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Recently, the vector dirty paper coding (DPC) achievable rate region has been shown to be the capacity region of a multiple-input multiple-output Gaussian broadcast channel (MIMO GBC). With DPC, the multiuser interference noncausally known at the transmitter can be completely removed. In this paper, we present a vector DPC structure for MIMO GBC. It is a generalization of the single antenna superposition dirty paper coding for the scalar Gaussian dirty paper problem proposed by Bennatan et al. In a theoretical random code setting, this construction is shown to be able to achieve the promised rate performance of the MIMO GBC. We also implement it with existing vector quantizer and capacity-achieving channel coding. Combined with iterative decoding, a design example validates the effectiveness of our methods.

Although the capacity of multiple-input/multiple-output (MIMO) broadcast channels (BCs) can be achieved by dirty paper coding (DPC), it is difficult to implement in practical systems. This paper investigates if, for a large number of users, simpler schemes can achieve the same performance. Specifically, we show that a zero-forcing beamforming (ZFBF) strategy, while generally suboptimal, can achieve the same asymptotic sum capacity as that of DPC, as the number of users goes to infinity. In proving this asymptotic result, we provide an algorithm for determining which users should be active under ZFBF. These users are semiorthogonal to one another and can be grouped for simultaneous transmission to enhance the throughput of scheduling algorithms. Based on the user grouping, we propose and compare two fair scheduling schemes in round-robin ZFBF and proportional-fair ZFBF. We provide numerical results to confirm the optimality of ZFBF and to compare the performance of ZFBF and proposed fair scheduling schemes with that of various MIMO BC strategies.

Recently, the capacity region of a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) Gaussian broadcast channel, with Gaussian codebooks and known-interference cancellation through dirty paper coding, was shown to equal the union of the capacity regions of a collection of MIMO multiple-access channels. We use this duality result to evaluate the system capacity achievable in a cellular wireless network with multiple antennas at the base station and multiple antennas at each terminal. Some fundamental properties of the rate region are exhibited and algorithms for determining the optimal weighted rate sum and the optimal covariance matrices for achieving a given rate vector on the boundary of the rate region are presented. These algorithms are then used in a simulation study to determine potential capacity enhancements to a cellular system through known-interference cancellation. We study both the circuit data scenario in which each user requires a constant data rate in every frame and the packet data scenario in which users can be assigned a variable rate in each frame so as to maximize the long-term average throughput. In the case of circuit data, the outage probability as a function of the number of active users served at a given rate is determined through simulations. For the packet data case, long-term average throughputs that can be achieved using the proportionally fair scheduling algorithm are determined. We generalize the zero-forcing beamforming technique to the multiple receive antennas case and use this as the baseline for the packet data throughput evaluation.

The growing demand for virtual reality (VR) applications requires wireless systems to provide a high transmission rate to support 360-degree video streaming to multiple users simultaneously. In this paper, we propose an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-aided rate-splitting (RS) VR streaming system. In the proposed system, RS facilitates the exploitation of the shared interests of the users in VR streaming, and IRS creates additional propagation channels to support the transmission of high-resolution 360-degree videos. IRS also enhances the capability to mitigate the performance bottleneck caused by the requirement that all RS users have to be able to decode the common message. We formulate an optimization problem for maximization of the achievable bitrate of the 360-degree video subject to the quality-of-service (QoS) constraints of the users. We propose a deep deterministic policy gradient with imitation learning (Deep-GRAIL) algorithm, in which we leverage deep reinforcement learning (DRL) and the hidden convexity of the formulated problem to optimize the IRS phase shifts, RS parameters, beamforming vectors, and bitrate selection of the 360-degree video tiles. We also propose RavNet, which is a deep neural network customized for the policy learning in our Deep-GRAIL algorithm. Performance evaluation based on a real-world VR streaming dataset shows that the proposed IRS-aided RS VR streaming system outperforms several baseline schemes in terms of system sum-rate, achievable bitrate of the 360-degree videos, and online execution runtime. Our results also reveal the respective performance gains obtained from RS and IRS for improving the QoS in multiuser VR streaming systems., Comment: 20 pages, 12 figures. This paper has been submitted to IEEE journal for possible publication

With the development of next-generation wireless networks, the Internet of Things (IoT) is evolving towards the intelligent IoT (iIoT), where intelligent applications usually have stringent delay and jitter requirements. In order to provide low-latency services to heterogeneous users in the emerging iIoT, multi-tier computing was proposed by effectively combining edge computing and fog computing. More specifically, multi-tier computing systems compensate for cloud computing through task offloading and dispersing computing tasks to multi-tier nodes along the continuum from the cloud to things. In this paper, we investigate key techniques and directions for wireless communications and resource allocation approaches to enable task offloading in multi-tier computing systems. A multi-tier computing model, with its main functionality and optimization methods, is presented in details. We hope that this paper will serve as a valuable reference and guide to the theoretical, algorithmic, and systematic opportunities of multi-tier computing towards next-generation wireless networks.

The thriving of artificial intelligence (AI) applications is driving the further evolution of wireless networks. It has been envisioned that 6G will be transformative and will revolutionize the evolution of wireless from "connected things" to "connected intelligence". However, state-of-the-art deep learning and big data analytics based AI systems require tremendous computation and communication resources, causing significant latency, energy consumption, network congestion, and privacy leakage in both of the training and inference processes. By embedding model training and inference capabilities into the network edge, edge AI stands out as a disruptive technology for 6G to seamlessly integrate sensing, communication, computation, and intelligence, thereby improving the efficiency, effectiveness, privacy, and security of 6G networks. In this paper, we shall provide our vision for scalable and trustworthy edge AI systems with integrated design of wireless communication strategies and decentralized machine learning models. New design principles of wireless networks, service-driven resource allocation optimization methods, as well as a holistic end-to-end system architecture to support edge AI will be described. Standardization, software and hardware platforms, and application scenarios are also discussed to facilitate the industrialization and commercialization of edge AI systems., This work is a JSAC invited survey & tutorial paper. Copyright may be transferred without notice, after which this version may no longer be accessible

The next-generation of wireless networks will enable many machine learning (ML) tools and applications to efficiently analyze various types of data collected by edge devices for inference, autonomy, and decision making purposes. However, due to resource constraints, delay limitations, and privacy challenges, edge devices cannot offload their entire collected datasets to a cloud server for centrally training their ML models or inference purposes. To overcome these challenges, distributed learning and inference techniques have been proposed as a means to enable edge devices to collaboratively train ML models without raw data exchanges, thus reducing the communication overhead and latency as well as improving data privacy. However, deploying distributed learning over wireless networks faces several challenges including the uncertain wireless environment (e.g., dynamic channel and interference), limited wireless resources (e.g., transmit power and radio spectrum), and hardware resources (e.g., computational power). This paper provides a comprehensive study of how distributed learning can be efficiently and effectively deployed over wireless edge networks. We present a detailed overview of several emerging distributed learning paradigms, including federated learning, federated distillation, distributed inference, and multi-agent reinforcement learning. For each learning framework, we first introduce the motivation for deploying it over wireless networks. Then, we present a detailed literature review on the use of communication techniques for its efficient deployment. We then introduce an illustrative example to show how to optimize wireless networks to improve its performance. Finally, we introduce future research opportunities. In a nutshell, this paper provides a holistic set of guidelines on how to deploy a broad range of distributed learning frameworks over real-world wireless communication networks.

