208 research outputs found
A Vision and Framework for the High Altitude Platform Station (HAPS) Networks of the Future
A High Altitude Platform Station (HAPS) is a network node that operates in
the stratosphere at an of altitude around 20 km and is instrumental for
providing communication services. Precipitated by technological innovations in
the areas of autonomous avionics, array antennas, solar panel efficiency
levels, and battery energy densities, and fueled by flourishing industry
ecosystems, the HAPS has emerged as an indispensable component of
next-generations of wireless networks. In this article, we provide a vision and
framework for the HAPS networks of the future supported by a comprehensive and
state-of-the-art literature review. We highlight the unrealized potential of
HAPS systems and elaborate on their unique ability to serve metropolitan areas.
The latest advancements and promising technologies in the HAPS energy and
payload systems are discussed. The integration of the emerging Reconfigurable
Smart Surface (RSS) technology in the communications payload of HAPS systems
for providing a cost-effective deployment is proposed. A detailed overview of
the radio resource management in HAPS systems is presented along with
synergistic physical layer techniques, including Faster-Than-Nyquist (FTN)
signaling. Numerous aspects of handoff management in HAPS systems are
described. The notable contributions of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in HAPS,
including machine learning in the design, topology management, handoff, and
resource allocation aspects are emphasized. The extensive overview of the
literature we provide is crucial for substantiating our vision that depicts the
expected deployment opportunities and challenges in the next 10 years
(next-generation networks), as well as in the subsequent 10 years
(next-next-generation networks).Comment: To appear in IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorial
A Prospective Look: Key Enabling Technologies, Applications and Open Research Topics in 6G Networks
The fifth generation (5G) mobile networks are envisaged to enable a plethora
of breakthrough advancements in wireless technologies, providing support of a
diverse set of services over a single platform. While the deployment of 5G
systems is scaling up globally, it is time to look ahead for beyond 5G systems.
This is driven by the emerging societal trends, calling for fully automated
systems and intelligent services supported by extended reality and haptics
communications. To accommodate the stringent requirements of their prospective
applications, which are data-driven and defined by extremely low-latency,
ultra-reliable, fast and seamless wireless connectivity, research initiatives
are currently focusing on a progressive roadmap towards the sixth generation
(6G) networks. In this article, we shed light on some of the major enabling
technologies for 6G, which are expected to revolutionize the fundamental
architectures of cellular networks and provide multiple homogeneous artificial
intelligence-empowered services, including distributed communications, control,
computing, sensing, and energy, from its core to its end nodes. Particularly,
this paper aims to answer several 6G framework related questions: What are the
driving forces for the development of 6G? How will the enabling technologies of
6G differ from those in 5G? What kind of applications and interactions will
they support which would not be supported by 5G? We address these questions by
presenting a profound study of the 6G vision and outlining five of its
disruptive technologies, i.e., terahertz communications, programmable
metasurfaces, drone-based communications, backscatter communications and
tactile internet, as well as their potential applications. Then, by leveraging
the state-of-the-art literature surveyed for each technology, we discuss their
requirements, key challenges, and open research problems
Five Facets of 6G: Research Challenges and Opportunities
Whilst the fifth-generation (5G) systems are being rolled out across the
globe, researchers have turned their attention to the exploration of radical
next-generation solutions. At this early evolutionary stage we survey five main
research facets of this field, namely {\em Facet~1: next-generation
architectures, spectrum and services, Facet~2: next-generation networking,
Facet~3: Internet of Things (IoT), Facet~4: wireless positioning and sensing,
as well as Facet~5: applications of deep learning in 6G networks.} In this
paper, we have provided a critical appraisal of the literature of promising
techniques ranging from the associated architectures, networking, applications
as well as designs. We have portrayed a plethora of heterogeneous architectures
relying on cooperative hybrid networks supported by diverse access and
transmission mechanisms. The vulnerabilities of these techniques are also
addressed and carefully considered for highlighting the most of promising
future research directions. Additionally, we have listed a rich suite of
learning-driven optimization techniques. We conclude by observing the
evolutionary paradigm-shift that has taken place from pure single-component
bandwidth-efficiency, power-efficiency or delay-optimization towards
multi-component designs, as exemplified by the twin-component ultra-reliable
low-latency mode of the 5G system. We advocate a further evolutionary step
towards multi-component Pareto optimization, which requires the exploration of
the entire Pareto front of all optiomal solutions, where none of the components
of the objective function may be improved without degrading at least one of the
other components
A prospective look: key enabling technologies, applications and open research topics in 6G networks
