally increase the far-field limit and the spherical curvature of the electromagnetic waves cannot be ignored anymore. This offers …
Detecting the presence of a random wireless source with minimum latency utilizing an array of radio sensors is considered. The problem is studied under the constraint that the analog-to-digital conversion at each sensor is restricted to reading the sign of the analog received signal. We formulate the resulting digital signal processing task as a sequential hypothesis test in simple form. To circumvent the intractable probabilistic model of the multivariate binary array data, a reduced model representation within the exponential family in conjunction with a log-likelihood ratio approximation is…
Designing distributed, fast and reliable wireless consensus protocols is instrumental in enabling mission-critical decentralized systems, such as robotic networks in the industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), drone swarms in rescue missions, and so forth. However, chasing both low-latency and reliability of consensus protocols is a challenging task. The problem is aggravated under wireless connectivity that may be slower and less reliable, compared to wired connections. To tackle this issue, we investigate fundamental relationships between consensus latency and reliability through the lens of w…
A relentless trend in wireless communications is the hunger for bandwidth, and fresh bandwidth is only to be found at ever-higher frequencies. While 5G systems are seizing the mmWave band, the attention of researchers is shifting already to the terahertz range. In that distant land of tiny wavelengths, antenna arrays can serve for more than power-enhancing beamforming. Defying lower-frequency wisdom, spatial multiplexing becomes feasible even in line-of-sight conditions. This paper reviews the underpinnings of this phenomenon, and it surveys recent results on the ensuing information-theoretic …
Ultra reliable, low latency vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications is a key requirement for seamless operation of autonomous vehicles (AVs) in future smart cities. To this end, cellular small base stations (SBSs) with edge computing capabilities can reduce the end-to-end (E2E) service delay by processing requested tasks from AVs locally, without forwarding the tasks to a remote cloud server. Nonetheless, due to the limited computational capabilities of the SBSs, coupled with the scarcity of the wireless bandwidth resources, minimizing the E2E latency for AVs and achieving a reliable V2…
Wireless communication in the TeraHertz band (0.1--10 THz) is envisioned as one of the key enabling technologies for the future six generation (6G) wireless communication systems. However, very high propagation attenuations and molecular absorptions of THz frequencies often limit the signal transmission distance and coverage range. Benefited from the recent breakthrough on the reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) for realizing smart radio propagation environment, we propose a novel hybrid beamforming scheme for the multi-hop RIS-assisted communication networks to improve the coverage rang…
Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communication (URLLC) is one of the distinctive features of the upcoming 5G wireless communication, going down to packet error rates (PER) of $10^{-9}$. In this paper we discuss the statistical properties of the wireless channel models that are relevant for characterization of the lower tail of the Cumulative Distribution Function (CDF). We show that, for a wide range of channel models, the outage probability at URLLC levels can be approximated by a simple power law expression, whose exponent and offset depend on the actual channel model. The main insights from the a…
Unlocking the full potential of millimeter-wave and sub-terahertz wireless communication networks hinges on realizing unprecedented low-latency and high-reliability requirements. The challenge in meeting those requirements lies partly in the sensitivity of signals in the millimeter-wave and sub-terahertz frequency ranges to blockages. One promising way to tackle that challenge is to help a wireless network develop a sense of its surrounding using machine learning. This paper attempts to do that by utilizing deep learning and computer vision. It proposes a novel solution that proactively predic…
Ultra-reliable low latency communication (URLLC) is an important new feature brought by 5G, with a potential to support a vast set of applications that rely on mission-critical links. In this article, we first discuss the principles for supporting URLLC from the perspective of the traditional assumptions and models applied in communication/information theory. We then discuss how these principles are applied in various elements of the system design, such as use of various diversity sources, design of packets and access protocols. The important messages are that there is a need to optimize the t…
