Design and Optimal Configuration of Full-Duplex MAC Protocol for Cognitive Radio Networks Considering Self-Interference

In this paper, we propose an adaptive Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol for full-duplex (FD) cognitive radio networks in which FD secondary users (SUs) perform channel contention followed by concurrent spectrum sensing and transmission, and transmission only with maximum power in two different stages (called the FD sensing and transmission stages, respectively) in each contention and access cycle. The proposed FD cognitive MAC (FDC-MAC) protocol does not require synchronization among SUs and it efficiently utilizes the spectrum and mitigates the self-interference in the FD transceiver. We then develop a mathematical model to analyze the throughput performance of the FDC-MAC protocol where both half-duplex (HD) transmission (HDTx) and FD transmission (FDTx) modes are considered in the transmission stage. Then, we study the FDC-MAC configuration optimization through adaptively controlling the spectrum sensing duration and transmit power level in the FD sensing stage where we prove that there exists optimal sensing time and transmit power to achieve the maximum throughput and we develop an algorithm to configure the proposed FDC-MAC protocol. Extensive numerical results are presented to illustrate the characteristic of the optimal FDC-MAC configuration and the impacts of protocol parameters and the self-interference cancellation quality on the throughput performance. Moreover, we demonstrate the significant throughput gains of the FDC-MAC protocol with respect to existing half-duplex MAC (HD MAC) and single-stage FD MAC protocols.Comment: To Appear, IEEE Access, 201

Dynamic Flow-Adaptive Spectrum Leasing with Channel Aggregation in Cognitive Radio Networks

Cognitive radio networks (CRNs), which allow secondary users (SUs) to dynamically access a network without affecting the primary users (PUs), have been widely regarded as an effective approach to mitigate the shortage of spectrum resources and the inefficiency of spectrum utilization. However, the SUs suffer from frequent spectrum handoffs and transmission limitations. In this paper, considering the quality of service (QoS) requirements of PUs and SUs, we propose a novel dynamic flow-adaptive spectrum leasing with channel aggregation. Specifically, we design an adaptive leasing algorithm, which adaptively adjusts the portion of leased channels based on the number of ongoing and buffered PU flows. Furthermore, in the leased spectrum band, the SU flows with access priority employ dynamic spectrum access of channel aggregation, which enables one flow to occupy multiple channels for transmission in a dynamically changing environment. For performance evaluation, the continuous time Markov chain (CTMC) is developed to model our proposed strategy and conduct theoretical analyses. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed strategy effectively improves the spectrum utilization and network capacity, while significantly reducing the forced termination probability and blocking probability of SU flows.publishedVersio

Mobile Networks

The growth in the use of mobile networks has come mainly with the third generation systems and voice traffic. With the current third generation and the arrival of the 4G, the number of mobile users in the world will exceed the number of landlines users. Audio and video streaming have had a significant increase, parallel to the requirements of bandwidth and quality of service demanded by those applications. Mobile networks require that the applications and protocols that have worked successfully in fixed networks can be used with the same level of quality in mobile scenarios. Until the third generation of mobile networks, the need to ensure reliable handovers was still an important issue. On the eve of a new generation of access networks (4G) and increased connectivity between networks of different characteristics commonly called hybrid (satellite, ad-hoc, sensors, wired, WIMAX, LAN, etc.), it is necessary to transfer mechanisms of mobility to future generations of networks. In order to achieve this, it is essential to carry out a comprehensive evaluation of the performance of current protocols and the diverse topologies to suit the new mobility conditions