The fifth generation (5G) mobile networks are envisaged to enable a plethora of breakthrough advancements in wireless technologies, providing support of a diverse set of services over a single platform. While the deployment of 5G systems is scaling up globally, it is time to look ahead for beyond 5G systems. This is mainly driven by the emerging societal trends, calling for fully automated systems and intelligent services supported by extended reality and haptics communications. To accommodate the stringent requirements of their prospective applications, which are data-driven and defined by extremely low-latency, ultra-reliable, fast and seamless wireless connectivity, research initiatives are currently focusing on a progressive roadmap towards the sixth generation (6G) networks, which are expected to bring transformative changes to this premise. In this article, we shed light on some of the major enabling technologies for 6G, which are expected to revolutionize the fundamental architectures of cellular networks and provide multiple homogeneous artificial intelligence-empowered services, including distributed communications, control, computing, sensing, and energy, from its core to its end nodes. In particular, the present paper aims to answer several 6G framework related questions: What are the driving forces for the development of 6G? How will the enabling technologies of 6G differ from those in 5G? What kind of applications and interactions will they support which would not be supported by 5G? We address these questions by presenting a comprehensive study of the 6G vision and outlining seven of its disruptive technologies, i.e., mmWave communications, terahertz communications, optical wireless communications, programmable metasurfaces, drone-based communications, backscatter communications and tactile internet, as well as their potential applications. Then, by leveraging the state-of-the-art literature surveyed for each technology, we discuss the associated requirements, key challenges, and open research problems. These discussions are thereafter used to open up the horizon for future research directions
IRS-assisted UAV Communications: A Comprehensive Review
Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) can smartly adjust the wavefronts in
terms of phase, frequency, amplitude and polarization via passive reflections
and without any need of radio frequency (RF) chains. It is envisaged as an
emerging technology which can change wireless communication to improve both
energy and spectrum efficiencies with low energy consumption and low cost. It
can intelligently configure the wireless channels through a massive number of
cost effective passive reflecting elements to improve the system performance.
Similarly, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) communication has gained a viable
attention due to flexible deployment, high mobility and ease of integration
with several technologies. However, UAV communication is prone to security
issues and obstructions in real-time applications. Recently, it is foreseen
that UAV and IRS both can integrate together to attain unparalleled
capabilities in difficult scenarios. Both technologies can ensure improved
performance through proactively altering the wireless propagation using smart
signal reflections and maneuver control in three dimensional (3D) space. IRS
can be integrated in both aerial and terrene environments to reap the benefits
of smart reflections. This study briefly discusses UAV communication, IRS and
focuses on IRS-assisted UAC communications. It surveys the existing literature
on this emerging research topic and highlights several promising technologies
which can be implemented in IRS-assisted UAV communication. This study also
presents several application scenarios and open research challenges. This study
goes one step further to elaborate research opportunities to design and
optimize wireless systems with low energy footprint and at low cost. Finally,
we shed some light on future research aspects for IRS-assisted UAV
communication
A Tutorial on Environment-Aware Communications via Channel Knowledge Map for 6G
Sixth-generation (6G) mobile communication networks are expected to have
dense infrastructures, large-dimensional channels, cost-effective hardware,
diversified positioning methods, and enhanced intelligence. Such trends bring
both new challenges and opportunities for the practical design of 6G. On one
hand, acquiring channel state information (CSI) in real time for all wireless
links becomes quite challenging in 6G. On the other hand, there would be
numerous data sources in 6G containing high-quality location-tagged channel
data, making it possible to better learn the local wireless environment. By
exploiting such new opportunities and for tackling the CSI acquisition
challenge, there is a promising paradigm shift from the conventional
environment-unaware communications to the new environment-aware communications
based on the novel approach of channel knowledge map (CKM). This article aims
to provide a comprehensive tutorial overview on environment-aware
communications enabled by CKM to fully harness its benefits for 6G. First, the
basic concept of CKM is presented, and a comparison of CKM with various
existing channel inference techniques is discussed. Next, the main techniques
for CKM construction are discussed, including both the model-free and
model-assisted approaches. Furthermore, a general framework is presented for
the utilization of CKM to achieve environment-aware communications, followed by
some typical CKM-aided communication scenarios. Finally, important open
problems in CKM research are highlighted and potential solutions are discussed
to inspire future work
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
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