Green Cellular Networks: A Survey, Some Research Issues and Challenges

Energy efficiency in cellular networks is a growing concern for cellular operators to not only maintain profitability, but also to reduce the overall environment effects. This emerging trend of achieving energy efficiency in cellular networks is motivating the standardization authorities and network operators to continuously explore future technologies in order to bring improvements in the entire network infrastructure. In this article, we present a brief survey of methods to improve the power efficiency of cellular networks, explore some research issues and challenges and suggest some techniques to enable an energy efficient or "green" cellular network. Since base stations consume a maximum portion of the total energy used in a cellular system, we will first provide a comprehensive survey on techniques to obtain energy savings in base stations. Next, we discuss how heterogeneous network deployment based on micro, pico and femto-cells can be used to achieve this goal. Since cognitive radio and cooperative relaying are undisputed future technologies in this regard, we propose a research vision to make these technologies more energy efficient. Lastly, we explore some broader perspectives in realizing a "green" cellular network technologyComment: 16 pages, 5 figures, 2 table

Techniques for Cooperative Cognitive Radio Networks

The frequency spectrum is an essential resource for wireless communication. Special sections of the spectrum are used for military purposes, governments sell some frequency bands to broadcasting and mobile communications companies for commercial use, others such as ISM (Industrial, Science and Medical) bands are available for the public free of charge. As the spectrum becomes overcrowded, there seem to be two possible solutions: pushing the frequency limits higher to frequencies of 60 GHz and above, or reaggregating the densely used licensed frequency bands. The new Cognitive Radio (CR) approach comes with the feasible solution to spectrum scarcity. Secondary utilization of a licensed spectrum band can enhance the spectrum usage and introduce a reliable solution to its dearth. In such a cognitive radio network, secondary users can access the spectrum under the constraint that a minimum quality of service is guaranteed for the licensed primary users. In this thesis, we focus on spectrum sharing techniques in cognitive radio network where there is a number of secondary users sharing unoccupied spectrum holes. More specifically, we introduce two collaborative cognitive radio networks in which the secondary user cooperate with the primary user to deliver the data of the primary user.Comment: Master's thesi

A Distributed MAC Protocol for Cooperation in Random Access Networks

WLAN is one of the most successful applications of wireless communications in daily life because of low cost and ease of deployment. The enabling technique for this success is the use of random access schemes for the wireless channel. Random access requires minimal coordination between the nodes, which considerably reduces the cost of the infrastructure. Recently, cooperative communication in wireless networks has been of increasing interest because it promises higher rates and reliability. An additional MAC overhead is necessary to coordinate the nodes to allow cooperation and this overhead can possibly cancel out the cooperative benefits. In this work, a completely distributed protocol is proposed that allows nodes in the network to cooperate via Two-Hop and Decode-and-Forward for transmitting their data to a common gateway node. It is shown that high throughput gains are obtained in terms of the individual throughput that can be guaranteed to any node in the network. These results are validated by Monte Carlo simulations.Comment: 5 pages, improved presentation compared to previous version v

Optimal Resource Allocation and Relay Selection in Bandwidth Exchange Based Cooperative Forwarding

In this paper, we investigate joint optimal relay selection and resource allocation under bandwidth exchange (BE) enabled incentivized cooperative forwarding in wireless networks. We consider an autonomous network where N nodes transmit data in the uplink to an access point (AP) / base station (BS). We consider the scenario where each node gets an initial amount (equal, optimal based on direct path or arbitrary) of bandwidth, and uses this bandwidth as a flexible incentive for two hop relaying. We focus on alpha-fair network utility maximization (NUM) and outage reduction in this environment. Our contribution is two-fold. First, we propose an incentivized forwarding based resource allocation algorithm which maximizes the global utility while preserving the initial utility of each cooperative node. Second, defining the link weight of each relay pair as the utility gain due to cooperation (over noncooperation), we show that the optimal relay selection in alpha-fair NUM reduces to the maximum weighted matching (MWM) problem in a non-bipartite graph. Numerical results show that the proposed algorithms provide 20- 25% gain in spectral efficiency and 90-98% reduction in outage probability.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figure

Resource Allocation in Wireless Networks with RF Energy Harvesting and Transfer

Radio frequency (RF) energy harvesting and transfer techniques have recently become alternative methods to power the next generation of wireless networks. As this emerging technology enables proactive replenishment of wireless devices, it is advantageous in supporting applications with quality-of-service (QoS) requirement. This article focuses on the resource allocation issues in wireless networks with RF energy harvesting capability, referred to as RF energy harvesting networks (RF-EHNs). First, we present an overview of the RF-EHNs, followed by a review of a variety of issues regarding resource allocation. Then, we present a case study of designing in the receiver operation policy, which is of paramount importance in the RF-EHNs. We focus on QoS support and service differentiation, which have not been addressed by previous literatures. Furthermore, we outline some open research directions.Comment: To appear in IEEE Networ