Radio Resource Management in LTE-Advanced Systems with Carrier Aggregation

In order to meet the ever-increasing demand for wireless broadband services from fast growing mobile users, the Long Term Evolution -Advanced (LTE-A) standard has been proposed to effectively improve the system capacity and the spectral efficiency for the fourth-generation (4G) wireless mobile communications. Many advanced techniques are incorporated in LTE-A systems to jointly ameliorate system performance, among which Carrier Aggregation (CA) is considered as one of the most promising improvements that has profound significance even in the upcoming 5G era. Component carriers (CCs) from various portions of the spectrum are logically concatenated to form a much larger virtual band, resulting in remarkable boosted system capacity and user data throughput. However, the unique features of CA have posed many emerging challenges as well as span-new opportunities on the Radio Resource Management (RRM) in the LTE-A systems. First, although multi-CC transmission can bring higher throughput, it may incur more intensive interference for each CC and more power consumption for users. Thus the performance gain of CA under different conditions needs fully evaluating. Besides, as CA offers flexible CC selection and cross-CC load balancing and scheduling, enhanced RRM strategies should be designed to further optimize the overall resource utilization. In addition, CA enables the frequency reuse on a CC resolution, adding another dimension to inter-cell interference management in heterogeneous networks (HetNets). New interference management mechanisms should be designed to take the advantage of CA. Last but not least, CA empowers the LTE-A systems to aggregate the licensed spectrum with the unlicensed spectrum, thus offering a capacity surge. Yet how to balance the traffic between licensed and unlicensed spectrum and how to achieve a harmony coexistence with other unlicensed systems are still open issues. To this end, the dissertation emphasizes on the new functionalities introduced by CA to optimize the RRM performance in LTE-A systems. The main objectives are four-fold: 1) to fully evaluate the benefits of CA from different perspectives under different conditions via both theoretical analysis and simulations; 2) to design cross-layer CC selection, packet scheduling and power control strategies to optimize the target performance; 3) to analytically model the interference of HetNets with CA and propose dynamic interference mitigation strategies in a CA scenario; and 4) to investigate the impact of LTE transmissions on other unlicensed systems and develop enhanced RRM mechanisms for harmony coexistence. To achieve these objectives, we first analyze the benefits of CA via investigating the user accommodation capabilities of the system in the downlink admission control process. The LTE-A users with CA capabilities and the legacy LTE users are considered. Analytical models are developed to derive the maximum number of users that can be admitted into the system given the user QoS requirements and traffic features. The results show that with only a slightly higher spectrum utilization, the system can admit as much as twice LTE-A users than LTE users when the user traffic is bursty. Second, we study the RRM in the single-tier LTE-A system and propose a cross-layer dynamic CC selection and power control strategy for uplink CA. Specifically, the uplink power offset effects caused by multi-CC transmission are considered. An estimation method for user bandwidth allocation is developed and a combinatorial optimization problem is formulated to improve the user throughput via maximizing the user power utilization. Third, we explore the interference management problem in multi-tier HetNets considering the CC-resolution frequency reuse. An analytical model is devised to capture the randomness behaviors of the femtocells exploiting the stochastic geometry theory. The interaction between the base stations of different tiers are formulated into a two-level Stackelberg game, and a backward induction method is exploited to obtain the Nash equilibrium. Last, we focus on the mechanism design for licensed and unlicensed spectrum aggregation. An LTE MAC protocol on unlicensed spectrum is developed considering the coexistence with the Wi-Fi systems. The protocol captures the asynchronous nature of Wi-Fi transmissions in time-slotted LTE frame structure and strike a tunable tradeoff between LTE and Wi-Fi performance. Analytical analysis is also presented to reveal the essential relation among different parameters of the two systems. In summary, the dissertation aims at fully evaluating the benefits of CA in different scenarios and making full use of the benefits to develop efficient and effective RRM strategies for better LTE-Advanced system performance