The Second Call for Papers of the Series on Machine Learning in Communications and Networks has continued to receive a great number of high-quality papers covering various aspects of intelligent communication systems. In addition to those already published, we include in this issue 27 articles that have been submitted to the call. In the following, we provide a brief review of key contributions of papers in this issue according to their topics.

In this paper, we spotlight vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications in 5G cellular networks. Cellular V2X (C-V2X) communications in 5G enable more advanced services with requirements of ultra-low latency and ultra-high reliability. How to make full use of the limited physical-layer resources is a key determinant to guarantee the quality of service (QoS). Therefore, resource allocation plays an essential role in exchanging information between vehicles, infrastructure, and other devices. In order to intelligently and reasonably allocate resources, a self-adaptive fuzzy logic-based strategy is developed in this paper. To evaluate the network performance for this adaptive strategy, a system model for V2X communications is built for urban areas, and typical safety and non-safety services are deployed in the network. Simulation results reveal that the proposed fuzzy logic-based algorithm can substantially improve resource utilization and satisfy the requirements of V2X services, compared with prior counterparts, which cannot provide guaranteed services due to low resource utilization.

Millimeter-wave (mmWave) and sub-Terahertz (THz) frequencies are expected to play a vital role in 6G wireless systems and beyond due to the vast available bandwidth of many tens of GHz. This paper presents an indoor 3-D spatial statistical channel model for mmWave and sub-THz frequencies based on extensive radio propagation measurements at 28 and 140 GHz conducted in an indoor office environment from 2014 to 2020. Omnidirectional and directional path loss models and channel statistics such as the number of time clusters, cluster delays, and cluster powers were derived from over 15,000 measured power delay profiles. The resulting channel statistics show that the number of time clusters follows a Poisson distribution and the number of subpaths within each cluster follows a composite exponential distribution for both LOS and NLOS environments at 28 and 140 GHz. This paper proposes a unified indoor statistical channel model for mmWave and sub-Terahertz frequencies following the mathematical framework of the previous outdoor NYUSIM channel models. A corresponding indoor channel simulator is developed, which can recreate 3-D omnidirectional, directional, and multiple input multiple output (MIMO) channels for arbitrary mmWave and sub-THz carrier frequency up to 150 GHz, signal bandwidth, and antenna beamwidth. The presented statistical channel model and simulator will guide future air-interface, beamforming, and transceiver designs for 6G and beyond., Comment: 15 pages, 14 figures, 7 tables

Massive access, also known as massive connectivity or massive machine-type communication (mMTC), is one of the main use cases of the fifth-generation (5G) and beyond 5G (B5G) wireless networks. In the past few years, it has received considerable attention in academia and industry. This Special Issue (SI) of the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (JSAC) on Massive Access for 5G and Beyond contains the latest results of researchers, industry practitioners, and individuals working on related research problems. Due to the extremely high response to the Call for Papers, this SI is split into two parts. The first part includes a guest editor-authored survey paper and 17 technical papers focusing on access models and access protocols, while the second part contains 18 papers focusing on access techniques and coverage enhancement approaches. We sincerely thank the authors, reviewers, JSAC staffs, and the Senior Editor, Prof. Wayne Stark, for their effort and time in preparing this SI.

Ultra-narrowband (UNB) communications has become a signature feature for many emerging low-power wide-area (LPWA) networks. Specifically, using extremely narrowband signals helps the network connect more Internet-of-things (IoT) devices within a given band. It also improves robustness to interference, extending the coverage of the network. In this paper, we study the coexistence capability of UNB networks and their scalability to enable massive access. To this end, we develop a stochastic geometry framework to analyze and model UNB networks on a large scale. The framework captures the unique characteristics of UNB communications, including the asynchronous time-frequency access, signal repetition, and the absence of base station (BS) association. Closed-form expressions of the transmission success probability and network connection density are presented for several UNB protocols. We further discuss multiband access for UNB networks, proposing a low-complexity protocol. Our analysis reveals several insights on the geographical diversity achieved when devices do not connect to a single BS, the optimal number of signal repetitions, and how to utilize multiple bands without increasing the complexity of BSs. Simulation results are provided to validate the analysis, and they show that UNB communications enables a single BS to connect thousands of devices even when the spectrum is shared with other networks., This paper is accepted for publication in the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1811.11092

Technological development expands the computation process of smart devices that adopt the telecare medical information system (TMIS) to fulfill the demands of the healthcare organization. It provides better medical identification to claim the features namely trustworthy, efficient, and resourceful. Moreover, the telecare services automate the remote healthcare monitoring process to ease professional workloads. Importantly, it is conceived to be more timesaving, economical, and easy healthcare access. Cloud-Based Medical Healthcare (CBMH) system is a standard platform that gives its support to the patients for emergency treatment from the medical experts over Internet communication. Since the medical records are very sensitive, security protection is much necessitated. In addition, patient anonymity should be well preserved. In 2016, Chiou et al. proposed a mutual authentication protocol for the Telecare Medical Information System (TMIS) using Cloud Environment (CE). They claim that their protocol satisfies patient anonymity. However, this paper proves that the Chiou et al. scheme is not only completely insecure against the patient anonymity, health-report revelation, health-report forgery, report confidentiality, and non-repudiation but also fails to validate the service access against verifiability, undeniability and unforgeability. In order to provide better mutual authenticity, this paper suggests the framework of smart service authentication to cross-examine the common secret session key among the communication entities. In order to examine the security properties, formal and informal verification was carried out. Lastly, to prove the security and performance efficiency of a system, the proposed SSA framework was implemented using FPGA and Moteiv TMote Sky-Mote. A proposed smart service authentication (SSA) framework is presented to ensure better data security between the patients and the physicians. The formal and informal security analysis proves the significance of the SSA framework model to withstand the security attacks such as health-report forgery, health-report revelation, server-spoofing etc. As a result, it is claimed that it can be well suited for TMIS.

Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) has emerged as a promising technique for future wireless communication networks. How to reliably transmit information in a RIS-based communication system arouses much interest. This paper proposes a reflecting modulation (RM) scheme for RIS-based communications, where both the reflecting patterns and transmit signals can carry information. Depending on that the transmitter and RIS jointly or independently deliver information, RM is further classified into two categories: jointly mapped RM (JRM) and separately mapped RM (SRM). JRM and SRM are naturally superior to existing schemes, because the transmit signal vectors, reflecting patterns, and bit mapping methods of JRM and SRM are more flexibly designed. To enhance transmission reliability, this paper proposes a discrete optimization-based joint signal mapping, shaping, and reflecting (DJMSR) design for JRM and SRM to minimize the bit error rate (BER) with a given transmit signal candidate set and a given reflecting pattern candidate set. To further improve the performance, this paper optimizes multiple reflecting patterns and their associated transmit signal sets in continuous fields for JRM and SRM. Numerical results show that JRM and SRM with the proposed system optimization methods considerably outperform existing schemes in BER.

Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) is a new paradigm that has great potential to achieve cost-effective, energy-efficient information modulation for wireless transmission, by the ability to change the reflection coefficients of the unit cells of a programmable metasurface. Nevertheless, the electromagnetic responses of the RISs are usually only phase-adjustable, which considerably limits the achievable rate of RIS-based transmitters. In this paper, we propose an RIS architecture to achieve amplitude-and-phase-varying modulation, which facilitates the design of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) transmission. The hardware constraints of the RIS and their impacts on the system design are discussed and analyzed. Furthermore, the proposed approach is evaluated using our prototype which implements the RIS-based MIMO-QAM transmission over the air in real time., This paper aims to investigate the feasibility of using RIS for MIMO wireless transmission for higher-order modulation by presenting an analytical modeling of the RIS-based system and providing experimental results from a prototype which has been built

Content delivery networks (CDNs) distribute much of the Internet content by caching and serving the objects requested by users. A major goal of a CDN is to maximize the hit rates of its caches, thereby enabling faster content downloads to the users. Content caching involves two components: an admission algorithm to decide whether to cache an object and an eviction algorithm to determine which object to evict from the cache when it is full. In this paper, we focus on cache admission and propose a novel algorithm called RL-Cache that uses model-free reinforcement learning (RL) to decide whether or not to admit a requested object into the CDN’s cache. Unlike prior approaches that use a small set of criteria for decision making, RL-Cache weights a large set of features that include the object size, recency, and frequency of access. We develop a publicly available implementation of RL-Cache and perform an evaluation using production traces for the image, video, and web traffic classes from Akamai’s CDN. The evaluation shows that RL-Cache improves the hit rate in comparison with the state of the art and imposes only a modest resource overhead on the CDN servers. Further, RL-Cache is robust enough that it can be trained in one location and executed on request traces of the same or different traffic classes in other locations of the same geographic region. The paper also reports extensive analyses of the RL-Cache sensitivity to its features and hyperparameter values. The analyses validate the made design choices and reveal interesting insights into the RL-Cache behavior. pub

This paper presents a passive data rate estimation method that leverages commonly available parameters of commercial modems with application in Intelligent Transportation Systems. The estimation is performed by utilizing an Adaptive Similarity-based Regression (ASR) approach. This constitutes the use of Support-Vector Regression (SVR) in conjunction with a similarity-based unlearning algorithm. It is demonstrated that this approach can adapt to the various properties of different mobile networks, while maintaining a fixed training set size. This is particularly useful in cases where training data is not available in large quantities, or the uplink rate is limited by the users subscription. ASR is developed as a set of modular components and as such can be used as an enhancement to protocols such as multipath Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), Software-Defined Networking (SDN), or as an aid to Quality-of-Service (QoS) routing. It is shown that the algorithm can achieve satisfactory performance with as little as 24 training samples, and can be deployed across different mobile networks without the need of pre-training. The solution is validated using a custom test-bed to perform mobile network measurements, gathering over 15, 000 measurement samples. In addition, the algorithm is tested using measurements collected under real life conditions both in a moving car and train. As there is a shortage of open source data in the field of rate estimation in mobile networks, we publish all of the data sets used in this paper to encourage further research on the subject.

In this paper, a full-duplex unmanned aerial vehicle (FD-UAV) relay is employed to increase the communication capacity of millimeter-wave (mmWave) networks. Large antenna arrays are equipped at the source node (SN), destination node (DN), and FD-UAV relay to overcome the high path loss of mmWave channels and to help mitigate the self-interference at the FD-UAV relay. Specifically, we formulate a problem for maximization of the achievable rate from the SN to the DN, where the UAV position, analog beamforming, and power control are jointly optimized. Since the problem is highly non-convex and involves high-dimensional, highly coupled variable vectors, we first obtain the conditional optimal position of the FD-UAV relay for maximization of an approximate upper bound on the achievable rate in closed form, under the assumption of a line-of-sight (LoS) environment and ideal beamforming. Then, the UAV is deployed to the position which is closest to the conditional optimal position and yields LoS paths for both air-to-ground links. Subsequently, we propose an alternating interference suppression (AIS) algorithm for the joint design of the beamforming vectors and the power control variables. In each iteration, the beamforming vectors are optimized for maximization of the beamforming gains of the target signals and the successive reduction of the interference, where the optimal power control variables are obtained in closed form. Our simulation results confirm the superiority of the proposed positioning, beamforming, and power control method compared to three benchmark schemes. Furthermore, our results show that the proposed solution closely approaches a performance upper bound for mmWave FD-UAV systems., This paper has been accepted by IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, special issue on Multiple Antenna Technologies for Beyond 5G

Visible light communication (VLC) is seen as a supplement for fifth-generation (5G) wireless communication in short-range high data rate communication applications [1] . A reliable VLC system relies on an accurate estimate of the position and orientation of the receiver, which corresponds to the six-dimensional positioning problem mentioned in [2] . In this paper, we investigate the simultaneous position and orientation estimation (SPO) problem using received signal strength (RSS), for a visible light system containing multiple LEDs and multiple photodiodes (PDs) (MLMP). Although in general, the position and orientation of the receiver can be represented by a vector and a rotation matrix, respectively, the constraints imposed by the rotation matrix make the numerical optimization in the estimation process cumbersome, e.g, the commonly used constrained optimization method is often very complex and non-robust. Therefore, in this paper, we design two SPO algorithms using the principle of optimization on manifolds, which alleviates the constraints from the rotation matrix. In addition, we propose an initialization algorithm, based on the direct linear transformation (DLT) principle, to obtain an initial estimate in closed-form for the iterative algorithms. To evaluate the performance of the proposed RSS-based SPO algorithms, we derive the Cramer-Rao bound (CRB). In particular, the orientation error component of the CRB corresponds to the intrinsic CRB or the CRB on manifolds, which measures the error in the estimated rotation matrix in a physically meaningful way. Finally, computer simulations show an asymptotic tightness between the performance of the proposed algorithms and the theoretical lower bound, demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed solutions.

As the industrial sector is becoming ever more flexible in order to improve productivity, legacy interfaces for industrial applications must evolve to enhance efficiency and must adapt to achieve higher elasticity and reliability in harsh manufacturing environments. The localization of machines, sensors and workers inside the industrial premises is one of such interfaces used by many applications. Current localization-based systems are unable to deal with highly variable conditions, meaning that the solutions working well in stationary systems suffer from considerable difficulties in harsh environments, such as factories. As a result, the precision of localization techniques is not satisfactory in most industrial applications. This paper fills in the existing gap between static approaches and dynamic indoor positioning systems, by presenting a solution adapting the system to highly changeable conditions. The proposed solution makes use of a Machine Learning-based feedback loop that learns the variability of the environment. This feedback makes continuous fingerprint calibration feasible even in the presence of different machines and Industrial Internet of Things sensors that introduce variations to the electromagnetic environment. This paper also presents a comprehensive indoor positioning system solution that reduces complexity of hardware, meaning that a multi-standard-transceiver infrastructure may be adopted with reduced capital and operational expenditures. We have developed the system from scratch and have conducted an extensive range of testbed experiments showing that the multi-technology transceiver feature is capable of increasing positioning accuracy, as well as of introducing permanent fingerprints calibration at harsh industrial premises.

