21 research outputs found
Performance of the sleep-mode mechanism of the new IEEE 802.16m proposal for correlated downlink traffic
There is a considerable interest nowadays in making wireless telecommunication more energy-efficient. The sleep-mode mechanism in WiMAX (IEEE 802.16e) is one of such energy saving measures. Recently, Samsung proposed some modifications on the sleep-mode mechanism, scheduled to appear in the forthcoming IEEE 802.16m standard, aimed at minimizing the signaling overhead. In this work, we present a performance analysis of this proposal and clarify the differences with the standard mechanism included in IEEE 802.16e. We also propose some special algorithms aimed at reducing the computational complexity of the analysis
Handover in Mobile WiMAX Networks: The State of Art and Research Issues
The next-generation Wireless Metropolitan Area
Networks, using the Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave
Access (WiMAX) as the core technology based on the IEEE
802.16 family of standards, is evolving as a Fourth-Generation
(4G) technology. With the recent introduction of mobility management
frameworks in the IEEE 802.16e standard, WiMAX
is now placed in competition to the existing and forthcoming
generations of wireless technologies for providing ubiquitous
computing solutions. However, the success of a good mobility
framework largely depends on the capability of performing fast
and seamless handovers irrespective of the deployed architectural
scenario. Now that the IEEE has defined the Mobile WiMAX
(IEEE 802.16e) MAC-layer handover management framework,
the Network Working Group (NWG) of the WiMAX Forum
is working on the development of the upper layers. However,
the path to commercialization of a full-fledged WiMAX mobility
framework is full of research challenges. This article focuses on
potential handover-related research issues in the existing and
future WiMAX mobility framework. A survey of these issues in
the MAC, Network and Cross-Layer scenarios is presented along
with discussion of the different solutions to those challenges. A
comparative study of the proposed solutions, coupled with some
insights to the relevant issues, is also included
Energy Efficient and Cooperative Solutions for Next-Generation Wireless Networks
Energy efficiency is increasingly important for next-generation wireless systems due to the limited battery resources of mobile clients. While fourth generation cellular standards emphasize low client battery consumption, existing techniques do not explicitly focus on reducing power that is consumed when a client is actively communicating with the network. Based on high data rate demands of modern multimedia applications, active mode power consumption is expected to become a critical consideration for the development and deployment of future wireless technologies.
Another reason for focusing more attention on energy efficient studies is given by the relatively slow progress in battery technology and the growing quality of service requirements of multimedia applications. The disproportion between demanded and available battery capacity is becoming especially significant for small-scale mobile client devices, where wireless power consumption dominates within the total device power budget. To compensate for this growing gap, aggressive improvements in all aspects of wireless system design are necessary.
Recent work in this area indicates that joint link adaptation and resource allocation techniques optimizing energy efficient metrics can provide a considerable gain in client power consumption. Consequently, it is crucial to adapt state-of-the-art energy efficient approaches for practical use, as well as to illustrate the pros and cons associated with applying power-bandwidth optimization to improve client energy efficiency and develop insights for future research in this area. This constitutes the first objective of the present research.
Together with energy efficiency, next-generation cellular technologies are emphasizing stronger support for heterogeneous multimedia applications. Since the integration of diverse services within a single radio platform is expected to result in higher operator profits and, at the same time, reduce network management expenses, intensive research efforts have been invested into design principles of such networks. However, as wireless resources are limited and shared by clients, service integration may become challenging. A key element in such systems is the packet scheduler, which typically helps ensure that the individual quality of service requirements of wireless clients are satisfied.
In contrastingly different distributed wireless environments, random multiple access protocols are beginning to provide mechanisms for statistical quality of service assurance. However, there is currently a lack of comprehensive analytical frameworks which allow reliable control of the quality of service parameters for both cellular and local area networks. Providing such frameworks is therefore the second objective of this thesis. Additionally, the study addresses the simultaneous operation of a cellular and a local area network in spectrally intense metropolitan deployments and solves some related problems.
Further improving the performance of battery-driven mobile clients, cooperative communications are sought as a promising and practical concept. In particular, they are capable of mitigating the negative effects of fading in a wireless channel and are thus expected to enhance next-generation cellular networks in terms of client spectral and energy efficiencies. At the cell edges or in areas missing any supportive relaying infrastructure, client-based cooperative techniques are becoming even more important. As such, a mobile client with poor channel quality may take advantage of neighboring clients which would relay data on its behalf.
