Wireless communications are envisioned to bring about dramatic changes in the future, with a variety of emerging applications, such as virtual reality (VR), Internet of things (IoT), etc., becoming a reality. However, these compelling applications have imposed many new challenges, including unknown channel models, low-latency requirement in large-scale super-dense networks, etc. The amazing success of deep learning (DL) in various fields, particularly in computer science, has recently stimulated increasing interest in applying it to address those challenges. Hence, in this review, a pair of dominant methodologies of using DL for wireless communications are investigated. The first one is DL-based architecture design, which breaks the classical model-based block design rule of wireless communications in the past decades. The second one is DL-based algorithm design, which will be illustrated by several examples in a series of typical techniques conceived for 5G and beyond. Their principles, key features, and performance gains will be discussed. Furthermore, open problems and future research opportunities will also be pointed out, highlighting the interplay between DL and wireless communications. We expect that this review can stimulate more novel ideas and exciting contributions for intelligent wireless communications.
Wireless power transfer (WPT) is an emerging paradigm that will enable using wireless to its full potential in future networks, not only to convey information but also to deliver energy. Such networks will enable trillions of future low-power devices to sense, compute, connect, and energize anywhere, anytime, and on the move. The design of such future networks brings new challenges and opportunities for signal processing, machine learning, sensing, and computing so as to make the best use of the RF radiations, spectrum, and network infrastructure in providing cost-effective and real-time power…
When Robotics Meets Wireless Communications: An Introductory Tutorial
College of Computing, Mohammed VI Polytechnic University（穆罕默德六世理工大学计算机学院）；Czech Technical University in Prague（布拉格捷克技术大学）；International University of Rabat（拉巴特国际大学）；School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University of Leeds（利兹大学电子与电气工程学院）
5G wireless communications technology is being launched, with many smart applications being integrated. However, 5G specifications merge the requirements of new emerging technologies forcefully. These include data rate, capacity, latency, reliability, resources sharing, and energy/bit. To meet these challenging demands, research is focusing on 6G wireless communications enabling different technologies and emerging new applications. In this report, the latest research work on 6G technologies and applications is summarized, and the associated research challenges are discussed.
While fifth-generation (5G) communications are being rolled out around the world, sixth-generation (6G) communications have attracted much attention from both the industry and academia. Compared with 5G, 6G will have a wider frequency band, higher transmission rate, spectrum efficiency, greater connection capacity, shorter delay, wider coverage and stronger anti-interference capability, so as to meet the various network requirements for industries. In this paper, we present a survey of potential essential technologies in 6G. In particular, we will introduce artificial intelligence, intelligent…
The efficiency of wireless information and power transfer (WIPT) systems requires an essential reevaluation and rethinking of the entire transceiver chain, which is characterized by a bottom-up multi-layer design approach. In this paper, we introduce and describe the key design layers: i) "Mathematical modeling", associated with the investigation of mathematical models for the wireless power transfer process, ii) "Information-theoretic limits", which refers to the fundamental limits of the WIPT channel, iii) "Link design", corresponding to signal processing techniques that make WIPT feasible, …
Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) are regarded as a promising emerging hardware technology to improve the spectrum and energy efficiency of wireless networks by artificially reconfiguring the propagation environment of electromagnetic waves. Due to the unique advantages in enhancing wireless channel capacity, RISs have recently become a hot research topic. In this article, we focus on three fundamental physical-layer challenges for the incorporation of RISs into wireless networks, namely, channel state information acquisition, passive information transfer, and low-complexity robust sy…