Cellular and Wi-Fi technologies evolution: from complementarity to competition

This PhD thesis has the characteristic to span over a long time because while working on it, I was working as a research engineer at CTTC with highly demanding development duties. This has delayed the deposit more than I would have liked. On the other hand, this has given me the privilege of witnessing and studying how wireless technologies have been evolving over a decade from 4G to 5G and beyond. When I started my PhD thesis, IEEE and 3GPP were defining the two main wireless technologies at the time, Wi-Fi and LTE, for covering two substantially complementary market targets. Wi-Fi was designed to operate mostly indoor, in unlicensed spectrum, and was aimed to be a simple and cheap technology. Its primary technology for coexistence was based on the assumption that the spectrum on which it was operating was for free, and so it was designed with interference avoidance through the famous CSMA/CA protocol. On the other hand, 3GPP was designing technologies for licensed spectrum, a costly kind of spectrum. As a result, LTE was designed to take the best advantage of it while providing the best QoE in mainly outdoor scenarios. The PhD thesis starts in this context and evolves with these two technologies. In the first chapters, the thesis studies radio resource management solutions for standalone operation of Wi-Fi in unlicensed and LTE in licensed spectrum. We anticipated the now fundamental machine learning trend by working on machine learning-based radio resource management solutions to improve LTE and Wi-Fi operation in their respective spectrum. We pay particular attention to small cell deployments aimed at improving the spectrum efficiency in licensed spectrum, reproducing small range scenarios typical of Wi-Fi settings. IEEE and 3GPP followed evolving the technologies over the years: Wi-Fi has grown into a much more complex and sophisticated technology, incorporating the key features of cellular technologies, like HARQ, OFDMA, MU-MIMO, MAC scheduling and spatial reuse. On the other hand, since Release 13, cellular networks have also been designed for unlicensed spectrum. As a result, the two last chapters of this thesis focus on coexistence scenarios, in which LTE needs to be designed to coexist with Wi-Fi fairly, and NR, the radio access for 5G, with Wi-Fi in 5 GHz and WiGig in 60 GHz. Unlike LTE, which was adapted to operate in unlicensed spectrum, NR-U is natively designed with this feature, including its capability to operate in unlicensed in a complete standalone fashion, a fundamental new milestone for cellular. In this context, our focus of analysis changes. We consider that these two technological families are no longer targeting complementarity but are now competing, and we claim that this will be the trend for the years to come. To enable the research in these multi-RAT scenarios, another fundamental result of this PhD thesis, besides the scientific contributions, is the release of high fidelity models for LTE and NR and their coexistence with Wi-Fi and WiGig to the ns-3 open-source community. ns-3 is a popular open-source network simulator, with the characteristic to be multi-RAT and so naturally allows the evaluation of coexistence scenarios between different technologies. These models, for which I led the development, are by academic citations, the most used open-source simulation models for LTE and NR and havereceived fundings from industry (Ubiquisys, WFA, SpiderCloud, Interdigital, Facebook) and federal agencies (NIST, LLNL) over the years.Aquesta tesi doctoral té la característica d’allargar-se durant un llarg període de temps ja que mentre treballava en ella, treballava com a enginyera investigadora a CTTC amb tasques de desenvolupament molt exigents. Això ha endarrerit el dipositar-la més del que m’hagués agradat. D’altra banda, això m’ha donat el privilegi de ser testimoni i estudiar com han evolucionat les tecnologies sense fils durant més d’una dècada des del 4G fins al 5G i més enllà. Quan vaig començar la tesi doctoral, IEEE i 3GPP estaven definint les dues tecnologies sense fils principals en aquell moment, Wi-Fi i LTE, que cobreixen dos objectius de mercat substancialment complementaris. Wi-Fi va ser dissenyat per funcionar principalment en interiors, en espectre sense llicència, i pretenia ser una tecnologia senzilla i barata. La seva tecnologia primària per a la convivència es basava en el supòsit que l’espectre en el que estava operant era de franc, i, per tant, es va dissenyar simplement evitant interferències a través del famós protocol CSMA/CA. D’altra banda, 3GPP estava dissenyant tecnologies per a espectres amb llicència, un tipus d’espectre costós. Com a resultat, LTE està dissenyat per treure’n el màxim profit alhora que proporciona el millor QoE en escenaris principalment a l’aire lliure. La tesi doctoral comença amb aquest context i evoluciona amb aquestes dues tecnologies. En els primers capítols, estudiem solucions de gestió de recursos de radio per a operacions en espectre de Wi-Fi sense llicència i LTE amb llicència. Hem anticipat l’actual tendència fonamental d’aprenentatge automàtic treballant solucions de gestió de recursos de radio basades en l’aprenentatge automàtic per millorar l’LTE i Wi-Fi en el seu espectre respectiu. Prestem especial atenció als desplegaments de cèl·lules petites destinades a millorar la eficiència d’espectre llicenciat, reproduint escenaris de petit abast típics de la configuració Wi-Fi. IEEE i 3GPP van seguir evolucionant les tecnologies al llarg dels anys: El Wi-Fi s’ha convertit en una tecnologia molt més