This paper investigates the throughput performance issue of the relay-assisted mmWave backhaul network. The maximum traffic demand of small-cell base stations (BSs) and the maximum throughput at the macro-cell BS have been found in a tree-style backhaul network through linear programming under different network settings, which concern both the number of radio chains available on BSs and the interference relationship between logical links in the backhaul network. A novel interference model for the relay-assisted mmWave backhaul network in the dense urban environment is proposed, which demonstrates the limited interference footprint of mmWave directional communications. Moreover, a scheduling algorithm is developed to find the optimal scheduling for tree-style mmWave backhaul networks. Extensive numerical analysis and simulations are conducted to show and validate the network throughput performance and the scheduling algorithm.
In this paper, a novel distributed scheduling algorithm is proposed, which aims to efficiently schedule both the uplink and downlink backhaul traffic in the relay-assisted mmWave backhaul network with a tree topology. The handshaking of control messages, calculation of local schedules, and the determination of final valid schedule are all discussed. Simulation results show that the performance of the distributed algorithm can reach very close to the maximum traffic demand of the backhaul network, and it can also adapt to the dynamic traffic with sharp traffic demand change of small-cell BSs qu…
Due to the rapid densification of small cells in 5G and beyond cellular networks, deploying wired high-bandwidth connections to every small cell base station is difficult, particularly in older metropolitan areas where infrastructure for fiber deployment is lacking. For this reason, mmWave wireless backhaul is being considered as a cost-effective and flexible alternative that has potential to support the high-rate transmission needed to accommodate backhaul traffic demands. However, maintaining a high network survivability is extremely important since networks based on mmWave communication are…
Recently, the millimeter wave (mmWave) bands have been investigated as a means to support the foreseen extreme data rate demands of next-generation cellular networks (5G). However, in order to overcome the severe isotropic path loss and the harsh propagation experienced at such high frequencies, a dense base station deployment is required, which may be infeasible because of the unavailability of fiber drops to provide wired backhauling. To address this challenge, the 3GPP is investigating the concept of Integrated Access and Backhaul (IAB), i.e., the possibility of providing wireless backhaul …
Wireless backhauling at millimeter-wave frequencies (mmWave) in static scenarios is a well-established practice in cellular networks. However, highly directional and adaptive beamforming in today's mmWave systems have opened new possibilities for self-backhauling. Tapping into this potential, 3GPP has standardized Integrated Access and Backhaul (IAB) allowing the same base station serve both access and backhaul traffic. Although much more cost-effective and flexible, resource allocation and path selection in IAB mmWave networks is a formidable task. To date, prior works have addressed this cha…
Integrated Access and Backhaul (IAB) is being investigated as a means to overcome deployment costs of ultra-dense 5G millimeter wave (mmWave) networks by realizing wireless backhaul links to relay the access traffic. For the development of these systems, however, it is fundamental to validate the performance of IAB in realistic scenarios through end-to-end system level simulations. In this paper, we shed light on the most recent standardization activities on IAB, and compare architectures with and without IAB in mmWave deployments. While it is well understood that IAB networks reduce deploymen…
The use of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based communication in millimeter-wave (mmWave) frequencies to provide on-demand radio access is a promising approach to improve capacity and coverage in beyond-5G (B5G) systems. There are several design aspects to be addressed when optimizing for the deployment of such UAV base stations. As traffic demand of mobile users varies across time and space, dynamic algorithms that correspondingly adjust the UAV locations are essential to maximize performance. In addition to careful tracking of spatio-temporal user/traffic activity, such optimization needs to …
In this paper, to address backhaul capacity bottleneck and concurrently optimize energy consumption and delay, we formulate a novel weighted-sum multi-objective optimization problem where popular content caching placement and integrated access and backhaul (IAB) millimeter (mmWave) bandwidth partitioning are optimized jointly to provide Pareto efficient optimal non-dominating solutions. In such integrated networks analysis of what-if scenarios to understand trade-offs in decision space, without losing sight of optimality, is important. A wide set of numerical investigations reveal that compare…
With the emergence of millimeter-Wave (mmWave) communication technology, the capacity of mobile backhaul networks can be significantly increased. On the other hand, Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) provides an appropriate infrastructure to offload latency-sensitive tasks. However, the amount of resources in MEC servers is typically limited. Therefore, it is important to intelligently manage the MEC task offloading by optimizing the backhaul bandwidth and edge server resource allocation in order to decrease the overall latency of the offloaded tasks. This paper investigates the task allocation probl…
