Towards Massive Machine Type Communications in Ultra-Dense Cellular IoT Networks: Current Issues and Machine Learning-Assisted Solutions

The ever-increasing number of resource-constrained Machine-Type Communication (MTC) devices is leading to the critical challenge of fulfilling diverse communication requirements in dynamic and ultra-dense wireless environments. Among different application scenarios that the upcoming 5G and beyond cellular networks are expected to support, such as eMBB, mMTC and URLLC, mMTC brings the unique technical challenge of supporting a huge number of MTC devices, which is the main focus of this paper. The related challenges include QoS provisioning, handling highly dynamic and sporadic MTC traffic, huge signalling overhead and Radio Access Network (RAN) congestion. In this regard, this paper aims to identify and analyze the involved technical issues, to review recent advances, to highlight potential solutions and to propose new research directions. First, starting with an overview of mMTC features and QoS provisioning issues, we present the key enablers for mMTC in cellular networks. Along with the highlights on the inefficiency of the legacy Random Access (RA) procedure in the mMTC scenario, we then present the key features and channel access mechanisms in the emerging cellular IoT standards, namely, LTE-M and NB-IoT. Subsequently, we present a framework for the performance analysis of transmission scheduling with the QoS support along with the issues involved in short data packet transmission. Next, we provide a detailed overview of the existing and emerging solutions towards addressing RAN congestion problem, and then identify potential advantages, challenges and use cases for the applications of emerging Machine Learning (ML) techniques in ultra-dense cellular networks. Out of several ML techniques, we focus on the application of low-complexity Q-learning approach in the mMTC scenarios. Finally, we discuss some open research challenges and promising future research directions.Comment: 37 pages, 8 figures, 7 tables, submitted for a possible future publication in IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorial

Energy-aware resource allocation in next generation wireless networks : application in large-scale MIMO Systems

In this thesis, we investigate the resource allocation problem for wireless networks that incorporate large-scale multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. These systems are considered as key technologies for future 5G wireless networks and are based on using few hundreds of antennas simultaneously to serve tens of users in the same time-frequency resource. The gains obtained by large-scale MIMO systems cannot be fully exploited without adequate resource allocation strategies. Hence, the aim of this thesis is to develop energy-aware resource allocation solutions for large-scale MIMO systems that take into consideration network power cost. Firstly, this thesis investigates the downlink of a base station equipped with large-scale MIMO system while taking into account a non-negligible transmit circuit power consumption. This consumption involves that activating all RF chains does not always necessarily achieve the maximum sum-rate. Thus, we derive the optimal number of activated RF chains. In addition, efficient antenna selection, user scheduling and power allocation algorithms in term of instantaneous sum-rate are proposed and compared. Also, fairness is investigated by considering equal receive power among users. Secondly, this thesis investigates a large-scale MIMO system that incorporates energy harvesting that is a promising key technology for greening future wireless networks since it reduces network operation costs and carbon footprints. Hence, we consider distributed large-scale MIMO systems made up of a set of remote radio heads (RRHs), each of which is powered by both an independent energy harvesting source and the grid. The grid energy source allows to compensate for the randomness and intermittency of the harvested energy. Optimal on-line and off-line energy management strategies are developed. In addition, on-line energy management algorithm based on energy prediction is devised. The feasibility problem is addressed by proposing an efficient link removal algorithm and for better energy efficiency, RRH on/off operation is investigated. Thirdly, wireless backhauling was proposed as an alternative solution that enable low-cost connection between the small base stations and the macro base station in heterogeneous networks (HetNets). The coexistence of massive MIMO, HetNets and wireless backhauling is a promising research direction since massive MIMO is a suitable solution to enable wireless backhauling. Thus, we propose a new transmission technique that is able to efficiently manage the interference in heterogeneous networks with massive MIMO wireless backhaul. The optimal time splitting parameter and the allocated transmit power are derived. The proposed transmission technique is shown to be more efficient in terms of transmit power consumption than the conventional reverse time division duplex with bandwidth splitting. In this thesis, we developed efficient resource allocation solutions related to system power for wireless networks that incorporate large-scale MIMO systems under different assumptions and network architectures. The results in this thesis can be expanded by investigating the research problems given at the end of the dissertation