complexa i sofisticada, incorporant les característiques clau de les tecnologies cel·lulars, com ara HARQ i la reutilització espacial. D’altra banda, des de la versió 13, també s’han dissenyat xarxes cel·lulars per a espectre sense llicència. Com a resultat, els dos darrers capítols d’aquesta tesi es centren en aquests escenaris de convivència, on s’ha de dissenyar LTE per conviure amb la Wi-Fi de manera justa, i NR, l’accés a la radio per a 5G amb Wi-Fi a 5 GHz i WiGig a 60 GHz. A diferència de LTE, que es va adaptar per funcionar en espectre sense llicència, NR-U està dissenyat de forma nativa amb aquesta característica, inclosa la seva capacitat per operar sense llicència de forma autònoma completa, una nova fita fonamental per al mòbil. En aquest context, el nostre focus d’anàlisi canvia. Considerem que aquestes dues famílies de tecnologia ja no estan orientades cap a la complementarietat, sinó que ara competeixen, i afirmem que aquesta serà el tendència per als propers anys. Per permetre la investigació en aquests escenaris multi-RAT, un altre resultat fonamental d’aquesta tesi doctoral, a més de les aportacions científiques, és l’alliberament de models d’alta fidelitat per a LTE i NR i la seva coexistència amb Wi-Fi a la comunitat de codi obert ns-3. ns-3 és un popular simulador de xarxa de codi obert, amb la característica de ser multi-RAT i, per tant, permet l’avaluació de manera natural d’escenaris de convivència entre diferents tecnologies. Aquests models, pels quals he liderat el desenvolupament, són per cites acadèmiques, els models de simulació de codi obert més utilitzats per a LTE i NR i que han rebut finançament de la indústria (Ubiquisys, WFA, SpiderCloud, Interdigital, Facebook) i agències federals (NIST, LLNL) al llarg dels anys.Esta tesis doctoral tiene la característica de extenderse durante mucho tiempo porque mientras trabajaba en ella, trabajaba como ingeniera de investigación en CTTC con tareas de desarrollo muy exigentes. Esto ha retrasado el depósito más de lo que me hubiera gustado. Por otro lado, gracias a ello, he tenido el privilegio de presenciar y estudiar como las tecnologías inalámbricas han evolucionado durante una década, de 4G a 5G y más allá. Cuando comencé mi tesis doctoral, IEEE y 3GPP estaban definiendo las dos principales tecnologías inalámbricas en ese momento, Wi-Fi y LTE, cumpliendo dos objetivos de mercado sustancialmente complementarios. Wi-Fi fue diseñado para funcionar principalmente en interiores, en un espectro sin licencia, y estaba destinado a ser una tecnología simple y barata. Su tecnología primaria para la convivencia se basaba en el supuesto en que el espectro en el que estaba operando era gratis, y así fue diseñado simplemente evitando interferencias a través del famoso protocolo CSMA/CA. Por otro lado, 3GPP estaba diseñando tecnologías para espectro con licencia, un tipo de espectro costoso. Como resultado, LTE está diseñado para aprovechar el espectro al máximo proporcionando al mismo tiempo el mejor QoE en escenarios principalmente al aire libre. La tesis doctoral parte de este contexto y evoluciona con estas dos tecnologías. En los primeros capítulos, estudiamos las soluciones de gestión de recursos de radio para operación en espectro Wi-Fi sin licencia y LTE con licencia. Anticipamos la tendencia ahora fundamental de aprendizaje automático trabajando en soluciones de gestión de recursos de radio para mejorar LTE y funcionamiento deWi-Fi en su respectivo espectro. Prestamos especial atención a las implementaciones de células pequeñas destinadas a mejorar la eficiencia de espectro licenciado, reproduciendo los típicos escenarios de rango pequeño de la configuración Wi-Fi. IEEE y 3GPP siguieron evolucionando las tecnologías a lo largo de los años: Wi-Fi se ha convertido en una tecnología mucho más compleja y sofisticada, incorporando las características clave de las tecnologías celulares, como HARQ, OFDMA, MU-MIMO, MAC scheduling y la reutilización espacial. Por otro lado, desde la Release 13, también se han diseñado redes celulares para espectro sin licencia. Como resultado, los dos últimos capítulos de esta tesis se centran en estos escenarios de convivencia, donde LTE debe diseñarse para coexistir con Wi-Fi de manera justa, y NR, el acceso por radio para 5G con Wi-Fi en 5 GHz y WiGig en 60 GHz. A diferencia de LTE, que se adaptó para operar en espectro sin licencia, NR-U está diseñado de forma nativa con esta función, incluyendo su capacidad para operar sin licencia de forma completamente independiente, un nuevo hito fundamental para los celulares. En este contexto, cambia nuestro enfoque de análisis. Consideramos que estas dos familias tecnológicas ya no tienen como objetivo la complementariedad, sino que ahora están compitiendo, y afirmamos que esta será la tendencia para los próximos años. Para permitir la investigación en estos escenarios de múltiples RAT, otro resultado fundamental de esta tesis doctoral, además de los aportes científicos, es el lanzamiento de modelos de alta fidelidad para LTE y NR y su coexistencia con Wi-Fi y WiGig a la comunidad de código abierto de ns-3. ns-3 es un simulador popular de red de código abierto, con la característica de ser multi-RAT y así, naturalmente, permite la evaluación de escenarios de convivencia entre diferentes tecnologías. Estos modelos, para los cuales lideré el desarrollo, son por citas académicas, los modelos de simulación de código abierto más utilizados para LTE y NR y han recibido fondos de la industria (Ubiquisys, WFA, SpiderCloud, Interdigital, Facebook) y agencias federales (NIST, LLNL) a lo largo de los años.Postprint (published version