With the increasing network densification, it has become exceedingly difficult to provide traditional fiber backhaul access to each cell site, which is especially true for small cell base stations (SBSs). The increasing maturity of millimeter wave (mmWave) communication has opened up the possibility of providing high-speed wireless backhaul to such cell sites. Since mmWave is also suitable for access links, the third generation partnership project (3GPP) is envisioning an integrated access and backhaul (IAB) architecture for the fifth generation (5G) cellular networks in which the same infrast…
In the scenario where small cells are densely deployed, the millimeter wave (mmWave) wireless backhaul network has been widely used. However, mmWave is easily blocked by obstacles, and how to forward the data of the blocked flows is still a significant challenge. To ensure backhauling capacity, the quality of service (QoS) requirements of flows should be satisfied. In this paper, we investigate the problem of optimal scheduling to maximize the number of flows satisfying their QoS requirements with relays exploited to overcome blockage. To achieve a practical solution, we propose a relay-assist…
The unlicensed spectrum is recently considered one of the defining solutions to meet the steadily growing traffic demand. This, in turn, has led to the enhancement for LTE in Release-13 to enable Licensed-Assisted Access (LAA) operations. The design of the medium access control (MAC) protocol for the LAA system to harmonically coexist with the incumbent WLAN system operating in an unlicensed band is critical and challenging. In this paper, we consider an Integrated Access and Backhaul (IAB) system coexisting with a Wi-Fi network operating at millimeter-wave (mmWave) unlicensed spectrum, for wh…
We investigate the problem of multi-hop scheduling in self-backhauled millimeter wave (mmWave) networks. Owing to the high path loss and blockage of mmWave links, multi-hop paths between the macro base station and the intended users via full-duplex small cells need to be carefully selected. This paper addresses the fundamental question: how to select the best paths and how to allocate rates over these paths subject to latency constraints. To answer this question, we propose a new system design, which factors in mmWave-specific channel variations and network dynamics. The problem is cast as a n…
Deployment of small cells in dense urban areas dedicated to the heterogeneous network (HetNet) and associated relay nodes for improving backhauling is expected to be an important structural element in the design of beyond 5G (B5G) and 6G wireless access networks. A key operational aspect in HetNets is how to optimally implement the wireless backhaul links to efficiently support the traffic demand. In this work, we utilize the recently proposed Robotic Aerial Small Cells (RASCs) that are able to grasp at different tall urban landforms as wireless relay nodes for backhauling. This can be conside…
The communication at mmWave frequencies is a promising enabler for ultra high data rates in the next generation of mobile cellular networks (5G). The harsh propagation environment at such high frequencies, however, demands a dense base station deployment, which may be infeasible because of the unavailability of fiber drops to provide wired backhauling. To address this issue, 3GPP has recently proposed a Study Item on Integrated Access and Backhaul (IAB), i.e., on the possibility of providing the wireless backhaul together with the radio access to the mobile terminals. The design of IAB base st…
Future 5G mobile networks will require increased backhaul (BH) capacity to connect a massive amount of high capacity small cells (SCs) to the network. Because having an optical connection to each SC might be infeasible, mmWave-based (e.g. 60 GHz) BH links are an interesting alternative due to their large available bandwidth. To cope with the increased path loss, mmWave links require directional antennas that should be able to direct their beams to different neighbors, to dynamically change the BH topology, in case new nodes are powered on/off or the traffic demand has changed. Such BH adaptati…
Recently, a mmWave-based access and backhaul integration HetNetsarchitecture (mABHetNets) has been envisioned to provide the high link capacity in both access and backhaul links. In mABHetNets, the access link and the backhaul link will share the same mm-wave spectral resources to serve cellular users as well as to maintain the backhaul capacity of the SBSs. However, a large spectrum bandwidth are occupied by the backhaul link to maintain the backhaul link capacity. Up to 50\% mmWave spectrum resource will be used in backhaul link to satisfy the high speed data traffic. Such "\emph{spectrum oc…
In milimeter wave heterogenous networks with integrated access and backhaul (mABHetNets), a considerable part of spectrum resources are occupied by the backhaul link, which limits the performance of the access link. In order to overcome such backhaul "spectrum occupancy", we introduce cache in mABHetNets. Caching popular files at small base stations (SBSs) can offload the backhaul traffic and transfer spectrum from the backhaul link to the access link. To achieve the optimal performance of the cache-enabled mABHetNets, we first analyze the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) distrib…
In this paper, we develop novel two-tier interference management strategies that enable macrocell users (MUEs) to improve their performance, with the help of open-access femtocells. To this end, we propose a rate-splitting technique using which the MUEs optimize their uplink transmissions by dividing their signals into two types: a coarse message that is intended for direct transmission to the macrocell base station and a fine message that is decoded by a neighboring femtocell and subsequently relayed over a heterogeneous (wireless/wired) backhaul. For deploying the proposed technique, we form…