This paper proposes a novel time-frequency warped waveform for short symbols, massive machine-type communication (mMTC), and internet of things (IoT) applications. The waveform is composed of asymmetric raised cosine (RC) pulses to increase the signal containment in time and frequency domains. The waveform has low power tails in the time domain, hence better performance in the presence of delay spread and time offsets. The time-axis warping unitary transform is applied to control the waveform occupancy in time-frequency space and to compensate for the usage of high roll-off factor pulses at the symbol edges. The paper explains a step-by-step analysis for determining the roll-off factors profile and the warping functions. Gains are presented over the conventional Zero-tail Discrete Fourier Transform-spread-Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (ZT-DFT-s-OFDM), and Cyclic prefix (CP) DFT-s-OFDM schemes in the simulations section., This paper has been accepted by IEEE JSAC special issue on 3GPP Technologies: 5G-Advanced and Beyond. Copyright may be transferred without notice, after which this version may no longer be accessible

More and more network media users concern about their privacy issues since they know that their network behaviors are being observed, and thus the observable users’ data are not reliable and sufficient in this case. How to evaluate the true quality of experience (QoE) of the privacy-aware users has become a significant technical challenge because of the most majority of existing data-driven QoE evaluation schemes based on the premise of the true and adequate users’ observations. To get over this dilemma, this paper proposes a systematic and robust QoE evaluation scheme with unreliable and insufficient observation data. Specifically, we first translate the subjective privacy-aware QoE evaluation problem into an objective rational user analysis procedure. Then, a semantics-based similarity measurement for multidimensional correlation analysis is constructed to classify the observable data. Subsequently, the highlight of this paper lies in proposing a class-level joint user classification and data cleaning strategy by frequently updating the training processes. Through elaborately designing an iterative framework, it can effectively resolve the data sparsity and inconsistency problems due to the user privacy-aware preferences. Importantly, we also introduce an efficient QoE model construction method for online implementation, and numerical results validate its efficiency for different kinds of privacy-aware users.

Spatial and temporal correlation among the generated traffic in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) can be exploited in reducing the energy consumption of continuous sensor data collection. Dual prediction (DP) and data compression (DC) schemes rely on the spatio-temporal correlation to reduce the number of transmissions across WSNs, which leads to conserving energy and bandwidth. In this paper, we present both schemes in a two-tier data reduction framework. The DP scheme is used to reduce transmissions between cluster nodes and cluster heads, while the DC scheme is used to reduce traffic between cluster heads and sink nodes. For both schemes, various algorithms will be studied and compared in terms of accuracy, delay, and transmission reduction percentage. For the DP scheme, neural networks (NNs) and long short-term memory networks (LSTMs) are proposed to perform predictions. The training phase of the NNs and LSTMs is done online which is necessary in the DP scheme. The performance will be compared to popular least-mean-square approaches. Regarding the DC scheme, principal component analysis, non-negative matrix factorization, truncated-singular value decomposition, and discrete wavelet transform will be discussed and compared. This paper focuses on comparative analysis of various data reduction algorithms alongside the proposed ones. Finally, design challenges and open research areas for having more transmission reductions will be presented.

Idle time windows (ITWs) consist of one critical trigger for various functions in green intelligent network management and traffic scheduling in mobile networks. In this paper, we study the ITW prediction in mobile networks based on network subscribers’ demand and mobility behaviors observed by network operators. We first innovatively formulate the ITW prediction into a regression problem with an ITW presence confidence index that facilitates direct ITW detection and estimation. Feature extraction on the demand and mobility history is then proposed to capture the current trends of subscribers’ demand and mobility as well as to account for the periodicity underlying subscribers’ demand and mobility patterns as exogenous inputs. In light of feature engineering, a deep learning-based ITW prediction model is proposed, which consists of two components, namely the representation learning network and the output network. The representation learning network is aimed to learn effective patterns, whereas the output network is designed to produce the desired ITW presence confidence index and the ITW estimate by integrating the learned representation and exogenous inputs. In this paper, a novel temporal graph convolutional network (TGCN) for the representation learning network is proposed to effectively capture the graph-based spatiotemporal input features. The experiment results validate the proposed direct ITW prediction formulation and demonstrate the superiority of the proposed TGCN in terms of both ITW detection and ITW estimation performance, which can achieve a significant intersection-over-union (IoU) improvement compared with baselines.

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 protocol avoids interference by frequency division orthogonal transmission, it is not scalable in terms of bandwidth required for achieving ultrareliability, when multiple controllers simultaneously communicate with multiple actuators (akin to the downlink of a multicell network). The main observation of this paper is that full frequency reuse in the first phase, together with successive decoding and cancellation of interference, can improve the performance of this strategy notably. We propose two protocols depending on whether interference cancellation or avoidance is implemented in the second phase, and show that both outperform Occupy CoW in terms of the required bandwidth and power for achieving ultrareliability at practical values of the transmit power.

Network function virtualization (NFV) has been introduced by network service providers to overcome various challenges that hinder them from satisfying the growing demand for networking services with higher return-on-investment. The association of NFV with the leading technologies of information technology virtualization and software defined networking is paving the way for flexible and dynamic orchestration of the VNFs, but still, various challenges need to be addressed. The VNFs instantiation and placement problems on data center’s (DC) servers are key enablers to achieve the desired flexible and dynamic NFV applications. In this paper, we have addressed the VNF placement problem by providing a novel mixed integer linear programming (MILP) optimization model and a novel heuristic solution, Betweenness centrality Algorithm for Component Orchestration of NFV platform (BACON), for small- and large-scale DC networks. The proposed solution addresses the VNF placement while taking into consideration the carrier-grade nature of the NFV applications and at the same time, minimizing the intra- and end-to-end delays of the service function chain (SFC). Also, the proposed approach enhances the reliability and the quality of service (QoS) of the SFC by maximizing the count of the functional group members. To evaluate the performance of the proposed solution, this paper conducts a comparative analysis with an NFV-agnostic algorithm and a greedy-k-NFV approach, which is proposed in the literature work. Also, this paper defines the complexity and the order of magnitude of the MILP model and BACON. BACON outperforms the greedy algorithms especially the greedy-k-NFV solution and has a lower complexity, which is calculated as $O((n^{3}-n^{2})/2)$ . The simulation results show that finding an optimized VNF placement can achieve minimal SFCs delays and enhance the QoS accordingly.