Incentive Schemes for Mobile Peer-to-Peer Systems and Free Riding Problem: A Survey

Mobile peer-to-peer networks are quite prevalent and popular now days due to advent of business scenarios where all the services are going mobile like whether it's to find good restaurants, healthy diet books making friends, job-hunting, real state info or cab-sharing etc. As the mobile users are increasing day by day, peer-to-peer networks getting bigger and complex. In contrast to client server system in peer-to-peer network resource sharing is done on the basis of mutual consent and agreed policies with no central authority and controlling entity. Incentive schemes for P2P networks are devised to encourage the participation and to adhere the policies agreed. P2P services based only on altruistic behaviour of users are facing serious challenges like Free riding or The tragedy of commons. Free riders are the users who consume the bandwidth of the system (perform downloading) but don't show altruistic behaviour (deny uploading) and act as a parasite for the P2P network. To counter the free riding issue many Incentive schemes are suggested by the researchers. In this paper we will survey the different incentive schemes, their architectures keeping eye on how they handle the challenges of modern P2P network.Comment: 29 pages, 10 figures, scholarly repor

Resource Allocation and Fairness in Wireless Powered Cooperative Cognitive Radio Networks

We integrate a wireless powered communication network with a cooperative cognitive radio network, where multiple secondary users (SUs) powered wirelessly by a hybrid access point (HAP) help a primary user relay the data. As a reward for the cooperation, the secondary network gains the spectrum access where SUs transmit to HAP using time division multiple access. To maximize the sum-throughput of SUs, we present a secondary sum-throughput optimal resource allocation (STORA) scheme. Under the constraint of meeting target primary rate, the STORA scheme chooses the optimal set of relaying SUs and jointly performs the time and energy allocation for SUs. Specifically, by exploiting the structure of the optimal solution, we find the order in which SUs are prioritized to relay primary data. Since the STORA scheme focuses on the sum-throughput, it becomes inconsiderate towards individual SU throughput, resulting in low fairness. To enhance fairness, we investigate three resource allocation schemes, which are (i) equal time allocation, (ii) minimum throughput maximization, and (iii) proportional time allocation. Simulation results reveal the trade-off between sum-throughput and fairness. The minimum throughput maximization scheme is the fairest one as each SU gets the same throughput, but yields the least SU sum-throughput.Comment: Accepted in IEEE Transactions on Communication

General Auction-Theoretic Strategies for Distributed Partner Selection in Cooperative Wireless Networks

It is unrealistic to assume that all nodes in an ad hoc wireless network would be willing to participate in cooperative communication, especially if their desired Quality-of- Service (QoS) is achievable via direct transmission. An incentivebased auction mechanism is presented to induce cooperative behavior in wireless networks with emphasis on users with asymmetrical channel fading conditions. A single-object secondprice auction is studied for cooperative partner selection in singlecarrier networks. In addition, a multiple-object bundled auction is analyzed for the selection of multiple simultaneous partners in a cooperative orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) setting. For both cases, we characterize equilibrium outage probability performance, seller revenue, and feedback bounds. The auction-based partner selection allows winning bidders to achieve their desired QoS while compensating the seller who assists them. At the local level sellers aim for revenue maximization, while connections are drawn to min-max fairness at the network level. The proposed strategies for partner selection in self-configuring cooperative wireless networks are shown to be robust under conditions of uncertainty in the number of users requesting cooperation, as well as minimal topology and channel link information available to individual users.Comment: 13 pages, to appear, IEEE Transactions on Communication

Delay-Limited Cooperative Communication with Reliability Constraints in Wireless Networks

We investigate optimal resource allocation for delay-limited cooperative communication in time varying wireless networks. Motivated by real-time applications that have stringent delay constraints, we develop a dynamic cooperation strategy that makes optimal use of network resources to achieve a target outage probability (reliability) for each user subject to average power constraints. Using the technique of Lyapunov optimization, we first present a general framework to solve this problem and then derive quasi-closed form solutions for several cooperative protocols proposed in the literature. Unlike earlier works, our scheme does not require prior knowledge of the statistical description of the packet arrival, channel state and node mobility processes and can be implemented in an online fashion.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figure