Analytical TCP Model for Millimeter-Wave 5G NR Systems in Dynamic Human Body Blockage Environment

Dynamic blockage of radio propagation paths between the user equipment (UE) and the 5G New Radio (NR) Base Station (BS) induces abrupt rate fluctuations that may lead to sub-optimal performance of the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) protocol. In this work, we characterize the effects of dynamic human blockage on TCP throughput at the 5G NR air interface. To this aim, we develop an analytical model that expresses the TCP throughput as a function of the round-trip time (RTT), environmental, and radio system parameters. Our results indicate that the blockage affects TCP throughput only when the RTT is comparable to the blocked and non-blocked state durations when the frequency of state changes is high. However, such conditions are not typical for dynamic body blockage environments allowing TCP to benefit from the high bandwidth of 5G NR systems fully

Impact of Channel Models on the End-to-End Performance of mmWave Cellular Networks

Communication at mmWave frequencies is one of the major innovations of the fifth generation of cellular networks, because of the potential multi-gigabit data rate given by the large amounts of available bandwidth. The mmWave channel, however, makes reliable communications particularly challenging, given the harsh propagation environment and the sensitivity to blockage. Therefore, proper modeling of the mmWave channel is fundamental for accurate results in system simulations of mmWave cellular networks. Nonetheless, complex models, such as the 3GPP channel model for frequencies above 6 GHz, may introduce a significant overhead in terms of computational complexity. In this paper we investigate the trade offs related to the accuracy and the simplicity of the channel model in end-to-end network simulations, and the impact on the performance evaluation of transport protocols.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures. To be presented at IEEE SPAWC 2018, Kalamata, Greece, June 201

System-Level Analysis of Blockage Dynamics in Millimeter-Wave Communications

The new generation of wireless technology, termed as the fifth generation (5G), introduces a large amount of novel features. An operation in the millimeter-wave (mmWave) spectrum becomes one of those features unlocking a wide bandwidth. The latter allows for a notable increase in the peak data rate by up to tens of gigabits per second and decreases latency to as low as few milliseconds. These improvements provide an opportunity to support high-rate and low-latency applications, such as augmented and virtual reality, eHealth, and many others. Though mmWave communications have great potential, they suffer from severe attenuation caused by signal blockage. In addition to large-scale blockers (i.e., buildings), small-scale blockers such as human bodies bring new challenges to the operation over mmWave bands. Large attenuation losses, as well as the unpredictable mobility of human body blockers, can significantly decrease a service quality when communicating over a mmWave link. Thereby, there is a need to properly model the blockage process, evaluate its impact on mmWave network performance, and estimate performance gains brought by different blockage mitigation techniques. The thesis proposes a mathematical methodology to characterize and evaluate the effect of blockage dynamics in mmWave networks. With the help of stochastic geometry and probability theory, it delivers mathematical models of static and dynamic small-scale blockage, as well as static large-scale blockage. It then introduces system-level performance evaluation frameworks accounting for the main features of mmWave communications, such as blockage and multipath propagation. The mathematical frameworks can also evaluate the impact of several blockage mitigation techniques in realistic deployment scenarios

Facilitating Internet of Things on the Edge

The evolution of electronics and wireless technologies has entered a new era, the Internet of Things (IoT). Presently, IoT technologies influence the global market, bringing benefits in many areas, including healthcare, manufacturing, transportation, and entertainment. Modern IoT devices serve as a thin client with data processing performed in a remote computing node, such as a cloud server or a mobile edge compute unit. These computing units own significant resources that allow prompt data processing. The user experience for such an approach relies drastically on the availability and quality of the internet connection. In this case, if the internet connection is unavailable, the resulting operations of IoT applications can be completely disrupted. It is worth noting that emerging IoT applications are even more throughput demanding and latency-sensitive which makes communication networks a practical bottleneck for the service provisioning. This thesis aims to eliminate the limitations of wireless access, via the improvement of connectivity and throughput between the devices on the edge, as well as their network identification, which is fundamentally important for IoT service management. The introduction begins with a discussion on the emerging IoT applications and their demands. Subsequent chapters introduce scenarios of interest, describe the proposed solutions and provide selected performance evaluation results. Specifically, we start with research on the use of degraded memory chips for network identification of IoT devices as an alternative to conventional methods, such as IMEI; these methods are not vulnerable to tampering and cloning. Further, we introduce our contributions for improving connectivity and throughput among IoT devices on the edge in a case where the mobile network infrastructure is limited or totally unavailable. Finally, we conclude the introduction with a summary of the results achieved