Aerial communication platforms, stratospheric high-altitude platform stations (HAPS), have the potential to provide/catalyze advanced mobile wireless communication services with its ubiquitous connectivity and ultra-wide coverage radius. Recently, HAPS has gained immense popularity - achieved primarily through self-sufficient energy systems - to render long-endurance characteristics. The photo-voltaic cells mounted on the aircraft harvest solar energy during the day, which can be partially used for communication and station-keeping, whereas, the excess is stored in the rechargeable batteries f…
The roll-out of various emerging wireless services has triggered the need for the sixth-generation (6G) wireless networks to provide functions of target sensing, intelligent computing and information communication over the same radio spectrum. In this paper, we provide a unified framework integrating sensing, computing, and communication to optimize limited system resource for 6G wireless networks. In particular, two typical joint beamforming design algorithms are derived based on multi-objective optimization problems (MOOP) with the goals of the weighted overall performance maximization and t…
Green radio communication is an emerging topic since the overall footprint of information and communication technology (ICT) services is predicted to triple between 2007 and 2020. Given this research line, energy harvesting (EH) and wireless power transfer (WPT) networks can be evaluated as promising approaches. In this paper, an overview of recent trends for future green networks on the platforms of EH and WPT is provided. By rethinking the application of radio frequency (RF)-WPT, a new concept, namely green RF-WTP, is introduced. Accordingly, opening challenges and promising combinations amo…
Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is an emerging technology that is able to significantly improve the performance of wireless communications, by smartly tuning signal reflections at a large number of passive reflecting elements. On the other hand, with ubiquitous wireless devices and ambient radio-frequency signals, wireless sensing has become a promising new application for the next-generation/6G wireless networks. By synergizing low-cost IRS and fertile wireless sensing applications, this article proposes a new IRS-aided sensing paradigm for enhancing the performance of wireless sensing c…
Comprehensive Review of Deep Unfolding Techniques for Next-Generation Wireless Communication Systems
Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati（印度理工学院古瓦哈提分校）；University of Oulu（奥卢大学）；Indian Institute of Technology (BHU) Varanasi（印度理工学院（贝拿勒斯印度教大学）瓦拉纳西分校）；Indian Institute of Technology Indore（印度理工学院印多尔分校）
Social distancing plays a pivotal role in preventing the spread of viral diseases illnesses such as COVID-19. By minimizing the close physical contact among people, we can reduce the chances of catching the virus and spreading it across the community. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive survey on how emerging technologies, e.g., wireless and networking, artificial intelligence (AI) can enable, encourage, and even enforce social distancing practice. To that end, we first provide a comprehensive background of social distancing including basic concepts, measurements, models, and propose va…
Industry 5.0 vision, a step toward the next industrial revolution and enhancement to Industry 4.0, envisioned the new goals of resilient, sustainable, and human-centric approaches in diverse emerging applications, e.g., factories-of-the-future, digital society. The vision seeks to leverage human intelligence and creativity in nexus with intelligent, efficient, and reliable cognitive collaborating robots (cobots) to achieve zero waste, zerodefect, and mass customization-based manufacturing solutions. However, the vision requires the merging of cyber-physical worlds through utilizing Industry 5.…
With emerging trends in the fifth generation and robotics, the Internet of Skills will enable us to deliver skills or expertise anywhere over the Internet. In this paper, we propose a wireless connected virtual reality and haptic communication open platform to show the proof of concept for multimodal teleoperation systems in real-time. We focus on a practical implementation with commercial products to facilitate the access and modification of the system. The performance of the system is measured in terms of system latency and user-centric metrics.
