Fundamental Green Tradeoffs: Progresses, Challenges, and Impacts on 5G Networks

With years of tremendous traffic and energy consumption growth, green radio has been valued not only for theoretical research interests but also for the operational expenditure reduction and the sustainable development of wireless communications. Fundamental green tradeoffs, served as an important framework for analysis, include four basic relationships: spectrum efficiency (SE) versus energy efficiency (EE), deployment efficiency (DE) versus energy efficiency (EE), delay (DL) versus power (PW), and bandwidth (BW) versus power (PW). In this paper, we first provide a comprehensive overview on the extensive on-going research efforts and categorize them based on the fundamental green tradeoffs. We will then focus on research progresses of 4G and 5G communications, such as orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and non-orthogonal aggregation (NOA), multiple input multiple output (MIMO), and heterogeneous networks (HetNets). We will also discuss potential challenges and impacts of fundamental green tradeoffs, to shed some light on the energy efficient research and design for future wireless networks.Comment: revised from IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorial

On Green Energy Powered Cognitive Radio Networks

Green energy powered cognitive radio (CR) network is capable of liberating the wireless access networks from spectral and energy constraints. The limitation of the spectrum is alleviated by exploiting cognitive networking in which wireless nodes sense and utilize the spare spectrum for data communications, while dependence on the traditional unsustainable energy is assuaged by adopting energy harvesting (EH) through which green energy can be harnessed to power wireless networks. Green energy powered CR increases the network availability and thus extends emerging network applications. Designing green CR networks is challenging. It requires not only the optimization of dynamic spectrum access but also the optimal utilization of green energy. This paper surveys the energy efficient cognitive radio techniques and the optimization of green energy powered wireless networks. Existing works on energy aware spectrum sensing, management, and sharing are investigated in detail. The state of the art of the energy efficient CR based wireless access network is discussed in various aspects such as relay and cooperative radio and small cells. Envisioning green energy as an important energy resource in the future, network performance highly depends on the dynamics of the available spectrum and green energy. As compared with the traditional energy source, the arrival rate of green energy, which highly depends on the environment of the energy harvesters, is rather random and intermittent. To optimize and adapt the usage of green energy according to the opportunistic spectrum availability, we discuss research challenges in designing cognitive radio networks which are powered by energy harvesters

Energy-Efficient User Association with Open Loop Power Control for Uplink Heterogeneous Cellular Networks

Energy reduction for wireless systems becomes more and more important due to its impact on the operation cost and global carbon footprint. In this paper, we investigate three kinds of energy-efficient association schemes under open loop power control for uplink heterogeneous cellular networks, which are formulated as a whole energy efficiency maximization problem, a sum energy efficiency maximization problem and a utility maximization problem respectively. The third case takes account of load balancing level and user's fairness in the energy-efficient association. Considering that the first problem is in a fractional mixed-integer form, we introduce an energy efficiency parameter to convert it into a parametric subtractive form, and then design an effective iterative algorithm to achieve the optimal solutions. As for the third problem, we first introduce a dual variable to decouple the constraint and then develop a distributed algorithm using dual decomposition. In addition, we also give the convergence proof for the proposed algorithms. In order to confirm the effectiveness of energy-efficient user association algorithms, we introduce other association rules for comparison, and investigate the influences of different parameters on the association performance of these association rules

A Survey on Mobile Edge Networks: Convergence of Computing, Caching and Communications

As the explosive growth of smart devices and the advent of many new applications, traffic volume has been growing exponentially. The traditional centralized network architecture cannot accommodate such user demands due to heavy burden on the backhaul links and long latency. Therefore, new architectures which bring network functions and contents to the network edge are proposed, i.e., mobile edge computing and caching. Mobile edge networks provide cloud computing and caching capabilities at the edge of cellular networks. In this survey, we make an exhaustive review on the state-of-the-art research efforts on mobile edge networks. We first give an overview of mobile edge networks including definition, architecture and advantages. Next, a comprehensive survey of issues on computing, caching and communication techniques at the network edge is presented respectively. The applications and use cases of mobile edge networks are discussed. Subsequently, the key enablers of mobile edge networks such as cloud technology, SDN/NFV and smart devices are discussed. Finally, open research challenges and future directions are presented as well

Mobile Converged Networks: Framework, Optimization and Challenges

In this paper, a new framework of mobile converged networks is proposed for flexible resource optimization over multi-tier wireless heterogeneous networks. Design principles and advantages of this new framework of mobile converged networks are discussed. Moreover, mobile converged network models based on interference coordination and energy efficiency are presented and the corresponding optimization algorithms are developed. Furthermore, future challenges of mobile converged networks are identified to promote the study in modeling and performance analysis of mobile converged networks.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figure

Applications of Economic and Pricing Models for Resource Management in 5G Wireless Networks: A Survey