5G wireless networks are expected to support Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communications (URLLC) traffic which requires very low packet delays ( < 1 msec.) and extremely high reliability ($\sim$99.999\%). In this paper we focus on the design of a wireless system supporting downlink URLLC traffic. Using a queuing network based model for the wireless system we characterize the effect of various design choices on the maximum URLLC load it can support, including: 1) system parameters such as the bandwidth, link SINR , and QoS requirements; 2) resource allocation schemes in Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) based systems; and 3) Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request (HARQ) schemes. Key contributions of this paper which are of practical interest are: 1) study of how the the minimum required system bandwidth to support a given URLLC load scales with associated QoS constraints; 2) characterization of optimal OFDMA resource allocation schemes which maximize the admissible URLLC load; and 3) optimization of a repetition code based HARQ scheme which approximates Chase HARQ combining.

The autonomous vehicles (AVs), like that in knight rider, were completely a scientific fiction just a few years ago, but are now already practical with real-world commercial deployments. A salient challenge of AVs, however, is the intensive computing tasks to carry out on board for the real-time traffic detection and driving decision making; this imposes heavy load to AVs due to the limited computing power. To explore more computing power and enable scalable autonomous driving, in this paper, we propose a collaborative task computing scheme for AVs, in which the AVs in proximity dynamically share idle computing power among each other. This, however, raises another fundamental problem on how to incentivize AVs to contribute their computing power and how to fully utilize the pool of group computing power in an optimal way. This paper studies the problem by modeling the issue as a market-based optimal computing resource allocation problem. In specific, we develop a software-defined network (SDN) architecture and consider a star topology where a centered AV outsources its computing tasks to the surrounding AVs for its autonomous driving. A market mechanism is developed in which the surrounding AVs sell their computing power at a cost based on their local idle computing resources. Then, we classify the tasks requested by the centered AV into two types which are task with time to live (TTL) and task without TTL, respectively. With different task types, we define corresponding cost models of the centered AV and formulate them as two minimization problems. The optimal solutions of the problems are achieved to guide the centered AV to wisely allocate computing tasks to surrounding AVs towards minimal cost. Finally, the performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated using simulations, which show that the proposed scheme can result in the guaranteed computing performance yet the lowest costs compared with other conventional schemes.

As a key enabling technology for 5G network softwarization, network function virtualization (NFV) provides an efficient paradigm to optimize network resource utility for the benefits of both network providers and users. However, the inherent network dynamics and uncertainties from 5G infrastructure, resources, and applications are slowing down the further adoption of NFV in many emerging networking applications. Motivated by this, in this paper, we investigate the issues of network utility degradation when implementing NFV in dynamic networks, and design a proactive NFV solution from a fully stochastic perspective. Unlike existing deterministic NFV solutions, which assume given network capacities and/or static service quality demands, this paper explicitly integrates the knowledge of influential network variations into a two-stage stochastic resource utilization model. By exploiting the hierarchical decision structures in this problem, a distributed computing framework with two-level decomposition is designed to facilitate a distributed implementation of the proposed model in large-scale networks. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed solution not only improves 3~5 folds of network performance, but also effectively reduces the risk of service quality violation.

Owing to the explosive growth of requirements of rapid emergency communication response and accurate observation services, airborne communication networks (ACNs) have received much attention from both industry and academia. ACNs are subject to heterogeneous networks that are engineered to utilize satellites, high-altitude platforms (HAPs), and low-altitude platforms (LAPs) to build communication access platforms. Compared to terrestrial wireless networks, ACNs are characterized by frequently changed network topologies and more vulnerable communication connections. Furthermore, ACNs have the demand for the seamless integration of heterogeneous networks such that the network quality-of-service (QoS) can be improved. Thus, designing mechanisms and protocols for ACNs poses many challenges. To solve these challenges, extensive research has been conducted. The objective of this special issue is to disseminate the contributions in the field of ACNs. To present this special issue with the necessary background and offer an overall view of this field, three key areas of ACNs are covered. Specifically, this paper covers LAP-based communication networks, HAP-based communication networks, and integrated ACNs. For each area, this paper addresses the particular issues and reviews major mechanisms. This paper also points out future research directions and challenges.

This paper presents the first network-coded multiple access (NCMA) downlink system on unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The use of UAV as a mobile aerial base station has received much attention in the 5G community in the context of highly mobile and flexible-configurable communication systems. As UAVs are limited by their flight time in the air, achieving high spectral and power efficiency while they are inflight is of great importance. Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) is a promising technique to increase the spectral and power efficiency. Conventional NOMA downlink that makes use of superposition coding in combination with successive interference cancellation (SIC) decoding does not work well in scenarios where the channel conditions of different downlink users are not readily available at the transmitter side. This is the case, for example, in the UAV scenario in which the UAV transmitter moves quickly, causing the channel conditions to vary in a very dynamic manner. This paper investigates a new NOMA downlink architecture, referred to as network-coded multiple access . In the absence of channel information, an NCMA transmitter allocates equal power to the superposed signals of different downlink users. A key challenge is how to achieve high NOMA throughput under such equal power allocation. Toward this end, NCMA makes joint use of physical-layer network coding (PNC) and multiuser decoding (MUD) together with a new superposition coding scheme, referred to as NCMA-based superposition coding . In NCMA-based superposition coding, equal powers are allocated to the signals of different users, but a relative phase offset between the signals is introduced to optimize PNC and MUD decodings. To demonstrate the feasibility and advantage of the NCMA downlink, we implemented our designs on a software-defined radio and UAV. Our experimental results show that NCMA is robust against varying channel conditions. Moreover, the throughput of NCMA can outperform the state-of-the-art SIC-based superposition coding system and the time-division multiple access system by 50% and 80%, respectively, demonstrating that NCMA is a practical solution to boost throughput in UAV NOMA.

The performance of cloud radio access network (C-RAN) is limited by the finite capacities of the backhaul links connecting the centralized processor (CP) with the base-stations (BSs), especially when the backhaul is implemented in a wireless medium. This paper proposes the use of wireless multicast together with BS caching, where the BSs pre-store contents of popular files, to augment the backhaul of C-RAN. For a downlink C-RAN consisting of a single cluster of BSs and wireless backhaul, this paper studies the optimal cache size allocation strategy among the BSs and the optimal multicast beamforming transmission strategy at the CP such that the user's requested messages are delivered from the CP to the BSs in the most efficient way. We first state a multicast backhaul rate expression based on a joint cache-channel coding scheme, which implies that larger cache sizes should be allocated to the BSs with weaker channels. We then formulate a two-timescale joint cache size allocation and beamforming design problem, where the cache is optimized offline based on the long-term channel statistical information, while the beamformer is designed during the file delivery phase based on the instantaneous channel state information. By leveraging the sample approximation method and the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM), we develop efficient algorithms for optimizing cache size allocation among the BSs, and quantify how much more cache should be allocated to the weaker BSs. We further consider the case with multiple files having different popularities and show that it is in general not optimal to entirely cache the most popular files first. Numerical results show considerable performance improvement of the optimized cache size allocation scheme over the uniform allocation and other heuristic schemes., Accepted and to appear in IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, Special Issue on Caching for Communication Systems and Networks

