1,642 research outputs found
A Novel Airborne Self-organising Architecture for 5G+ Networks
Network Flying Platforms (NFPs) such as unmanned aerial vehicles, unmanned
balloons or drones flying at low/medium/high altitude can be employed to
enhance network coverage and capacity by deploying a swarm of flying platforms
that implement novel radio resource management techniques. In this paper, we
propose a novel layered architecture where NFPs, of various types and flying at
low/medium/high layers in a swarm of flying platforms, are considered as an
integrated part of the future cellular networks to inject additional capacity
and expand the coverage for exceptional scenarios (sports events, concerts,
etc.) and hard-to-reach areas (rural or sparsely populated areas). Successful
roll-out of the proposed architecture depends on several factors including, but
are not limited to: network optimisation for NFP placement and association,
safety operations of NFP for network/equipment security, and reliability for
NFP transport and control/signaling mechanisms. In this work, we formulate the
optimum placement of NFP at a Lower Layer (LL) by exploiting the airborne
Self-organising Network (SON) features. Our initial simulations show the NFP-LL
can serve more User Equipment (UE)s using this placement technique.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, conference paper in IEEE VTC-Fall 2017, in
Proceedings IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC-Fall 2017), Toronto,
Canada, Sep. 201
A Transfer Learning Approach for UAV Path Design with Connectivity Outage Constraint
The connectivity-aware path design is crucial in the effective deployment of
autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Recently, Reinforcement Learning
(RL) algorithms have become the popular approach to solving this type of
complex problem, but RL algorithms suffer slow convergence. In this paper, we
propose a Transfer Learning (TL) approach, where we use a teacher policy
previously trained in an old domain to boost the path learning of the agent in
the new domain. As the exploration processes and the training continue, the
agent refines the path design in the new domain based on the subsequent
interactions with the environment. We evaluate our approach considering an old
domain at sub-6 GHz and a new domain at millimeter Wave (mmWave). The teacher
path policy, previously trained at sub-6 GHz path, is the solution to a
connectivity-aware path problem that we formulate as a constrained Markov
Decision Process (CMDP). We employ a Lyapunov-based model-free Deep Q-Network
(DQN) to solve the path design at sub-6 GHz that guarantees connectivity
constraint satisfaction. We empirically demonstrate the effectiveness of our
approach for different urban environment scenarios. The results demonstrate
that our proposed approach is capable of reducing the training time
considerably at mmWave.Comment: 14 pages,8 figures, journal pape
Cognitive Connectivity Resilience in Multi-layer Remotely Deployed Mobile Internet of Things
Enabling the Internet of things in remote areas without traditional
communication infrastructure requires a multi-layer network architecture. The
devices in the overlay network are required to provide coverage to the underlay
devices as well as to remain connected to other overlay devices. The
coordination, planning, and design of such two-layer heterogeneous networks is
an important problem to address. Moreover, the mobility of the nodes and their
vulnerability to adversaries pose new challenges to the connectivity. For
instance, the connectivity of devices can be affected by changes in the
network, e.g., the mobility of the underlay devices or the unavailability of
overlay devices due to failure or adversarial attacks. To this end, this work
proposes a feedback based adaptive, self-configurable, and resilient framework
for the overlay network that cognitively adapts to the changes in the network
to provide reliable connectivity between spatially dispersed smart devices. Our
results show that if sufficient overlay devices are available, the framework
leads to a connected configuration that ensures a high coverage of the mobile
underlay network. Moreover, the framework can actively reconfigure itself in
the event of varying levels of device failure.Comment: To appear in IEEE Global Communications Conference (Globecom 2017
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