The key idea behind the concept of client relay is to provide flexible and distributed control over cooperative communications by the wireless clients themselves. By contrast to fully centralized control, this is expected to minimize overhead protocol signaling and hence ensure simpler implementation. Compared to infrastructure relay, client relay will also be cheaper to deploy. Developing the novel concept of client relay, proposing simple and feasible cooperation protocols, and analyzing the basic trade-offs behind client relay functionality become the third objective of this research.
Envisioning the evolution of cellular technologies beyond their fourth generation, it appears important to study a wireless network capable of supporting machine-to-machine applications. Recent standardization documents cover a plethora of machine-to-machine use cases, as they also outline the respective technical requirements and features according to the application or network environment. As follows from this activity, a smart grid is one of the primary machine-to-machine use cases that involves meters autonomously reporting usage and alarm information to the grid infrastructure to help reduce operational cost, as well as regulate a customer's utility usage.
The preliminary analysis of the reference smart grid scenario indicates weak system architecture components. For instance, the large population of machine-to-machine devices may connect nearly simultaneously to the wireless infrastructure and, consequently, suffer from excessive network entry delays. Another concern is the performance of cell-edge machine-to-machine devices with weak wireless links. Therefore, mitigating the above architecture vulnerabilities and improving the performance of future smart grid deployments is the fourth objective of this thesis.
Summarizing, this thesis is generally aimed at the improvement of energy efficient properties of mobile devices in next-generation wireless networks. The related research also embraces a novel cooperation technique where clients may assist each other to increase per-client and network-wide performance. Applying the proposed solutions, the operation time of mobile clients without recharging may be increased dramatically. Our approach incorporates both analytical and simulation components to evaluate complex interactions between the studied objectives. It brings important conclusions about energy efficient and cooperative client behaviors, which is crucial for further development of wireless communications technologies
System Level Performance Evaluation of Client Cooperation in Wireless Cellular Networks
Growing demand for bandwidth dictates the use of smaller wireless cells, which results in increased inter-cell interference. In most contemporary cellular systems, the clients at the cell edge typically have the worst chance of successful uplink transmission due to interference from the neighboring cells using the same frequency. Cooperative communications are believed to be a promising technique to enhance the performance of cell-edge users by allowing them to exploit other users as relay nodes and thus improve their throughput by reducing the number of retransmissions.
This thesis presents in-depth system-level evaluation of client relay technique in state-of-the-art wireless cellular networks (IEEE 802.16, LTE release 10). Several important scenarios are considered, including opportunistic client relay behavior and various network layouts.
It is demonstrated that client cooperation may considerably improve system performance in terms of cell-edge user performance for the cost of some increase in energy consumption of cell-center user. /Kir1
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Scalable base station switching framework for green cellular networks
With the recent unprecedented growth in the wireless market, network operators are obliged not only to find new techniques including dense deployment of base stations (BSs) in order to support high data rate services and high user density, but also to reduce the operating costs and energy consumption of various network elements. To solve these challenges, powering down certain BSs during low-traffic periods, so-called BS sleeping, has emerged as an effective green communications paradigm. While BS sleeping offers the potential to significantly lower energy consumption, it also raises many challenges, since when a BS is switched off, this can lead to, for example, coverage holes, sudden degradation in quality of service (QoS), higher transmit power dissipation in off-cell mobile stations (MSs), an inability to rapidly power up/down equipment and finally, a failure to uphold regulatory requirements. In order to realise greener network designs which both maximise energy savings whilst guaranteeing QoS, innovative BS switching mechanisms need to be developed.
This thesis presents a novel BS switching framework which improves energy efficiency (EE) in comparison with existing approaches, while guaranteeing the minimum QoS and seamless services. The major technical contributions in this framework are: i) a new BS to relay station (RS) switching model where certain BSs are switched to RS mode rather than being turned off, firstly using a fixed threshold based switching algorithm utilizing temporal traffic diversity, and ii) then subsequently by means of an adaptive threshold by exploiting the inherently asymmetric traffic profile between cells, i.e., by exploiting both the temporal and spatial traffic diversity; iii) a traffic-and-interference-aware BS switching strategy that considers the impact of inter-cell interference in the decision making process to dynamically determine the best BS set to be kept active for improved EE; and finally iv) a novel scalable multimode BS switching model which enables each BS to operate in different power modes i.e., macro/micro/sleep to explore energy savings potential even at higher traffic conditions.
