End-to-End Simulation of 5G mmWave Networks

Due to its potential for multi-gigabit and low latency wireless links, millimeter wave (mmWave) technology is expected to play a central role in 5th generation cellular systems. While there has been considerable progress in understanding the mmWave physical layer, innovations will be required at all layers of the protocol stack, in both the access and the core network. Discrete-event network simulation is essential for end-to-end, cross-layer research and development. This paper provides a tutorial on a recently developed full-stack mmWave module integrated into the widely used open-source ns--3 simulator. The module includes a number of detailed statistical channel models as well as the ability to incorporate real measurements or ray-tracing data. The Physical (PHY) and Medium Access Control (MAC) layers are modular and highly customizable, making it easy to integrate algorithms or compare Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) numerologies, for example. The module is interfaced with the core network of the ns--3 Long Term Evolution (LTE) module for full-stack simulations of end-to-end connectivity, and advanced architectural features, such as dual-connectivity, are also available. To facilitate the understanding of the module, and verify its correct functioning, we provide several examples that show the performance of the custom mmWave stack as well as custom congestion control algorithms designed specifically for efficient utilization of the mmWave channel.Comment: 25 pages, 16 figures, submitted to IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials (revised Jan. 2018

A Comprehensive Survey of the Tactile Internet: State of the art and Research Directions

The Internet has made several giant leaps over the years, from a fixed to a mobile Internet, then to the Internet of Things, and now to a Tactile Internet. The Tactile Internet goes far beyond data, audio and video delivery over fixed and mobile networks, and even beyond allowing communication and collaboration among things. It is expected to enable haptic communication and allow skill set delivery over networks. Some examples of potential applications are tele-surgery, vehicle fleets, augmented reality and industrial process automation. Several papers already cover many of the Tactile Internet-related concepts and technologies, such as haptic codecs, applications, and supporting technologies. However, none of them offers a comprehensive survey of the Tactile Internet, including its architectures and algorithms. Furthermore, none of them provides a systematic and critical review of the existing solutions. To address these lacunae, we provide a comprehensive survey of the architectures and algorithms proposed to date for the Tactile Internet. In addition, we critically review them using a well-defined set of requirements and discuss some of the lessons learned as well as the most promising research directions

A simulation study of beam management for 5G millimeter-wave cellular networks

This thesis aims at performing a system-level analysis of beam management protocol under different scenarios, mobility conditions and parameters configurations.This thesis aims at performing a system-level analysis of beam management protocol under different scenarios, mobility conditions and parameters configurations

Optimized Live 4K Video Multicast

4K videos are becoming increasingly popular. However, despite advances in wireless technology, streaming 4K videos over mmWave to multiple users is facing significant challenges arising from directional communication, unpredictable channel fluctuation and high bandwidth requirements. This paper develops a novel 4K layered video multicast system. We (i) develop a video quality model for layered video coding, (ii) optimize resource allocation, scheduling, and beamforming based on the channel conditions of different users, and (iii) put forward a streaming strategy that uses fountain code to avoid redundancy across multicast groups and a Leaky-Bucket-based congestion control. We realize an end-to-end system on commodity-off-the-shelf (COTS) WiGig devices. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our system with extensive testbed experiments and emulation

Improvement of 5G performance through network densification in millimetre wave band

Recently, there has been a substantial growth in mobile data traffic due to the widespread of data hungry devices such as mobiles and laptops. The anticipated high traffic demands and low latency requirements stemmed from the Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine Type Communications (MTC) can only be met with radical changes to the network paradigm such as harnessing the millimetre wave (mmWave) band in Ultra-Dense Network (UDN). This thesis presents many challenges, problems and questions that arise in research and design stage of 5G network. The main challenges of 5G in mmWave can be characterised with the following attributes: i- huge traffic demands, with very high data rate requirements, ii- high interference in UDN, iii increased handover in UDN, higher dependency on Line of Sight (LOS) coverage and high shadow fading, and iv-massive MTC traffic due to billions of connected devices. In this work, software simulation tools have been used to evaluate the proposed solutions. Therefore, we have introduced 5G network based on network densification. Network densification includes densification over frequency through mmWave, and densification over space through higher number of antennas, Higher Order Sectorisation (HOS), and denser deployment of small-cells. Our results show that the densification theme has significantly improved network capacity and user Quality of Experience (QoE). UDN network can efficiently raise the user experience to the level that 5G vision promised. However, one of the drawback of using UDN and HOS is the significant increase in Inter-Cell Interference (ICI). Therefore, ICI has been addressed in this work to increase the gain of densification. ICI can degrade the performance of wireless network, particularly in UDN due to the increased interference from surrounding cells. We have used Fractional Frequency Reuse (FFR) as ICI Coordination (ICIC) for UDN network and HOS environment. The work shows that FFR has improved the network performance in terms of cell-edge data throughput and average cell throughput, and maintain the peak data throughput at a certain threshold. Additionally, HOS has shown even greater gain over default sectored sites when the interference is carefully coordinated. To generalise the principle of densification, we have introduced Distributed Base Station (DBS) as the envisioned network architecture for 5G in mmWave. Remotely distributed antennas in DBS architecture have been harnessed in order to compensate for the high path loss that characterise mmWave propagation. The proposed architecture has significantly improved the user data throughput, decreased the unnecessary handovers as a result of dense network, increased the LOS coverage probability, and reduced the impact of shadow fading. Additionally, this research discusses the regulatory requirements at mmWave band for the Maximum Permissible Exposure (MPE). Finally, scheduling massive MTC traffic in 5G has been considered. MTC is expected to contribute to the majority of IoT traffic. In this context, an algorithm has been developed to schedule this type of traffic. The results demonstrate the gain of using distributed antennas on MTC traffic in terms of spectral efficiency, data throughput, and fairness. The results show considerable improvement in the performance metrics. The combination of these contributions has provided remarkable increase in data throughput to achieve the 5G vision of “massive” capacity and to support human and machine traffic