Today, a large portion of the mobile data traffic is consumed behind the shielding walls of buildings or in the Faraday cage of trains. This renders cellular network coverage from outdoor cell sites difficult. Indoor small cells and distributed antennas along train tracks are often considered as a solution, but the cost and the need for optical fiber backhaul are often prohibitive. To alleviate this issue, we describe an out-of-band repeater that converts a sub-6 GHz cell signal from a small cell installed at a cell tower to a mmWave frequency for the fronthaul to buildings or distributed ante…
Limited backhaul bandwidth and blockage effects are two main factors limiting the practical deployment of millimeter wave (mmWave) networks. To tackle these issues, we study the feasibility of relaying as well as caching in mmWave networks. A user association and relaying (UAR) criterion dependent on both caching status and maximum biased received power is proposed by considering the spatial correlation caused by the coexistence of base stations (BSs) and relay nodes (RNs). A joint UAR and caching placement problem is then formulated to maximize the backhaul offloading traffic. Using stochasti…
We consider a dynamic millimeter-wave network with integrated access and backhaul, where mobile relay nodes move to auto-reconfigure the wireless backhaul. Specifically, we focus on in-band relaying networks, which conduct access and backhaul links on the same frequency band with severe constraints on co-channel interference. In this context, we jointly study the complex problem of dynamic relay node positioning, user association, and backhaul capacity allocation. To address this problem, with limited complexity, we adopt a hierarchical multi-agent reinforcement with a two-level structure. A h…
Owing to severe path loss and unreliable transmission over a long distance at higher frequency bands, we investigate the problem of path selection and rate allocation for multi-hop self-backhaul millimeter wave (mmWave) networks. Enabling multi-hop mmWave transmissions raises a potential issue of increased latency, and thus, in this work we aim at addressing the fundamental questions: how to select the best multi-hop paths and how to allocate rates over these paths subject to latency constraints? In this regard, we propose a new system design, which exploits multiple antenna diversity, mmWave …
Millimeter-wave supplies an alternative frequency band of wide bandwidth to better realize pillar technologies of enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) and ultra-reliable and lowlatency communication (uRLLC) for 5G - new radio (5G-NR). When using mmWave frequency band, relay stations to assist the coverage of base stations in radio access network (RAN) emerge as an attractive technique. However, relay selection to result in the strongest link becomes the critical technology to facilitate RAN using mmWave. A alternative approach toward relay selection is to take advantage of existing operating data …
Millimeter-wave (mmWave) communication plays a vital role to efficiently disseminate large volumes of data in beyond-5G networks. Unfortunately, the directionality of mmWave communication significantly complicates efficient data dissemination, particularly in multicasting, which is gaining more and more importance in emerging applications (e.g., V2X, public safety). While multicasting for systems operating at lower frequencies (i.e., sub-6GHz) has been extensively studied, they are sub-optimal for mmWave systems as mmWave has significantly different propagation characteristics, i.e., using the…
Recently, a mmWave-based access and backhaul integration heterogeneous networks (HetNets) architecture (mABHetNets) has been envisioned to provide high wireless capacity.Since the access link and the backhaul link share the same mmwave spectral resource, a large spectrum bandwidth is occupied by the backhaul link, which hinders the wireless access capacity improvement. To overcome the backhaul spectrum occupation problem and improve the network throughput in the existing mABHetNets, we introduce the cache at base stations (BSs). In detail, by caching popular files at small base stations (SBSs)…
Millimeter wave (mmWave) systems are emerging as an essential technology to enable extremely high data rate wireless communications. The main limiting factors of mmWave systems are blockage (high penetration loss) and deafness (misalignment between the beams of the transmitter and receiver). To alleviate these problems, it is imperative to incorporate efficient association and relaying between terminals and access points. Unfortunately, the existing association techniques are designed for the traditional interference-limited networks, and thus are highly suboptimal for mmWave communications du…
In millimeter wave (mmWave) vehicular communications, multi-hop relay disconnection by line-of-sight (LOS) blockage is a critical problem, especially in the early diffusion phase of mmWave-available vehicles, where not all the vehicles have mmWave communication devices. This paper proposes a distributed position control method for autonomous vehicles to make long relays connecting to road side units (RSUs) by avoiding blockages to communicate with each other via LOS paths. Even though vehicles with the proposed method do not use the whole information of the environments and cooperate with each…
We design and build SKYHAUL, the first large-scale, autonomous, self-organizing network of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) that are connected using a mmWave wireless mesh backhaul. While the use of a mmWave backhaul paves the way for a new class of bandwidth-intensive, latency-sensitive cooperative applications (e.g., LTE coverage during disasters, surveillance during rescue in challenging terrains), the network of UAVs allows these applications to be executed at operating ranges that are far beyond the line-of-sight distances that limit individual UAVs today. To realize the challenging vision…
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey（罗格斯新泽西州立大学）；University of Pennsylvania（宾夕法尼亚大学）