The thesis findings conclusively confirm this new BS switching framework provides significant EE improvements from both BS and MS perspectives, under diverse network conditions and represents a notable step towards greener communications
Device-to-Device Communication and Multihop Transmission for Future Cellular Networks
The next generation wireless networks i.e. 5G aim to provide multi-Gbps data traffic, in order to satisfy the increasing demand for high-definition video, among other high data rate services, as well as the exponential growth in mobile subscribers. To achieve this dramatic increase in data rates, current research is focused on improving the capacity of current 4G network standards, based on Long Term Evolution (LTE), before radical changes are exploited which could include acquiring additional/new spectrum. The LTE network has a reuse factor of one; hence neighbouring cells/sectors use the same spectrum, therefore making the cell edge users vulnerable to inter-cell interference. In addition, wireless transmission is commonly hindered by fading and pathloss.
In this direction, this thesis focuses on improving the performance of cell edge users in LTE and LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) networks by initially implementing a new Coordinated Multi-Point (CoMP) algorithm to mitigate cell edge user interference. Subsequently Device-to-Device (D2D) communication is investigated as the enabling technology for maximising Resource Block (RB) utilisation in current 4G and emerging 5G networks. It is demonstrated that the application, as an extension to the above, of novel power control algorithms, to reduce the required D2D TX power, and multihop transmission for relaying D2D traffic, can further enhance network performance. To be able to develop the aforementioned technologies and evaluate the performance of new algorithms in emerging network scenarios, a beyond-the-state-of-the-art LTE system-level simulator (SLS) was implemented. The new simulator includes Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) antenna functionalities, comprehensive channel models (such as Wireless World initiative New Radio II i.e. WINNER II) and adaptive modulation and coding schemes to accurately emulate the LTE and LTE-A network standards. Additionally, a novel interference modelling scheme using the ‘wrap around’ technique was proposed and implemented that maintained the topology of flat surfaced maps, allowing for use with cell planning tools while obtaining accurate and timely results in the SLS compared to the few existing platforms.
For the proposed CoMP algorithm, the adaptive beamforming technique was employed to reduce interference on the cell edge UEs by applying Coordinated Scheduling (CoSH) between cooperating cells. Simulation results show up to 2-fold improvement in terms of throughput, and also shows SINR gain for the cell edge UEs in the cooperating cells. Furthermore, D2D communication underlaying the LTE network (and future generation of wireless networks) was investigated. The technology exploits the proximity of users in a network to achieve higher data rates with maximum RB utilisation (as the technology reuses the cellular RB simultaneously), while taking some load off the Evolved Node B (eNB) i.e. by direct communication between User Equipment (UE). Simulation results show that the proximity and transmission power of D2D transmission yields high performance gains for a D2D receiver, which was demonstrated to be better than that of cellular UEs with better channel conditions or in close proximity to the eNB in the network. The impact of interference from the simultaneous transmission however impedes the achievable data rates of cellular UEs in the network, especially at the cell edge. Thus, a power control algorithm was proposed to mitigate the impact of interference in the hybrid network (network consisting of both cellular and D2D UEs). It was implemented by setting a minimum SINR threshold so that the cellular UEs achieve a minimum performance, and equally a maximum SINR threshold to establish fairness for the D2D transmission as well. Simulation results show
an increase in the cell edge throughput and notable improvement in the overall SINR distribution of UEs in the hybrid network. Additionally, multihop transmission for D2D UEs was investigated in the hybrid network: traditionally, the scheme is implemented to relay cellular traffic in a homogenous network. Contrary to most current studies where D2D UEs are employed to relay cellular traffic, the use of idle nodes to relay D2D traffic was implemented uniquely in this thesis. Simulation results show improvement in D2D receiver throughput with multihop transmission, which was significantly better than that of the same UEs performance with equivalent distance between the D2D pair when using single hop transmission
Acesso banda larga sem fios em ambientes heterogéneos de próxima geração
Doutoramento em Engenharia InformáticaO acesso ubíquo à Internet é um dos principais desafios para os operadores
de telecomunicações na próxima década. O número de utilizadores da Internet
está a crescer exponencialmente e o paradigma de acesso "always connected,
anytime, anywhere" é um requisito fundamental para as redes móveis de
próxima geração. A tecnologia WiMAX, juntamente com o LTE, foi
recentemente reconhecida pelo ITU como uma das tecnologias de acesso
compatíveis com os requisitos do 4G. Ainda assim, esta tecnologia de acesso
não está completamente preparada para ambientes de próxima geração,
principalmente devido à falta de mecanismos de cross-layer para integração de
QoS e mobilidade. Adicionalmente, para além das tecnologias WiMAX e LTE,
as tecnologias de acesso rádio UMTS/HSPA e Wi-Fi continuarão a ter um
impacto significativo nas comunicações móveis durante os próximos anos.