Taming and Leveraging Directionality and Blockage in Millimeter Wave Communications

To cope with the challenge for high-rate data transmission, Millimeter Wave(mmWave) is one potential solution. The short wavelength unlatched the era of directional mobile communication. The semi-optical communication requires revolutionary thinking. To assist the research and evaluate various algorithms, we build a motion-sensitive mmWave testbed with two degrees of freedom for environmental sensing and general wireless communication.The first part of this thesis contains two approaches to maintain the connection in mmWave mobile communication. The first one seeks to solve the beam tracking problem using motion sensor within the mobile device. A tracking algorithm is given and integrated into the tracking protocol. Detailed experiments and numerical simulations compared several compensation schemes with optical benchmark and demonstrated the efficiency of overhead reduction. The second strategy attempts to mitigate intermittent connections during roaming is multi-connectivity. Taking advantage of properties of rateless erasure code, a fountain code type multi-connectivity mechanism is proposed to increase the link reliability with simplified backhaul mechanism. The simulation demonstrates the efficiency and robustness of our system design with a multi-link channel record.The second topic in this thesis explores various techniques in blockage mitigation. A fast hear-beat like channel with heavy blockage loss is identified in the mmWave Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) communication experiment due to the propeller blockage. These blockage patterns are detected through Holm\u27s procedure as a problem of multi-time series edge detection. To reduce the blockage effect, an adaptive modulation and coding scheme is designed. The simulation results show that it could greatly improve the throughput given appropriately predicted patterns. The last but not the least, the blockage of directional communication also appears as a blessing because the geometrical information and blockage event of ancillary signal paths can be utilized to predict the blockage timing for the current transmission path. A geometrical model and prediction algorithm are derived to resolve the blockage time and initiate active handovers. An experiment provides solid proof of multi-paths properties and the numeral simulation demonstrates the efficiency of the proposed algorithm

Beam Tracking Strategies for 5G New Radio Networks Operating in the Millimetre Wave Bands