Advanced PHY/MAC Design for Infrastructure-less Wireless Networks

Wireless networks play a key role in providing information exchange among distributed mobile devices. Nowadays, Infrastructure-Less Wireless Networks (ILWNs), which include ad hoc and sensor networks, are gaining increasing popularity as they do not need a fixed infrastructure. Simultaneously, multiple research initiatives have led to different findings at the physical (PHY) layer of the wireless communication systems, which can effectively be adopted in ILWNs. However, the distributed nature of ILWNs demand for different network control policies that should have into account the most recent findings to increase the network performance. This thesis investigates the adoption of Multi-Packet Reception (MPR) techniques at the PHY layer of distributed wireless networks, which is itself a challenging task due to the lack of a central coordinator and the spatial distribution of the nodes. The work starts with the derivation of an MPR system performance model that allows to determine optimal points of operation for different radio conditions. The model developed and validated in this thesis is then used to study the performance of ILWNs in high density of transmitters and when the spectrum can be sensed a priori (i.e. before each transmission). Based on the theoretical analysis developed in the thesis, we show that depending on the propagation conditions the spectrum sensing can reduce the network throughput to a level where its use should be avoided. At the final stage, we propose a crosslayered architecture that improves the capacity of an ILWN. Different Medium Access Control (MAC) schemes for ILWNs adopting MPR communications are proposed and their performance is theoretically characterized. We propose a cross-layer optimization methodology that considers the features of the MPR communication scheme together with the MAC performance. The proposed cross-layer optimization methodology improves the throughput of ILWNs, which is validated through theoretical analysis and multiple simulation results