While millimeter wave (mmWave) communications promise high data rates, their sensitivity to blockage and severe signal attenuation presents challenges in their deployment in urban settings. To overcome these effects, we consider a distributed cooperative beamforming system, which relies on static relays deployed in clusters with similar channel characteristics, and where, at every time instance, only one relay from each cluster is selected to participate in beamforming to the destination. To meet the quality-of-service guarantees of the network, a key prerequisite for beamforming is relay sele…
Millimeter wave (mmWave) communications have been postulated as one of the most disruptive technologies for future 5G systems. Among mmWave bands the 60-GHz radio technology is specially suited for ultradense small cells and mobile data offloading scenarios. Many challenges remain to be addressed in mmWave communications but among them deafness, or misalignment between transmitter and receivers beams, and interference management lie among the most prominent ones. In the recent years, scenarios considering negligible interference on mmWave resource allocation have been rather common in literatu…
Rail transportation, especially, high-speed rails (HSR), is an important infrastructure for the development of national economy and the promotion of passenger experience. Due to the large bandwidth, millimeter wave (mmWave) communication is regarded as a promising technology to meet the demand of high data rates. However, since mmWave communication has the characteristic of high attenuation, mobile relay (MR) is considered in this paper. Also, full-duplex (FD) communications have been proposed to improve the spectral efficiency. However, because of the high speed, as well as the problem of pen…
The 6th generation of wireless communication (6G) is envisioned to give rise to various technologies for improving the end-to-end communication performance, where the communication is envisioned to utilize wireless signals in the millimeter wave (mmWave) frequencies and above. Among others, these technologies comprise Intelligent Reflective Surfaces (IRSs) and Mobile Relays (MRs), whose envisaged roles include mitigating the negative effects of Non-Line-of-Sight (NLoS) connectivity, in particular at mmWave and higher frequencies. The core idea behind these technologies is to use cooperative ne…
Due to their Radio-Frequency (RF) immunity, Visible Light Communications (VLC) pose as a promising technology for interference sensitive applications such as medical data networks. In this paper, we investigate mixed RF-VLC relaying systems especially suited for this type of applications that support mobility. In this system setup, the end-user, who is assumed to be on a vehicle that is in dynamic movement, is served by an indoor VLC system, while the outdoor data traffic is conveyed through multiple backhaul RF links. Furthermore, it is assumed that a single backhaul RF link is activated by t…
Wireless engineers and business planners commonly raise the question on where, when, and how millimeter-wave (mmWave) will be used in 5G and beyond. Since the next generation network is not just a new radio access standard, but instead an integration of networks for vertical markets with diverse applications, answers to the question depend on scenarios and use cases to be deployed. This paper gives four 5G mmWave deployment examples and describes in chronological order the scenarios and use cases of their probable deployment, including expected system architectures and hardware prototypes. The…
With the dense deployment of millimeter wave (mmWave) front ends and popularization of bandwidth-intensive applications, shared backhaul in fiber-wireless (FiWi) networks is still facing a bandwidth crunch. To alleviate the backhaul pressure, in this paper, caching capability is enabled at the edge of FiWi networks, i.e., optical network unit access points (ONU-APs). On the other hand, as both power budget and backhaul bandwidth in FiWi networks are constrained, it is challenging to properly leverage power for caching and that for wireless transmission to achieve superior system performance. A…
With the introduction of new technologies such as Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), High Altitude Platform Station (HAPS), Millimeter Wave (mmWave) frequencies, Massive Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (mMIMO), and beamforming, wireless backhaul is expected to be an integral part of the 5G networks. While this concept is nothing new, it was shortcoming in terms of performance compared to the fiber backhauling. However, with these new technologies, fiber is no longer the foremost technology for backhauling. With the projected densification of networks, wireless backhaul has become mandatory to use. …
Millimeter-wave (mmWave) communication is a promising technology to cope with the expected exponential increase in data traffic in 5G networks. mmWave networks typically require a very dense deployment of mmWave base stations (mmBS). To reduce cost and increase flexibility, wireless backhauling is needed to connect the mmBSs. The characteristics of mmWave communication, and specifically its high directional- ity, imply new requirements for efficient routing and scheduling paradigms. We propose an efficient scheduling method, so-called schedule-oriented optimization, based on matching theory th…
Integrated access and backhaul (IAB) is one of the promising techniques for 5G networks and beyond (6G), in which the same node/hardware is used to provide both backhaul and cellular services in a multi-hop fashion. Due to the sensitivity of the backhaul links with high rate/reliability demands, proper network planning is needed to make the IAB network performing appropriately and as good as possible. In this paper, we study the effect of deployment optimization on the coverage of IAB networks. We concentrate on the cases where, due to either geographical or interference management limitations…