[ES] La llegada de la próxima generación del estándar de comunicaciones móviles, la llamada quinta generación (5G), es prácticamente una realidad. Las primeras redes comerciales han comenzado a ser desplegadas, centrándose en ofrecer altas velocidades de transferencia de datos. Sin embargo, el estándar 5G va mucho más allá y prevé dar soporte a nuevos servicios que pretenden revolucionar la sociedad. Estos nuevos servicios imponen un nivel alto de requisitos en no solo en cuanto a velocidad del tráfico de datos, sino en cuanto a latencia o número de dispositivos conectados simultáneamente. La amplia variedad de requisitos no puede ser soportada por las redes de cuarta generación (4G), por lo que se hizo necesario plantear un nuevo paradigma para las redes inalámbricas. Con la promesa de grandes cantidades de ancho de banda sin utilizar, el estándar 5G contempla utilizar frecuencias en la comúnmente conocida como banda de milimétricas (mmWave). Esta banda presenta grandes pérdidas de propagación, que se acentúan si existen bloqueos de señal. Actividades regulatorias del uso de las bandas de milimétricas atrajo el interés tanto de la industria como de la academia en plantear soluciones para dar servicio en estas bandas. En los últimos años se han presentado infinidad de trabajos basados en sistemas con múltiples antenas o MIMO, para conformar las señales transmitidas o recibidas en haces apuntando en determinadas direcciones. La ganancia que aportan los sistemas MIMO pueden compensar las altas pérdidas de propagación, asegurando la viabilidad de las comunicaciones mmWave. Se ha detectado una evidente falta de estudios sobre la viabilidad de sistemas MIMO en entornos móviles y dinámicos con bloqueos que hagan necesario que el sistema se reconfigure. Esta Tesis pretende cubrir este espacio desde un enfoque práctico y propone mecanismos de gestión de los haces para hacerles un seguimiento utilizando los recursos y mecanismos del nuevo estándar 5G. Las soluciones aportadas se basan en el uso eficiente de los reportes de medidas de las señales de referencia estandarizadas en enlace descendente. En primer lugar, esta Tesis recoge un análisis minucioso del estado del arte, donde se corrobora la necesidad de aportar soluciones de seguimiento de haces en sistemas de comunicaciones en la banda de milimétricas. Además, se estudian los diferentes mecanismos definidos en el estándar 5G y que posibilitan el seguimiento. Cabe destacar que el estándar no define un mecanismo único a seguir, permitiendo presentar propuestas. Una vez conocidas las tecnologías, se centra el estudio en el impacto del seguimiento sobre las prestaciones a nivel de red y de enlace. Dicho estudio se realiza sobre un sistema punto a punto, donde el terminal móvil se desplaza por un entorno urbano. En base a simulaciones de red, se cuantifica el índice de seguimiento de haz y de cómo dicho seguimiento afecta a la relación señal a ruido más interferencia (SINR) y la tasa de transmisión del usuario. Las soluciones de seguimiento propuestas en esta Tesis se pueden clasificar en dos categorías. En una primera categoría, se realiza el seguimiento en base a reportes de medidas de las señales de referencia. Independientemente de la velocidad, se alcanza un seguimiento del 91% con poca penalización en la tasa de transmisión si se monitorizan los haces de interés con una periodicidad menor de 20 ms. En la segunda categoría caben mecanismos de seguimiento que hacen uso de fuentes externas de información. Dentro de esta categoría, se propone un fingerprinting que relacione haces con la localización reportada y un modelo de machine learning (ML) que prediga los haces a utilizar. El fingerprinting proporciona los mismos niveles de rendimiento. Sin embargo, esta solución es muy sensible a errores y requiere considerar todos los casos posibles, lo que la hace tecnológicamente inviable. En cambio, el modelo de ML, que hace p[CA] L'arribada de la següent generació de l'estàndard de comunicacions mòbils, l'anomenada cinquena generació (5G), es pràcticament una realitat. Les primeres xarxes comercials han començat a desplegar-se i s'han centrat en oferir altes velocitats de transferència de dades. No obstant, l'estàndard 5G va molt mes allà y preveu donar suport a nous serveis que pretenen revolucionar la societat. Estos nous serveis imposen un alt nivell de requisits no sols en quant a velocitat de tràfic de dades, si no també en quant a latència o número de connexions simultànies. L'ampla varietat de requisits no es suportada per les xarxes de quarta generació (4G) actuals, per el qual es va fer necessari un nou paradigma de xarxes sense fil. Amb la promesa de amplies quantitats d'ample de banda, l'estàndard 5G contempla utilitzar freqüències a la banda de mil·limètriques. Esta banda presenta l'inconvenient d'experimentar grans pèrdues de propagació, que s'accentuen en cas de bloqueigs. L'apertura de les bandes de mil·limètriques va atraure l'interès tant de l'industria com de l'acadèmia en plantejar solucions per a donar servei en estes bandes. En els últims anys s'han presentat infinitat de treballs basats en sistemes amb múltiples antenes o MIMO, per a conformar els senyals transmesos o rebuts en feixos apuntant en determinades direccions d'interès. El guany de feix es pot utilitzar per a compensar les pèrdues de propagació, assegurant la viabilitat de les comunicacions en la banda de mil·limètriques. No obstant això, s'ha detectat una preocupant manca d'estudis sobre la viabilitat d'estos sistemes en entorns mòbils i dinàmics, amb obstacles que bloquejen els feixos i facen necessari que el sistema es reconfigure. El present treball de Tesi pretén cobrir este espai buit i des d'un punt de vista pràctic, es proposen mecanismes de gestió dels feixos per a ser el seguiment utilitzant els recursos i mecanismes dels que disposa l'estàndard 5G. D'esta manera, les solucions aportades es basen en la utilització eficient dels reports de mesures dels senyals de referència del enllaç descendent. En primer lloc, esta Tesi recull una anàlisi