Authentication is a key requirement for secure communications in modern wireless systems. Compared with the conventional authentication at the upper layer using a cryptographic tool, authentication at the physical layer has many advantages, including enhanced security through the introduction of uncertainty to adversaries and increased efficiency and compatibility through the avoidance of operations at the upper layer, particularly in heterogeneous coexistence environments, e.g., 5G wireless systems. In this paper, we investigate authentication at the physical layer under time-varying fading channels. Conventional authentication schemes at the physical layer operate poorly under fast fading or frequency selective fading channels. Furthermore, conventional schemes require additional complicated preprocessing such as channel estimation and message symbol recovery through demodulation and decoding. This paper proposes a new blind authentication scheme at the physical layer that combines the techniques of blind known interference cancellation (BKIC) and differential processing to implement authentication without requiring any of the above-described preprocessing. The proposed scheme utilizes both the smoothing (SM) technique and belief propagation (BP) technique to achieve BKIC through the distinct blind authentication schemes with a superimposed tag over pilots (BSUPs) referred to, respectively, as BSUP-SM and BSUP-BP. The proposed scheme not only effectively suppresses the deteriorate effect of fading channels without any additional preprocessing but is also covert to unaware users, robust to interference, and secure for identity verification. The tradeoffs of using the proposed system with respect to various goals are discussed and analyzed. The performance of the BSUP-SM scheme depends on the channel fading and the length of the pilot cluster, while the performance of the BSUP-BP scheme is not sensitive to the above factors but depends instead on the quantization step used. The BSUP-BP scheme works well in fast fading channels, even in frequency selective fading channels.

Cognitive radio (CR) and non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) have been deemed two promising technologies due to their potential to achieve high spectral efficiency and massive connectivity. This paper studies a multiple-input single-output NOMA CR network relying on simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) conceived for supporting a massive population of power limited battery-driven devices. In contrast to most of the existing works, which use an ideally linear energy harvesting model, this study applies a more practical non-linear energy harvesting model. In order to improve the security of the primary network, an artificial-noise-aided cooperative jamming scheme is proposed. The artificial-noise-aided beamforming design problems are investigated subject to the practical secrecy rate and energy harvesting constraints. Specifically, the transmission power minimization problems are formulated under both perfect channel state information (CSI) and the bounded CSI error model. The problems formulated are non-convex, hence they are challenging to solve. A pair of algorithms either using semidefinite relaxation (SDR) or a cost function are proposed for solving these problems. Our simulation results show that the proposed cooperative jamming scheme succeeds in establishing secure communications and NOMA is capable of outperforming the conventional orthogonal multiple access in terms of its power efficiency. Finally, we demonstrate that the cost function algorithm outperforms the SDR-based algorithm., Comment: This paper has been accepted by IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1802.03908

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) has revolutionized service provisioning in cloud datacenter networks. It enables the complete decoupling of Network Functions (NFs) from the physical hardware middle boxes that network operators deploy for implementing service-specific and strictly ordered NF chains. Precisely, NFV allows for dispatching NFs as instances of plain software called virtual network functions (VNFs) running on virtual machines hosted by one or more industry standard physical machines. Nevertheless, NF softwarization introduces processing vulnerability ( e.g. , failures caused by hardware or software, and so on). Since any failure of VNFs could break down an entire service chain, thus interrupting the service, the functionality of an NFV-enabled network will require a higher reliability compared with traditional networks. This paper encloses an in-depth investigation of a reliability-aware joint VNF chain placement and flow routing optimization. In order to guarantee the required reliability, an incremental approach is proposed to determine the number of required VNF backups. Through illustration, it is shown herein that the formulated single path routing model can be easily extended to support resource sharing between adjacent backup VNF instances. This paper advocates the absolute existence of a share-resource-based VNF assignment strategy that is capable of trading off all of the reliability, bandwidth, and computing resources consumption of a given service chain. A heuristic is proposed to work around the complexity of the presently formulated integer linear programming (ILP). Thorough numerical analysis and simulations are conducted in order to verify and assert the validity, correctness, and effectiveness of this proposed heuristic reflecting its ability to achieve very close results to those obtained through the resolution of the complex ILP within a negligible amount of time. Above and beyond, the proposed resource-sharing-based VNF placement scheme outperforms existing resource-sharing agnostic schemes by 15.6% and 14.7% in terms of bandwidth and CPU utilization respectively.

© 1983-2012 IEEE. Accurate estimation of angle-of-arrival (AoA) is critical to wideband satellite communications, but is susceptible to receive noises and can be ambiguous due to space/cost-effective hybrid antenna array designs with localized analog phased subarrays. As a matter of fact, there has yet to be an unambiguous estimator even for narrow-band systems. This paper proposes a new design of subarray-specific time-varying phase shifts, which enables unambiguous and noise-tolerant estimation of AoA in localized hybrid arrays. Particularly, the new phase shifts deliver deterministic phase changes in the cross-correlations of receive signals between subarrays, and enable the cross-correlations to be coherently accumulated across subarrays and sub-carriers to eliminate ambiguities and tolerate noises. Another important contribution of the paper is that we optimize the frequency interval for coherent accumulation across sub-carriers, leveraging between estimation errors, and accumulation gains. Evident from simulations, our approach is able to dramatically improve the estimation accuracy by orders of magnitudes with significantly reduced requirements of complexities and training symbols, as compared with the state of the art. The approach is robust against noises, with estimation errors asymptotically achieving a rigorously developed lower bound.

In this paper, we cope with the reliable and efficient data transfer problem in aeronautical ad hoc networks (AANETs). AANETs are different from terrestrial ad hoc networks and these distinctions feature AANETs with large propagation delay, highly dynamic network topology, and high error probability, which pose many new challenges for data transfer in such environments. In this paper, we propose a protocol, called FRUDP, which combines reliable UDP and fountain code to achieve reliable and efficient data transfer in AANETs. It employs Raptor codes to recover from data losses to mitigate retransmission caused by high channel losses in AANETs. A code rate determining algorithm is developed to estimate the redundancy on the fly by taking into full consideration the time-varying aeronautical network conditions. Moreover, the improved selective negative acknowledgment scheme is utilized to solve the bandwidth asymmetry problem in AANETs and a congestion control scheme is deployed to decouple congestion decisions from packet losses in order to avoid the erroneous congestion decisions due to frequent link handoffs. The proposed FRUDP is fully implemented directly on top of UDP in Linux and examined over a variety of emulation network environments. The experimental results show that FRUDP is suitable for reliable and efficient data transfer service in AANETs.

