On the Reliability of LTE Random Access: Performance Bounds for Machine-to-Machine Burst Resolution Time

Random Access Channel (RACH) has been identified as one of the major bottlenecks for accommodating massive number of machine-to-machine (M2M) users in LTE networks, especially for the case of burst arrival of connection requests. As a consequence, the burst resolution problem has sparked a large number of works in the area, analyzing and optimizing the average performance of RACH. However, the understanding of what are the probabilistic performance limits of RACH is still missing. To address this limitation, in the paper, we investigate the reliability of RACH with access class barring (ACB). We model RACH as a queuing system, and apply stochastic network calculus to derive probabilistic performance bounds for burst resolution time, i.e., the worst case time it takes to connect a burst of M2M devices to the base station. We illustrate the accuracy of the proposed methodology and its potential applications in performance assessment and system dimensioning.Comment: Presented at IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), 201

Deep Reinforcement Learning for Real-Time Optimization in NB-IoT Networks

NarrowBand-Internet of Things (NB-IoT) is an emerging cellular-based technology that offers a range of flexible configurations for massive IoT radio access from groups of devices with heterogeneous requirements. A configuration specifies the amount of radio resource allocated to each group of devices for random access and for data transmission. Assuming no knowledge of the traffic statistics, there exists an important challenge in "how to determine the configuration that maximizes the long-term average number of served IoT devices at each Transmission Time Interval (TTI) in an online fashion". Given the complexity of searching for optimal configuration, we first develop real-time configuration selection based on the tabular Q-learning (tabular-Q), the Linear Approximation based Q-learning (LA-Q), and the Deep Neural Network based Q-learning (DQN) in the single-parameter single-group scenario. Our results show that the proposed reinforcement learning based approaches considerably outperform the conventional heuristic approaches based on load estimation (LE-URC) in terms of the number of served IoT devices. This result also indicates that LA-Q and DQN can be good alternatives for tabular-Q to achieve almost the same performance with much less training time. We further advance LA-Q and DQN via Actions Aggregation (AA-LA-Q and AA-DQN) and via Cooperative Multi-Agent learning (CMA-DQN) for the multi-parameter multi-group scenario, thereby solve the problem that Q-learning agents do not converge in high-dimensional configurations. In this scenario, the superiority of the proposed Q-learning approaches over the conventional LE-URC approach significantly improves with the increase of configuration dimensions, and the CMA-DQN approach outperforms the other approaches in both throughput and training efficiency

Frame Structure Design and Analysis for Millimeter Wave Cellular Systems

The millimeter-wave (mmWave) frequencies have attracted considerable attention for fifth generation (5G) cellular communication as they offer orders of magnitude greater bandwidth than current cellular systems. However, the medium access control (MAC) layer may need to be significantly redesigned to support the highly directional transmissions, ultra-low latencies and high peak rates expected in mmWave communication. To address these challenges, we present a novel mmWave MAC layer frame structure with a number of enhancements including flexible, highly granular transmission times, dynamic control signal locations, extended messaging and ability to efficiently multiplex directional control signals. Analytic formulae are derived for the utilization and control overhead as a function of control periodicity, number of users, traffic statistics, signal-to-noise ratio and antenna gains. Importantly, the analysis can incorporate various front-end MIMO capability assumptions -- a critical feature of mmWave. Under realistic system and traffic assumptions, the analysis reveals that the proposed flexible frame structure design offers significant benefits over designs with fixed frame structures similar to current 4G long-term evolution (LTE). It is also shown that fully digital beamforming architectures offer significantly lower overhead compared to analog and hybrid beamforming under equivalent power budgets.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Transactions for Wireless Communication