minuciosa de l'estat de l'art on es corrobora la necessitat de aportar solucions de seguiment de feixos per a comunicacions en la banda de freqüències mil·limètriques. A més a més, s'estudien els diferents mecanismes definits a l'estàndard 5G i que possibiliten el seguiment. Cap destacar que l'estàndard no defineix un mecanisme únic, si no que deixa la porta oberta a presentar propostes. Una vegada conegudes les tecnologies, l'estudi es centra en l'impacte del seguiment sobre les prestacions a nivell de xarxa i d'enllaç. Este estudi es realitza sobre un sistema MIMO punt a punt, en una única estació base i un terminal mòbil desplaçant-se en un entorn urbà. En base a simulacions d'extrem a extrem, es quantifica l'índex de seguiment de feix i com l'anomenat seguiment afecta a la relació senyal a soroll més interferència (SINR) i a la taxa instantània de transmissió de l'usuari. Les solucions de seguiment de feixos propostes a la Tesi es poden classificar en dos categories. A la primera categoria, el seguiment de feixos es realitza en base als reports de mesures dels senyals de referència. Independentment de la velocitat, s'arriba a una taxa de seguiment del 91% amb poca penalització de taxa de transmissió si els feixos d'interès es mesuren amb una periodicitat menor a 20 ms. A la segona categoria pertanyen els algoritmes que utilitzen fonts d'informació externes. Dins d'aquesta categoria es proposa un fingerprinting que relaciona un parell de feixos amb la ubicació de l'usuari, i a banda un model d'intel·ligència artificial (IA) que preveu el feix a utilitzar. El fingerprinting ofereix el mateix rendiment. Però, esta solució es molt sensible a errors i requereix considerar tots els casos possibles, fent-la tecnològicament inviable. En canvi, el[EN] The arrival of the next generation of mobile communication standards, the so-called Fifth Generation (5G), is already a reality. The first commercial networks have begun to be deployed, and they focus on providing higher data rates. However, the 5G standard goes much further from that and aims at providing support to new services which will revolutionise the society. These new services impose a high level of requirements not only in terms of the data traffic speed, but also in terms of very low latency or incredibly large number of simultaneous connections. This wide variety of requirements cannot be technologically supported by the current Fourth Generation (4G) networks, so it became necessary to move forward with a new paradigm for wireless networks. With the promise of large amounts of bandwidth, in the order of GHz, the 5G standard contemplates the use of frequencies in the commonly known Millimetre Wave (mmWave) band. The mmWave band experiences large propagation losses, which are accentuated in blockage events. Regulatory activities worldwide in the mmWave bands attracted the interest of both the industry and the academia. In the last few years, a tremendous number of contributions on mmWave propagation studies and networks have appeared, most of them based on Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) solutions. MIMO architectures allow to beamform, which focuses the radiated energy on certain directions of interest called beams. The additional beam gain compensates the high propagation losses, ensuring the viability of the communications in the mmWave band. There is an evident lack of viability studies of mmWave MIMO systems in mobile and highly-dynamic environments, where obstacles may block beams and forcing frequent re-configurations. This Thesis work aims to fill this gap from a practical approach. This Thesis proposes beam management mechanisms utilising the mechanisms and resources offered by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) 5G radio access standard: 5G New Radio (NR). The practical solutions are based on the efficient use of measurement reports of standardised downlink Reference Signals (RS). In first place, this Thesis provides a thorough state-of-the-art analysis and corroborates the need of adopting beam tracking solutions for mmWave networks. Then, a complete overview of the 5G standard mechanisms that enable beam tracking is given. The NR standard does not define a standardised mechanism for beam tracking, leaving the door open to proposals to carry out such monitoring. Once the technologies have been identified, the Thesis continues with assessing the impact of the beam tracking strategies on the network and link-level performance. The study is focused on individual point-to-point mmWave links in a realistic urban environment. Based on end-to-end network simulations, the Thesis is interested in assessing the beam tracking success ratio and how beam misalignment affects the perceived Signal to Noise plus Interference Ratio (SINR) and user throughput at pedestrian and vehicular speeds. The beam tracking solutions proposed in this Thesis fall into two categories. The first category monitors beams based on measuring and reporting beamformed RS. Regardless of the speed, this beam tracking category provides up to 91 % tracking performance, with little throughput reduction if the beams of interest are measured with a periodicity below 20 ms. Beam tracking in the second category relies on external information sources. Within this category, this Thesis proposes a fingerprinting database relating beams to the user position and a machine learning (ML) model. Fingerprinting beam tracking is technologically viable and provides similar performance levels. However, this solution is very sensitive to errors and requires considering all possible situations. The ML beam tracking, which makes predictions with a 16 % of estimation error for the reference data set.I want to thank the Spanish Ministry of Education and Professional Formation for funding this Thesis work with an official pre-doctoral contract grant.Herranz Claveras, C. (2019). Beam Tracking Strategies for 5G New Radio Networks Operating in the Millimetre Wave Bands [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/130845TESI