As a method of dimming support for visible light communications using a massive LED array, we consider a hybrid pulse width modulation/digitally controlled pulse amplitude modulation (PWM/DPAM) system. Especially, in this paper, we consider a digital color shift keying (DCSK) using an RGB-LED array as an optical intensity modulation scheme, that transmits data through the ratio of the optical intensities (i.e., color) emitted by red, green, and blue LEDs. In DCSK, since only one color is activated in each RGB-LED at a time, the color can be represented by the combination of the digitally (i.e., linearly) controlled “ON-OFF” LEDs. In general, for the dimming control system of DCSK, two schemes have been considered. One is the dimming control by PWM, which changes the duty cycle of optical transmit signals, and the other is the dimming control by DPAM, which changes the number of active LEDs in the RGB-LED array. In this paper, PWM and DPAM are combined to realize a higher spectral efficiency than PWM and a wider dimming range than DPAM. We evaluate the error performances of the proposed system, DCSK with PWM, and DCSK with DPAM from a simulation analysis under several measured light dimming levels. The results show that DPAM should be used only for low bit rate systems because the effect of inter-symbol-interference (ISI), caused by the LED frequency response, increases at a high bit rate. While, PWM is significantly robust against ISI because the PWM signal duration is limited in a symbol duration at the low dimming levels and the empty duration can mitigate the effect of ISI even if the bit rate is high. When focusing on symbol error rate performances corresponding to the dimming levels, the hybrid dimming control and the PWM dimming control can achieve lower signal energy-to-noise-ratio at the dimming level of low and high, respectively.

This paper focuses on the design of non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) in a classical two-transmitter two-receiver Z-channel, wherein one transmitter sends information to its intended receiver from the direct link while the other transmitter sends information to both receivers from the direct and cross links. Unlike most existing designs using (continuous) Gaussian input distribution, we consider the practical finite-alphabet (i.e., discrete) inputs by assuming that the widely-used quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) constellations are adopted by both transmitters. To balance the error performance of two receivers, we apply the max-min fairness design criterion in this paper. More specifically, we propose to jointly optimize the scaling factors at both transmitters, which control the minimum Euclidean distance of transmitting constellations, to maximize the smaller minimum Euclidean distance of two resulting constellations at the receivers, subject to an individual average power constraint at each transmitter. The formulated problem is a mixed continuous-discrete optimization problem and is thus intractable in general. By resorting to the Farey sequence, we manage to attain the closed-form expression for the optimal solution to the formulated problem. This is achieved by dividing the overall feasible region of the original optimization problem into a finite number of sub-intervals and deriving the optimal solution in each sub-interval. Through carefully observing the structure of the optimal solutions in all sub-intervals, we obtain compact and closed-form expressions for the optimal solutions to the original problem in three possible scenarios defined by the relative strength of the cross link. Simulation studies are provided to validate our analysis and demonstrate the merits of the proposed design over existing orthogonal or non-orthogonal schemes., Comment: To appear in IEEE JSAC Special Issue on Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access for 5G Systems

This paper investigates the resource allocation (RA) problem for the downlink multiple input multiple output-based non-orthogonal multiple access (MIMO-NOMA) system, which is usually solved through a beamforming (BF) process and a user selection (US) process. In this paper, we propose the multiple-user channel state information (CSI)-based singular value decomposition (MU-CSI-SVD) BF scheme and the minimization of power (Min-Power) US scheme. Under perfect CSI scenarios, the proposed MU-CSI-SVD achieves near optimal sum rate performance with the high-complexity BF scheme while has the same level computational complexity as the low-complexity BF scheme. For imperfect CSI scenarios, the proposed MU-CSI-SVD also achieves better outage probability performance but requires the same level computational complexity as the existing low-complexity BF scheme. Moreover, MU-CSI-SVD is helpful to decrease the computational complexity for solving the Min-Power US problem. Compared with existing US schemes, the proposed Min-Power scheme can achieve larger sum rate or lower outage probability with limited computational complexity increment. Therefore, in this paper, we develop a complete RA scheme for 5G MIMO-NOMA systems, which has excellent performance while with low computational complexity for both perfect and imperfect CSI scenarios.

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) has been considered as a highly efficient communication technology in the fifth generation (5G) networks by serving multiple users concurrently through non-orthogonal sharing communication resources. NOMA can be combined with both massive multiple input multiple output (MIMO) and relaying technologies to further improve 5G system efficiency at the cost of increased complexity. These combinations rely on the efficient utilization of 3-D communication resources. In the first part of this paper, we investigate highly efficient 3-D resource allocation for massive MIMO-NOMA systems. Due to hardware complexity constraints and channel variation in the massive MIMO-NOMA system, efficient antenna selection and user scheduling algorithms are proposed for sum rate maximization. In the second part of this paper, a collaborative NOMA-assisted relaying (CNAR) system is proposed to serve multiple cell-edge users by 3-D resource utilization. To reduce the relaying complexity in CNAR system, a simplified-CNAR (S-CNAR) system is proposed as an alternative NOMA-enabled relaying strategy. Numerical results show that our antenna selection and user scheduling algorithms achieve similar performance to existing methods with reduced complexity. Under high target rate, CNAR obtains better performance over other transmission strategies and S-CNAR reaches similar performance by simplified relaying scheme.

To address the ever increasing high data rate and connectivity requirements in the next generation 5G wireless network, novel radio access technologies (RATs) are actively explored to enhance the system spectral efficiency and connectivity. As a promising RAT for 5G cellular networks, non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) has attracted extensive research attentions. Compared with the orthogonal multiple access (OMA) that has been widely applied in existing wireless communication systems, NOMA possesses the potential to further improve the system spectral efficiency and connectivity capability. This paper develops analytical frameworks for NOMA downlink and uplink multi-cell wireless systems to evaluate the system outage probability and average achievable rate. In the downlink NOMA system, two different NOMA group pairing schemes are considered, based on which theoretical results on outage and achievable data rates are derived. In the uplink NOMA, revised back-off power control scheme is applied, and outage probability and per UE average achievable rate are derived. As wireless networks turn into more and more densely deployed, inter-cell interference has become a dominant capacity limiting factor but has not been addressed in most of the existing NOMA studies. In this paper, a stochastic geometry approach is used to model a dense wireless system, that supports NOMA on both uplink and downlink, based on which analytical results are derived either in pseudo-closed forms or succinct closed forms and are further validated by simulations. Numerical results demonstrate that NOMA can bring considerable system-wide performance gain compared with OMA on both uplink and downlink when properly designed.