LTE-LAA 성능 향상을 위한 MAC 계층 기법

학위논문 (박사)-- 서울대학교 대학원 : 공과대학 전기·컴퓨터공학부, 2019. 2. 최성현.3GPP long term evolution (LTE) operation in unlicensed spectrum is emerging as a promising technology in achieving higher data rate with LTE since ultra-wide unlicensed spectrum, e.g., about 500 MHz at 5–6 GHz range, is available in most countries. Recently, 3GPP has finalized standardization of licensed-assisted access (LAA) for LTE operation in 5 GHz unlicensed spectrum, which has been a playground only for Wi-Fi. In this dissertation, we propose the following three strategies to enhance the performance of LAA: (1) Receiver-aware COT adaptation, (2) Collision-aware link adaptation, and (3) Power and energy detection threshold adaptation. First, LAA has a fixed maximum channel occupancy time (MCOT), which is the maximum continuous transmission time after channel sensing, while Wi-Fi may transmit for much shorter time duration. As a result, when Wi-Fi coexists with LAA, Wi-Fi airtime and throughput can be much less than those achieved when Wi-Fi coexists with another Wi-Fi. To guarantee fair airtime and improve throughput of Wi-Fi, we propose a receiver-aware channel occupancy time (COT) adaptation ( RACOTA ) algorithm, which observes Wi-Fi aggregate MAC protocol data unit (A-MPDU) frames and matches LAAs COT to the duration of A-MPDU frames when any Wi-Fi receiver has more data to receive. Moreover, RACOTA detects saturation of Wi-Fi traffic and adjusts COT only if Wi-Fi traffic is saturated. We prototype saturation detection algorithm of RACOTA with commercial off-the-shelf Wi-Fi device and show that RACOTA detects saturation of Wi-Fi networks accurately. Through ns-3 simulations, we demonstrate that RACOTA provides airtime fairness between LAA and Wi-Fi while achieves up to 334% Wi-Fi throughput gain. Second, the link adaptation scheme of the conventional LTE, adaptive modulation and coding (AMC), cannot operate well in the unlicensed band due to intermittent collisions. Intermittent collisions make LAA eNB lower modulation and coding scheme (MCS) for the subsequent transmission and such unnecessarily lowered MCS significantly degrades spectral efficiency. To address this problem, we propose a collision-aware link adaptation algorithm ( COALA ). COALA exploits k-means unsupervised clustering algorithm to discriminate channel quality indicator (CQI) reports which are measured with collision interference and selects the most suitable MCS for the next transmission. By prototype-based experiments, we demonstrate that COALA detects collisions accurately, and by conducting ns-3 simulations in various scenarios, we also show that COALA achieves up to 74.9% higher user perceived throughput than AMC. Finally, we propose PETAL to mitigate the negative impact of spatial reuse (SR) operation. We first design the baseline algorithm, which operates SR aggressively, and show that the baseline algorithm degrades the throughput performance severely when the UE is close to an interferer. Our proposed algorithm PETAL estimates and compares the spectral efficiency for the SR operation and non-SR operation. Then, PETAL operates SR only if the spectral efficiency of SR operation is expected to be higher than the case of non-SR operation. Our simulation verifies the performance of PETAL in various scenarios. When two pair of an eNB and a UE coexists, PETAL improves the throughput by up to 329% over the baseline algorithm. In summary, we identify interesting problems that appeared with LAA and shows the impact of the problems through the extensive simulations and propose compelling algorithms to solve the problems. The airtime fairness between Wi-Fi and LAA is improved with COT adaptation. Furthermore, link adaptation accuracy and SR operation are improved by exploiting CQI reports history. The performance of the proposed schemes is verified by system level simulation.비면허 대역에서의 LTE 동작은 더 높은 데이터 전송률을 달성하는 유망한 기술로 부각되고 있다. 최근 3GPP는 기존 Wi-Fi 기술이 사용하던 5 GHz 비면허 대역에서 LTE를 사용하는 licensed-assisted access (LAA) 기술의 표준화를 완료하였다. 본 논문에서 우리는 LAA의 성능을 향상시키기 위해 다음과 같은 세 가지 전략을 제안한다: (1) 수신기 인식 채널 점유 시간 적응, (2) 충돌 인식 링크 적응, (3) 전력 및 에너지 검출 역치 적응. 첫째, LAA는 고정된 최대 채널 점유 시간을 가지고 있고 그 시간 만큼 연속적으로 전송할 수 있는 반면, Wi-Fi는 비교적 짧은 시간 동안만 연속적으로 전송할 수 있다. 그 결과 Wi-Fi가 LAA와 공존할 때 Wi-Fi의 airtime과 수율 성능은 Wi-Fi가 또 다른 Wi-Fi와 공존할 때에 비하여 저하되게된다. 따라서 우리는 Wi-Fi의 airtime과 수율 성능을 향상시키기 위하여 Wi-Fi의 A-MPDU 프레임 전송 시간에 맞추어 LAA의 채널 점유 시간을 조절하는 수신기 인식 채널 점유 시간 적응 기법인 RACOTA를 제안한다. RACOTA 는 포화 감지 결과 Wi-Fi 수신기가 더 받을 데이터가 있다고 판단될 때에만 채널 점유 시간을 조절한다. 우리는 RACOTA 의 포화 감지 알고리즘을 상용 Wi-Fi 장비에 구현하여 이를 바탕으로 실측을 통해 RACOTA 가 공존하는 Wi-Fi의 포화 여부를 정확하게 감지해냄을 보인다. 또한 우리는 ns-3 시뮬레이션을 통하여 RACOTA 를 사용하는 LAA가 공존하는 Wi-Fi에게 공정한 airtime을 제공하고 기존 LAA와 공존하는 Wi-Fi 대비 최대 334%의 Wi-Fi 수율 성능 향상을 가져옴을 보인다. 