University of Virginia（弗吉尼亚大学）；University of Miami（迈阿密大学）；Sun Yat-Sen University（中山大学）
We advocate a new resource allocation framework, which we term resource rationing, for wireless federated learning (FL). Unlike existing resource allocation methods for FL, resource rationing focuses on balancing resources across learning rounds so that their collective impact on the federated learning performance is explicitly captured. This new framework can be integrated seamlessly with existing resource allocation schemes to optimize the convergence of FL. In particular, a novel "later-is-better" principle is at the front and center of resource rationing, which is validated empirically in …
We introduce "Wireless 2.0": The future generation of wireless communication networks, where the radio environment becomes controllable, programmable, and intelligent by leveraging the emerging technologies of reconfigurable metasurfaces and artificial intelligence (AI). This paper, in particular, puts the emphasis on AI-based computational methods and commence with an overview of the concept of intelligent radio environments based on reconfigurable meta-surfaces. Later we elaborate on data management aspects, the requirements of supervised learning by examples, and the paradigm of reinforceme…
Broadband access is key to ensuring robust economic development and improving quality of life. Unfortunately, the communication infrastructure deployed in rural areas throughout the world lags behind its urban counterparts due to low population density and economics. This article examines the motivations and challenges of providing broadband access over vast rural regions, with an emphasis on the wireless aspect in view of its irreplaceable role in closing the digital gap. Applications and opportunities for future rural wireless communications are discussed for a variety of areas, including re…
With the commencement of the 5G of wireless networks, researchers around the globe have started paying their attention to the imminent challenges that may emerge in the beyond 5G (B5G) era. Various revolutionary technologies and innovative services are offered in 5G networks, which, along with many principal advantages, are anticipated to bring a boom in the number of connected wireless devices and the types of use-cases that may cause the scarcity of network resources. These challenges partly emerged with the advent of massive machine-type communications (mMTC) services, require extensive res…
Wireless signals are commonly used for communications. Emerging applications are giving new functions to wireless signals, in which wireless sensing is the most attractive one. Channel state information (CSI) is not only the parameter for channel equalization in communications but also the indicator for wireless sensing. However, due to the broadcast nature of wireless signals, eavesdroppers can easily capture legitimate user signals and violate user privacy by measuring CSI. Moreover, the advancement of hardware simplifies illegal eavesdropping since smart devices can track over-the-air signa…
Integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) are envisioned to be an integral part of future wireless networks, especially when operating at the millimeter-wave (mmWave) and terahertz (THz) frequency bands. However, establishing wireless connections at these high frequencies is quite challenging, mainly due to the penetrating pathloss that prevents reliable communication and sensing. Another emerging technology for next-generation wireless systems is reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs), which are capable of modifying harsh propagation environments. RISs are the focus of growing research…
Smart homes are further development of intelligent buildings and home automation, where context awareness and autonomous behaviour are added. They are based on a combination of the Internet and emerging technologies like wireless sensor nodes. These wireless sensor nodes are challenging because they consume battery power, they use network bandwidth, and they produce wireless interferences. Currently, different methods exist for handling these challenges. These methods are, however, based on adjusting the transmitter frequency and using duty-cycling in combination with sleep mode approaches. Th…
The fifth generation (5G) of wireless communication is in its infancy, and its evolving versions will be launched over the coming years. However, according to exposing the inherent constraints of 5G and the emerging applications and services with stringent requirements e.g. latency, energy/bit, traffic capacity, peak data rate, and reliability, telecom researchers are turning their attention to conceptualize the next generation of wireless communications, i.e. 6G. In this paper, we investigate 6G challenges, requirements, and trends. Furthermore, we discuss how artificial intelligence (AI) tec…
Next generation wireless networks are expected to be extremely complex due to their massive heterogeneity in terms of the types of network architectures they incorporate, the types and numbers of smart IoT devices they serve, and the types of emerging applications they support. In such large-scale and heterogeneous networks (HetNets), radio resource allocation and management (RRAM) becomes one of the major challenges encountered during system design and deployment. In this context, emerging Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) techniques are expected to be one of the main enabling technologies to…
As the standardization of 5G is being solidified, researchers are speculating what 6G will be. Integrating sensing functionality is emerging as a key feature of the 6G Radio Access Network (RAN), allowing to exploit the dense cell infrastructure of 5G for constructing a perceptive network. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive overview on the background, range of key applications and state-of-the-art approaches of Integrated Sensing and Communications (ISAC). We commence by discussing the interplay between sensing and communications (S&C) from a historical point of view, and then consider …
University of Hong Kong（香港大学）；University of New South Wales（新南威尔士大学）；Southern University of Science and Technology（南方科技大学）
Wireless federated learning (FL) is an emerging machine learning paradigm that trains a global parametric model from distributed datasets via wireless communications. This paper proposes a unit-modulus wireless FL (UMWFL) framework, which simultaneously uploads local model parameters and computes global model parameters via optimized phase shifting. The proposed framework avoids sophisticated baseband signal processing, leading to both low communication delays and implementation costs. A training loss bound is derived and a penalty alternating minimization (PAM) algorithm is proposed to minimi…