Enabling Dynamic Spectrum Allocation in Cognitive Radio Networks

The last decade has witnessed the proliferation of innovative wireless technologies, such asWi-Fi, wireless mesh networks, operating in unlicensed bands. Due to the increasing popularity and the wide deployments of these technologies, the unlicensed bands become overcrowded. The wireless devices operating in these bands interfere with each other and hurt the overall performance. To support fast growths of wireless technologies, more spectrums are required. However, as most "prime" spectrum has been allocated, there is no spectrum available to expand these innovative wireless services. Despite the general perception that there is an actual spectral shortage, the recent measurement results released by the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) show that on average only 5% of the spectrum from 30MHz to 30 GHz is used in the US. This indicates that the inefficient spectrum usage is the root cause of the spectral shortage problem. Therefore, this dissertation is focused on improving spectrum utilization and efficiency in tackling the spectral shortage problem to support ever-growing user demands for wireless applications. This dissertation proposes a novel concept of dynamic spectrum allocation, which adaptively divides available spectrum into non-overlapping frequency segments of different bandwidth considering the number of potentially interfering transmissions and the distribution of traffic load in a local environment. The goals are (1) to maximize spectrum efficiency by increasing parallel transmissions and reducing co-channel interferences, and (2) to improve fairness across a network by balancing spectrum assignments. Since existing radio systems offer very limited flexibility, cognitive radios, which can sense and adapt to radio environments, are exploited to support such a dynamic concept. We explore two directions to improve spectrum efficiency by adopting the proposed dynamic allocation concept. First, we build a cognitive wireless system called KNOWS to exploit unoccupied frequencies in the licensed TV bands. KNOWS is a hardware-software platform that includes new radio hardware, a spectrum-aware MAC (medium access control) protocol and an algorithm for implementing the dynamic spectrum allocation. We show that KNOWS accomplishes a remarkable 200% throughput gain over systems based on fixed allocations in common cases. Second, we enhance Wireless LANs (WLANs), the most popular network setting in unlicensed bands, by proposing a dynamic channelization structure and a scalable MAC design. Through analysis and extensive simulations, we show that the new channelization structure and the scalable MAC design improve not only network capacity but per-client fairness by allocating channels of variable width for access points in a WLAN. As a conclusion, we believe that our proposed concept of dynamic spectrum allocation lays down a solid foundation for building systems to efficiently use the invaluable spectrum resource

A Tutorial on Mathematical Modeling of 5G/6G Millimeter Wave and Terahertz Cellular Systems

Millimeter wave (mmWave) and terahertz (THz) radio access technologies (RAT) are expected to become a critical part of the future cellular ecosystem providing an abundant amount of bandwidth in areas with high traffic demands. However, extremely directional antenna radiation patterns that need to be utilized at both transmit and receive sides of a link to overcome severe path losses, dynamic blockage of propagation paths by large static and small dynamic objects, macro-and micromobility of user equipment (UE) makes provisioning of reliable service over THz/mmWave RATs an extremely complex task. This challenge is further complicated by the type of applications envisioned for these systems inherently requiring guaranteed bitrates at the air interface. This tutorial aims to introduce a versatile mathematical methodology for assessing performance reliability improvement algorithms for mmWave and THz systems. Our methodology accounts for both radio interface specifics as well as service process of sessions at mmWave/THz base stations (BS) and is capable of evaluating the performance of systems with multiconnectivity operation, resource reservation mechanisms, priorities between multiple traffic types having different service requirements. The framework is logically separated into two parts: (i) parameterization part that abstracts the specifics of deployment and radio mechanisms, and (ii) queuing part, accounting for details of the service process at mmWave/THz BSs. The modular decoupled structure of the framework allows for further extensions to advanced service mechanisms in prospective mmWave/THz cellular deployments while keeping the complexity manageable and thus making it attractive for system analysts.publishedVersionPeer reviewe

A Tutorial on Mathematical Modeling of 5G/6G Millimeter Wave and Terahertz Cellular Systems

Millimeter wave (mmWave) and terahertz (THz) radio access technologies (RAT) are expected to become a critical part of the future cellular ecosystem providing an abundant amount of bandwidth in areas with high traffic demands. However, extremely directional antenna radiation patterns that need to be utilized at both transmit and receive sides of a link to overcome severe path losses, dynamic blockage of propagation paths by large static and small dynamic objects, macro-and micromobility of user equipment (UE) makes provisioning of reliable service over THz/mmWave RATs an extremely complex task. This challenge is further complicated by the type of applications envisioned for these systems inherently requiring guaranteed bitrates at the air interface. This tutorial aims to introduce a versatile mathematical methodology for assessing performance reliability improvement algorithms for mmWave and THz systems. Our methodology accounts for both radio interface specifics as well as service process of sessions at mmWave/THz base stations (BS) and is capable of evaluating the performance of systems with multiconnectivity operation, resource reservation mechanisms, priorities between multiple traffic types having different service requirements. The framework is logically separated into two parts: (i) parameterization part that abstracts the specifics of deployment and radio mechanisms, and (ii) queuing part, accounting for details of the service process at mmWave/THz BSs. The modular decoupled structure of the framework allows for further extensions to advanced service mechanisms in prospective mmWave/THz cellular deployments while keeping the complexity manageable and thus making it attractive for system analysts.publishedVersionPeer reviewe