Deste modo, é fundamental garantir a coexistência das várias tecnologias de
acesso rádio em termos de QoS e mobilidade, permitindo assim a entrega de
serviços multimédia de tempo real em redes móveis.
Para garantir a entrega de serviços multimédia a utilizadores WiMAX, esta
Tese propõe um gestor cross-layer WiMAX integrado com uma arquitectura de
QoS fim-a-fim. A arquitectura apresentada permite o controlo de QoS e a
comunicação bidireccional entre o sistema WiMAX e as entidades das
camadas superiores. Para além disso, o gestor de cross-layer proposto é
estendido com eventos e comandos genéricos e independentes da tecnologia
para optimizar os procedimentos de mobilidade em ambientes WiMAX. Foram
realizados testes para avaliar o desempenho dos procedimentos de QoS e
mobilidade da arquitectura WiMAX definida, demonstrando que esta é
perfeitamente capaz de entregar serviços de tempo real sem introduzir custos
excessivos na rede.
No seguimento das extensões de QoS e mobilidade apresentadas para a
tecnologia WiMAX, o âmbito desta Tese foi alargado para ambientes de
acesso sem-fios heterogéneos. Neste sentido, é proposta uma arquitectura de
mobilidade transparente com suporte de QoS para redes de acesso multitecnologia.
A arquitectura apresentada integra uma versão estendida do IEEE
802.21 com suporte de QoS, bem como um gestor de mobilidade avançado
integrado com os protocolos de gestão de mobilidade do nível IP. Finalmente,
para completar o trabalho desenvolvido no âmbito desta Tese, é proposta uma
extensão aos procedimentos de decisão de mobilidade em ambientes
heterogéneos para incorporar a informação de contexto da rede e do terminal.
Para validar e avaliar as optimizações propostas, foram desenvolvidos testes
de desempenho num demonstrador inter-tecnologia, composta pelas redes de
acesso WiMAX, Wi-Fi e UMTS/HSPA.Ubiquitous Internet access is one of the main challenges for the
telecommunications industry in the next decade. The number of users
accessing the Internet is growing exponentially and the network access
paradigm of “always connected, anytime, anywhere” is a central requirement
for the so-called Next Generation Mobile Networks (NGMN). WiMAX, together
with LTE, was recently recognized by ITU as one of the compliant access
technologies for 4G. Nevertheless, WiMAX is not yet fully prepared for next
generation environments, mainly due to the lack of QoS and mobility crosslayer
procedures to support real-time multimedia services delivery.
Furthermore, besides the 4G compliant WiMAX and LTE radio access
technologies, UMTS/HSPA and Wi-Fi will also have a significant impact in the
mobile communications during the next years. Therefore, it is fundamental to
ensure the coexistence of multiple radio access technologies in what QoS and
mobility procedures are concerned, thereby allowing the delivery of real-time
services in mobile networks.
In order to provide the WiMAX mobile users with the demanded multimedia
services, it is proposed in this Thesis a WiMAX cross-layer manager integrated
in an end-to-end all-IP QoS enabled architecture. The presented framework
enables the QoS control and bidirectional communication between WiMAX and
the upper layer network entities. Furthermore, the proposed cross-layer
framework is extended with media independent events and commands to
optimize the mobility procedures in WiMAX environments. Tests were made to
evaluate the QoS and mobility performance of the defined architecture,
demonstrating that it is perfectly capable of handling and supporting real time
services without introducing an excessive cost in the network.
Following the QoS and mobility extensions provided for WiMAX, the scope of
this Thesis is broaden and a seamless mobility architecture with QoS support in
heterogeneous wireless access environments is proposed. The presented
architecture integrates an extended version of the IEEE 802.21 framework with
QoS support, as well as an advanced mobility manager integrated with the IP
level mobility management protocols. Finally, to complete the work within the
framework of this Thesis, it is proposed an extension to the handover decisionmaking
processes in heterogeneous access environments through the
integration of context information from both the network entities and the enduser.
Performance tests were developed in a real testbed to validate the
proposed optimizations in an inter-technology handover scenario involving
WiMAX, Wi-Fi and UMTS/HSPA