This paper presents a comprehensive literature review on applications of economic and pricing theory for resource management in the evolving fifth generation (5G) wireless networks. The 5G wireless networks are envisioned to overcome existing limitations of cellular networks in terms of data rate, capacity, latency, energy efficiency, spectrum efficiency, coverage, reliability, and cost per information transfer. To achieve the goals, the 5G systems will adopt emerging technologies such as massive Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO), mmWave communications, and dense Heterogeneous Networks (HetNets). However, 5G involves multiple entities and stakeholders that may have different objectives, e.g., high data rate, low latency, utility maximization, and revenue/profit maximization. This poses a number of challenges to resource management designs of 5G. While the traditional solutions may neither efficient nor applicable, economic and pricing models have been recently developed and adopted as useful tools to achieve the objectives. In this paper, we review economic and pricing approaches proposed to address resource management issues in the 5G wireless networks including user association, spectrum allocation, and interference and power management. Furthermore, we present applications of economic and pricing models for wireless caching and mobile data offloading. Finally, we highlight important challenges, open issues and future research directions of applying economic and pricing models to the 5G wireless networks

Joint User Association and Power Control for Load Balancing in Downlink Heterogeneous Cellular Networks

Instead of achievable rate in the conventional association, we utilize the effective rate to design two association schemes for load balancing in heterogeneous cellular networks (HCNs), which are both formulated as such problems with maximizing the sum of effective rates. In these two schemes, the one just considers user association, but the other introduces power control to mitigate interference and reduce energy consumption while performing user association. Since the effective rate is closely related to the load of some BS and the achievable rate of some user, it can be used as a key factor of association schemes for load balancing in HCNs. To solve the association problem without power control, we design a one-layer iterative algorithm, which converts the sum-of-ratio form of original optimization problem into a parameterized polynomial form. By combining this algorithm with power control algorithm, we propose a two-layer iterative algorithm for the association problem with power control. Specially, the outer layer performs user association using the algorithm of problem without power control, and the inner layer updates the transmit power of each BS using a power update function (PUF). At last, we give some convergence and complexity analyses for the proposed algorithms. As shown in simulation results, the proposed schemes have superior performance than the conventional association, and the scheme with joint user association and power control achieves a higher load balancing gain and energy efficiency than conventional scheme and other offloading scheme.Comment: 10 page

Recent Advances in Cloud Radio Access Networks: System Architectures, Key Techniques, and Open Issues

As a promising paradigm to reduce both capital and operating expenditures, the cloud radio access network (C-RAN) has been shown to provide high spectral efficiency and energy efficiency. Motivated by its significant theoretical performance gains and potential advantages, C-RANs have been advocated by both the industry and research community. This paper comprehensively surveys the recent advances of C-RANs, including system architectures, key techniques, and open issues. The system architectures with different functional splits and the corresponding characteristics are comprehensively summarized and discussed. The state-of-the-art key techniques in C-RANs are classified as: the fronthaul compression, large-scale collaborative processing, and channel estimation in the physical layer; and the radio resource allocation and optimization in the upper layer. Additionally, given the extensiveness of the research area, open issues and challenges are presented to spur future investigations, in which the involvement of edge cache, big data mining, social-aware device-to-device, cognitive radio, software defined network, and physical layer security for C-RANs are discussed, and the progress of testbed development and trial test are introduced as well.Comment: 27 pages, 11 figure

A Survey on High-Speed Railway Communications: A Radio Resource Management Perspective

High-speed railway (HSR) communications will become a key feature supported by intelligent transportation communication systems. The increasing demand for HSR communications leads to significant attention on the study of radio resource management (RRM), which enables efficient resource utilization and improved system performance. RRM design is a challenging problem due to heterogenous quality of service (QoS) requirements and dynamic characteristics of HSR wireless communications. The objective of this paper is to provide an overview on the key issues that arise in the RRM design for HSR wireless communications. A detailed description of HSR communication systems is first presented, followed by an introduction on HSR channel models and characteristics, which are vital to the cross-layer RRM design. Then we provide a literature survey on state-of-the-art RRM schemes for HSR wireless communications, with an in-depth discussion on various RRM aspects including admission control, mobility management, power control and resource allocation. Finally, this paper outlines the current challenges and open issues in the area of RRM design for HSR wireless communications.Comment: 40 pages, 10 figures. Submitted to Computer Communication

A Survey on QoE-oriented Wireless Resources Scheduling

Future wireless systems are expected to provide a wide range of services to more and more users. Advanced scheduling strategies thus arise not only to perform efficient radio resource management, but also to provide fairness among the users. On the other hand, the users' perceived quality, i.e., Quality of Experience (QoE), is becoming one of the main drivers within the schedulers design. In this context, this paper starts by providing a comprehension of what is QoE and an overview of the evolution of wireless scheduling techniques. Afterwards, a survey on the most recent QoE-based scheduling strategies for wireless systems is presented, highlighting the application/service of the different approaches reported in the literature, as well as the parameters that were taken into account for QoE optimization. Therefore, this paper aims at helping readers interested in learning the basic concepts of QoE-oriented wireless resources scheduling, as well as getting in touch with its current research frontier.Comment: Revised version: updated according to the most recent related literature; added references; corrected typo