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

Intelligent Resource Allocation in 5G Multi-Radio Heterogeneous Networks

The fast-moving evolution of wireless networks, which started less than three decades ago, has resulted in worldwide connectivity and influenced the development of a global market in all related areas. However, in recent years, the growing user traffic demands have led to the saturation of licensed and unlicensed frequency bands regarding capacity and load-over-time. On the physical layer the used spectrum efficiency is already close to Shannon’s limit; however the traffic demand continues to grow, forcing mobile network operators and equipment manufacturers to evaluate more effective strategies of the wireless medium access.One of these strategies, called cell densification, implies there are a growing number of serving entities, with the appropriate reduction of the per-cell coverage area. However, if implemented blindly, this approach will lead to a significant growth in the average interference level and overhead control signaling, which are both required to allow sufficient user mobility. Furthermore, the interference is also affected by the increasing variety of radio access technologies (RATs) and applications, often deployed without the necessary level of cooperation with technologies that are already in place.To overcome these problems today’s telecommunication standardization groups are trying to collaborate. That is why the recent agenda of the fifth generation wireless networks (5G) includes not only the development schedules for the particular technologies but also implies there should be an expansion of the appropriate interconnection techniques. In this thesis, we describe and evaluate the concept of heterogeneous networks (HetNets), which involve the cooperation between several RATs.In the introductory part, we discuss the set of the problems, related to HetNets, and review the HetNet development process. Moreover, we show the evolution of existing and potential segments of the multi-RAT 5G network, together with the most promising applications, which could be used in future HetNets.Further, in the thesis, we describe the set of key representative scenarios, including three-tier WiFi-LTE multi-RAT deployment, MTC-enabled LTE, and the mmWave-based network. For each of these scenarios, we define a set of unsolved issues and appropriate solutions. For the WiFi-LTE multi-RAT scenario, we develop the framework, enabling intelligent and flexible resource allocation between the involved RATs. For MTC-enabled LTE, we study the effect of massive MTC deployments on the performance of LTE random access procedure and propose some basic methods to improve its efficiency. Finally, for the mmWave scenario, we study the effects of connectivity strategies, human body blockage and antenna array configuration on the overall network performance. Next, we develop a set of validated analytical and simulation-based techniques which allow us to evaluate the performance of proposed solutions. At the end of the introductory part a set of HetNet-related demo activities is demonstrated