Fog-enabled Edge Learning for Cognitive Content-Centric Networking in 5G

By caching content at network edges close to the users, the content-centric networking (CCN) has been considered to enforce efficient content retrieval and distribution in the fifth generation (5G) networks. Due to the volume, velocity, and variety of data generated by various 5G users, an urgent and strategic issue is how to elevate the cognitive ability of the CCN to realize context-awareness, timely response, and traffic offloading for 5G applications. In this article, we envision that the fundamental work of designing a cognitive CCN (C-CCN) for the upcoming 5G is exploiting the fog computing to associatively learn and control the states of edge devices (such as phones, vehicles, and base stations) and in-network resources (computing, networking, and caching). Moreover, we propose a fog-enabled edge learning (FEL) framework for C-CCN in 5G, which can aggregate the idle computing resources of the neighbouring edge devices into virtual fogs to afford the heavy delay-sensitive learning tasks. By leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to jointly processing sensed environmental data, dealing with the massive content statistics, and enforcing the mobility control at network edges, the FEL makes it possible for mobile users to cognitively share their data over the C-CCN in 5G. To validate the feasibility of proposed framework, we design two FEL-advanced cognitive services for C-CCN in 5G: 1) personalized network acceleration, 2) enhanced mobility management. Simultaneously, we present the simulations to show the FEL's efficiency on serving for the mobile users' delay-sensitive content retrieval and distribution in 5G.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Communications Magzine, under review, Feb. 09, 201

Deep Learning Techniques for Mobility Prediction and Management in Mobile Networks

Trajectory prediction is an important research topic in modern mobile networks (e.g., 5G and beyond 5G) to enhance the network quality of service by accurately predicting the future locations of mobile users, such as pedestrians and vehicles, based on their past mobility patterns. A trajectory is defined as the sequence of locations the user visits over time. The primary objective of this thesis is to improve the modeling of mobility data and establish personalized, scalable, collective-intelligent, distributed, and strategic trajectory prediction techniques that can effectively adapt to the dynamics of urban environments in order to facilitate the optimal delivery of mobility-aware network services. Our proposed approaches aim to increase the accuracy of trajectory prediction while minimizing communication and computational costs leading to more efficient mobile networks. The thesis begins by introducing a personalized trajectory prediction technique using deep learning and reinforcement learning. It adapts the neural network architecture to capture the distinct characteristics of mobile users’ data. Furthermore, it introduces advanced anticipatory handover management and dynamic service migration techniques that optimize network management using our high-performance trajectory predictor. This approach ensures seamless connectivity and proactively migrates network services, enhancing the quality of service in dense wireless networks. The second contribution of the thesis introduces cluster-level prediction to extend the reinforcement learning-based trajectory prediction, addressing scalability challenges in large-scale networks. Cluster-level trajectory prediction leverages users’ similarities within clusters to train only a few representatives. This enables efficient transfer learning of pre-trained mobility models and reduces computational overhead enhancing the network scalability. The third contribution proposes a collaborative social-aware multi-agent trajectory prediction technique that accounts for the interactions between multiple intra-cluster agents in a dynamic urban environment, increasing the prediction accuracy but decreasing the algorithm complexity and computational resource usage. The fourth contribution proposes a federated learning-driven multi-agent trajectory prediction technique that leverages the collaborative power of multiple local data sources in a decentralized manner to enhance user privacy and improve the accuracy of trajectory prediction while jointly minimizing computational and communication costs. The fifth contribution proposes a game theoretic non-cooperative multi-agent prediction technique that considers the strategic behaviors among competitive inter-cluster mobile users. The proposed approaches are evaluated on small-scale and large-scale location-based mobility datasets, where locations could be GPS coordinates or cellular base station IDs. Our experiments demonstrate that our proposed approaches outperform state-of-the-art trajectory prediction methods making significant contributions to the field of mobile networks

Heterogeneous Collaborative Learning for Personalized Healthcare Analytics via Messenger Distillation

In this paper, we propose a Similarity-Quality-based Messenger Distillation (SQMD) framework for heterogeneous asynchronous on-device healthcare analytics. By introducing a preloaded reference dataset, SQMD enables all participant devices to distill knowledge from peers via messengers (i.e., the soft labels of the reference dataset generated by clients) without assuming the same model architecture. Furthermore, the messengers also carry important auxiliary information to calculate the similarity between clients and evaluate the quality of each client model, based on which the central server creates and maintains a dynamic collaboration graph (communication graph) to improve the personalization and reliability of SQMD under asynchronous conditions. Extensive experiments on three real-life datasets show that SQMD achieves superior performance

Federated Learning for Connected and Automated Vehicles: A Survey of Existing Approaches and Challenges

Machine learning (ML) is widely used for key tasks in Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAV), including perception, planning, and control. However, its reliance on vehicular data for model training presents significant challenges related to in-vehicle user privacy and communication overhead generated by massive data volumes. Federated learning (FL) is a decentralized ML approach that enables multiple vehicles to collaboratively develop models, broadening learning from various driving environments, enhancing overall performance, and simultaneously securing local vehicle data privacy and security. This survey paper presents a review of the advancements made in the application of FL for CAV (FL4CAV). First, centralized and decentralized frameworks of FL are analyzed, highlighting their key characteristics and methodologies. Second, diverse data sources, models, and data security techniques relevant to FL in CAVs are reviewed, emphasizing their significance in ensuring privacy and confidentiality. Third, specific and important applications of FL are explored, providing insight into the base models and datasets employed for each application. Finally, existing challenges for FL4CAV are listed and potential directions for future work are discussed to further enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of FL in the context of CAV

Preference-Based Learning for Exoskeleton Gait Optimization

This paper presents a personalized gait optimization framework for lower-body exoskeletons. Rather than optimizing numerical objectives such as the mechanical cost of transport, our approach directly learns from user preferences, e.g., for comfort. Building upon work in preference-based interactive learning, we present the CoSpar algorithm. CoSpar prompts the user to give pairwise preferences between trials and suggest improvements; as exoskeleton walking is a non-intuitive behavior, users can provide preferences more easily and reliably than numerical feedback. We show that CoSpar performs competitively in simulation and demonstrate a prototype implementation of CoSpar on a lower-body exoskeleton to optimize human walking trajectory features. In the experiments, CoSpar consistently found user-preferred parameters of the exoskeleton’s walking gait, which suggests that it is a promising starting point for adapting and personalizing exoskeletons (or other assistive devices) to individual users

Metaverse for Wireless Systems: Architecture, Advances, Standardization, and Open Challenges

The growing landscape of emerging wireless applications is a key driver toward the development of novel wireless system designs. Such a design can be based on the metaverse that uses a virtual model of the physical world systems along with other schemes/technologies (e.g., optimization theory, machine learning, and blockchain). A metaverse using a virtual model performs proactive intelligent analytics prior to a user request for efficient management of the wireless system resources. Additionally, a metaverse will enable self-sustainability to operate wireless systems with the least possible intervention from network operators. Although the metaverse can offer many benefits, it faces some challenges as well. Therefore, in this tutorial, we discuss the role of a metaverse in enabling wireless applications. We present an overview, key enablers, design aspects (i.e., metaverse for wireless and wireless for metaverse), and a novel high-level architecture of metaverse-based wireless systems. We discuss metaverse management, reliability, and security of the metaverse-based system. Furthermore, we discuss recent advances and standardization of metaverse-enabled wireless system. Finally, we outline open challenges and present possible solutions