The millimeter wave (mmWave) bands offer the possibility of orders of magnitude greater throughput for fifth generation (5G) cellular systems. However, since mmWave signals are highly susceptible to blockage, channel quality on any one mmWave link can be extremely intermittent. This paper implements a novel dual connectivity protocol that enables mobile user equipment (UE) devices to maintain physical layer connections to 4G and 5G cells simultaneously. A novel uplink control signaling system combined with a local coordinator enables rapid path switching in the event of failures on any one link. This paper provides the first comprehensive end-to-end evaluation of handover mechanisms in mmWave cellular systems. The simulation framework includes detailed measurement-based channel models to realistically capture spatial dynamics of blocking events, as well as the full details of MAC, RLC and transport protocols. Compared to conventional handover mechanisms, the study reveals significant benefits of the proposed method under several metrics., 16 pages, 13 figures, to appear on the 2017 IEEE JSAC Special Issue on Millimeter Wave Communications for Future Mobile Networks

Leveraging multiple simultaneous small cell connections is an emerging and promising solution to enhance session continuity in millimeter-wave (mmWave) cellular systems that suffer from frequent link interruptions due to blockage in ultra-dense urban deployments. However, the available performance benefits of feasible multi-connectivity strategies as well as the tentative service quality gains that they promise remain an open research question. Addressing it requires the development of a novel performance evaluation methodology, which should consider: 1) the intricacies of mmWave radio propagation in realistic urban environments; 2) the dynamic mmWave link blockage due to human mobility; and 3) the multi-connectivity network behavior to preserve session continuity. In this paper, we construct this much needed methodology by combining the methods from queuing theory, stochastic geometry, as well as ray-based and system-level simulations. With this integrated framework, both user- and network-centric performance indicators together with their underlying scaling laws can be quantified in representative mmWave scenarios. To ensure modeling accuracy, the components of our methodology are carefully cross verified and calibrated against the current considerations in the standards. Building on this, a thorough comparison of alternative multi-connectivity strategies is conducted, as this paper reveals that even simpler multi-connectivity schemes bring notable improvements to session-level mmWave operation in realistic environments. These findings may become an important reference point for subsequent standardization in this area.

This is the second part of the papers in this special issue on deployment issues and performance challenges for 5G. The papers have been divided into five categories: • Massive MIMO • Co existence • Signal Processing and New Waveforms • Cloud RAN • Field Trials

To support the multi-gigabit per second data rates of 5G wireless networks, there have been significant efforts on the research and development of massive MIMO (M-MIMO) technologies at the physical layer. So far, however, the understanding of how M-MIMO could affect the performance of network control, and optimization algorithms remain rather limited. In this paper, we focus on analyzing the performance of the queue-length-based joint congestion control and scheduling framework over M-MIMO cellular networks with limited channel state information (CSI). Our contributions in this paper are twofold. First, we characterize the scaling performance of the queue-lengths and show that there exists a phase transitioning phenomenon in the steady-state queue-length deviation with respect to the CSI quality (reflected in the number of bits $B$ that represent CSI). Next, we characterize the congestion control rate scaling performance and show that there also exists a phase transitioning phenomenon in steady-state congestion control rate deviation with respect to the CSI quality. Collectively, the findings in this paper advance our understanding of the tradeoffs between delay, throughput, and the accuracy/complexity of CSI acquisition in M-MIMO cellular network systems.

Little is known about millimeter wave (mmWave) path loss in rural areas with tall base station antennas; yet, as shown here, surprisingly long distances (greater than 10 km) can be achieved in clear weather with less than 1 W of power. This paper studies past rural macrocell (RMa) propagation models and the current third generation partnership project (3GPP) RMa path loss models for frequencies from 0.5 to 30 GHz adopted from the International Telecommunications Union-Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R). We show that 3GPP and ITU-R RMa path loss models were derived for frequencies below 6 GHz, yet are being asserted for use up to 30 GHz. Until this paper, there has not been published data to support mmWave RMa path loss models. In this paper, 73-GHz measurements in rural Virginia are used to develop a new RMa path loss model that is more accurate and easier to apply for varying transmitter antenna heights than the existing 3GPP/ITU-R RMa path loss models, and may be used for frequencies from 0.5 to 100 GHz. The measurement system used here has a measurement range comparable to a wideband (800-MHz radio frequency bandwidth) channel sounder with 21.7-dBW effective isotropic radiated power. Measured data verify a new path loss model that uses a close-in free space reference distance with a novel height-dependent path loss exponent (CIH model). This work shows that the CIH model is accurate and stable, and is frequency-independent beyond the first meter of propagation, and effectively models the path loss dependence on base station height in rural channels.

For the potential of providing rates of multiple Giga-bps in a single channel, millimeter wave (mmWave) communications have recently attracted substantial research interest. While mmWave technology is already being used in stationary scenarios such as indoor hotspots or backhaul, it is challenging to use mmWave frequencies in mobile networks, where transmitting/receiving nodes may be moving, channels may have a complicated structure, and the coordination among multiple nodes is difficult. To fully exploit the high potential rates of mmWave in mobile networks, many significant technical challenges must be tackled. The main objective of this IEEE JSAC Special Issue on “ Millimeter wave communications for future mobile networks ” is to collect the most recent technical advances in mmWave for future mobile networks. The response from the community to the call has been overwhelming. We received 96 submissions with a call period short than 4 months. Many of the submissions are from the most well known research groups in the field. After a strict review process, we decided to accept 38 papers, which will be published in two issues. The papers were selected based on the technical relevance and merits. Unfortunately, due to space limitations, a number of interesting papers were not selected, despite the merits that they had. We sincerely hope those papers can find other publishing venues.

Keystroke privacy is critical for ensuring the security of computer systems and the privacy of human users as what is being typed could be passwords or privacy sensitive information. In this paper, we show for the first time that WiFi signals can also be exploited to recognize keystrokes. The intuition is that while typing a certain key, the hands and fingers of a user move in a unique formation and direction and thus generate a unique pattern in the time-series of channel state information (CSI) values, which we call CSI-waveform for that key. In this paper, we propose a WiFi signal-based keystroke recognition system called WiKey. WiKey consists of two commercial off-the-shelf WiFi devices, a sender (such as a router) and a receiver (such as a laptop). The sender continuously emits signals and the receiver continuously receives signals. When a human subject types on a keyboard, WiKey recognizes the typed keys based on how the CSI values at the WiFi signal receiver end. We implemented the WiKey system using a TP-Link TL-WR1043ND WiFi router and a Lenovo X200 laptop. WiKey achieves over 97.5% detection rate for detecting the keystroke and 96.4% recognition accuracy for classifying single keys. In real-world experiments, WiKey can recognize keystrokes in a continuously typed sentence with an accuracy of 93.5%. WiKey can also recognize complete words inside a sentence with over 85% accuracy.

Visible light communication (VLC) has been shown to have several advantages over traditional wireless communication. In this paper, we envision an LED-light-to-smartphone VLC protocol for delivering messages to a group of randomly arriving smartphone receivers. Our goal is to increase the throughput for large message delivery, as well as to reduce the delay of message broadcast. Key challenges for implementing such a VLC message broadcast protocol are: 1) the imperfect synchronization among receivers and the transmitter; 2) the receivers’ arbitrary arrival times; and 3) the diversity of receivers’ smartphones (e.g., location, capability, and frame-rates). In this paper, we propose a new modulation scheme and design link-layer protocols for improving the network data rate. We carefully design and implement our protocol, Martian, which allows smooth communication from the LED lights to a group of smartphone embedded cameras. Across several phone models, Martian can achieve data rate of about 1.6 kb/s even with NLOS -light. It also has a stable and small delay for broadcasting messages to the randomly arriving receivers.