Dynamic Rate Splitting Grouping for Antifragile Responses to Wireless Network Disruptions

The reliance on wireless network architectures for applications demanding high reliability and fault tolerance is growing. These architectures heavily depend on wireless channels, making them susceptible to impairments and blockages. Ensuring functionality, particularly for safety-critical applications, demands robust countermeasures at the physical layer. In response, this work proposes the utilization of a dynamic Rate Splitting (RS) grouping approach as a resilience mechanism during blockages. RS effectively manages interference within networks but faces challenges during outages and blockages, where system performance can deteriorate due to the lowest decoding rate dictating the common rate and increased interference from fewer available channel links. As a strategic countermeasure, RS is leveraged to mitigate the impact of blockages, maintaining system efficiency and performance amidst disruptions. In fact, the introduction of new RS groups enables the exploration of novel solutions to the resource allocation problem, potentially outperforming those adopted before the occurrence of a blockage. As it turns out, by employing the dynamic RS grouping, the network exhibits an antifragile recovery response, showcasing the network's ability to not only recover from disruptions but also surpass its initial performance.
Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, submitted to 19th International Symposium on Wireless Communication Systems (ISWCS 2024)