둘째, 간헐적인 충돌이 발생할 수 있는 비면허 대역에서는 기존 LTE의 링크 적응 기법인 adaptive modulation and coding (AMC)이 잘 동작하지 않을 수 있다. 간헐적인 충돌은 LAA 기지국으로 하여금 modulation and coding scheme (MCS)을 낮추어서 다음 전송을 하도록 하는데 다음 전송 시에 충돌이 발생하지 않는다면 불필요하게 낮춘 MCS로 인해 주파수 효율이 크게 저하된다. 이러한 문제를 해결하기위해 우리는 충돌 인식 링크 적응 기법인 COALA 를 제안한다. COALA 는 k-means 무감독 클러스터링 알고리즘을 사용하여 channel quality indicator (CQI) 리포트 중 충돌 간섭에 영향을 받은 CQI 리포트들을 구별해내고 이를 통해 다음 전송을 위한 최적의 MCS를 선택한다. 우리는 실측을 통하여 COALA 가 정확하게 충돌을 감지해냄을 보인다. 또한 우리는 다양한 환경에서의 ns-3 시뮬레이션을 통하여 COALA 가 AMC 대비 최대 74.9%의 사용자 인식 수율 성능 향상을 가져옴을 보인다. 셋째, 우리는 공간 재사용 동작의 부작용을 최소화하기 위하여 수신 단말을 고려하여 전송 파워 및 에너지 검출 역치를 적응적으로 조절하는 PETAL 알고리즘을 제안한다. 우리는 먼저 수신 단말을 고려하지 않고 공격적으로 공간 재사용 동작을 하는 baseline 알고리즘을 설계하고 다양한 환경에서의 시뮬레이션을 통하여 수신 단말이 간섭원에 가까운 경우 baseline 알고리즘의 성능이 심각하게 열화됨을 보인다. 제안하는 알고리즘인 PETAL 은 수신 단말로부터 받은 CQI 리포트 정보와 채널 점유 시점까지의 평균 대기 시간을 이용하여 공간 재사용 동작을 할 때 예상되는 주파수 효율과 공간 재사용 동작을 하지 않을 때 예상되는 주파수 효율을 비교하여 공간 재사용 동작을 할 때 예상되는 주파수 효율이 더 클 때에만 공간 재사용 동작을 한다. 우리는 다양한 환경에서의 ns-3 시뮬레이션을 통하여 PETAL 이 baseline 알고리즘 대비 최대 329%의 수율 성능 향상을 가져옴을 보인다. 요약하자면, 우리는 LAA의 등장과 함께 새롭게 대두되는 흥미로운 문제들을 확인하고 문제들의 심각성을 다양한 환경에서의 시뮬레이션을 통하여 살펴보고 이 러한 문제들을 해결할 수 있는 알고리즘들을 제안한다. Wi-Fi와 LAA 사이의 airtime 공정성은 LAA의 연속 전송 시간을 적응적으로 조절하여 개선할 수 있다. 또한 링크 적응 정확도와 공간 재사용 동작의 효율성은 CQI 리포트들의 분포를 이용하여 개선할 수 있다. 제안하는 알고리즘들의 성능은 시스템 레벨 시뮬레이션을 통하여 검증되었다.1 Introduction 1 1.1 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1.2 Overview of Existing Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 1.3 Main Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 1.3.1 RACOTA: Receiver-Aware Channel Occupancy Time Adaptation for LTE-LAA . . . . . . . 2 1.3.2 COALA: Collision-Aware Link Adaptation for LTE-LAA . . 3 1.3.3 PETAL: Power and Energy Detection Threshold Adaptation for LAA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 1.4 Organization of the Dissertation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2 RACOTA:Receiver-AwareChannelOccupancyTimeAdaptationforLTE- LAA 6 2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 2.2 Related Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 2.3 MAC Mechanisms of Wi-Fi and LAA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 2.3.1 Wi-Fi MAC Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 2.3.2 LAA Listen-Before-Talk (LBT) Mechanism . . . . . . . . . . 11 2.3.3 Wide Bandwidth Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 2.4 Coexistence performance of LAA and Wi-Fi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 2.4.1 Simulation Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 2.4.2 Unfairness between LAA and Wi-Fi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 2.5 Receiver-Aware COT Adaptation Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 2.5.1 Saturation Detection (SD) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 2.5.2 Receiver-Aware COT Decision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 2.6 Performance Evaluation of SD Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 2.6.1 Measurement Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 2.6.2 PPDUMaxTime Detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 2.6.3 Saturation Detection Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 2.7 Performance Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 2.7.1 Saturated Traffic Scenario . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 2.7.2 Unsaturated Traffic Scenario . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 2.7.3 Bursty Traffic Scenario . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 2.7.4 Heterogeneous Wi-Fi Traffic Generation Scenario . . . . . . 31 2.7.5 Multiple Node Scenario . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 2.8 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 3 COALA: Collision-Aware Link Adaptation for LTE-LAA 36 3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 3.2 Backgound and Related Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 3.2.1 LAA and LBT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 3.2.2 AMC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 3.2.3 Inter-Cell Interference Cancellation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 3.2.4 Related Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 3.3 Impact of Collision to Link Adaptation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 3.4 COALA: Collision-aware Link Adaptation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 3.4.1 CQI Clustering Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 3.4.2 Collision Detection and Collision Probability Estimation . . . 48 3.4.3 Suitable MCS Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 3.5 Performance Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 3.5.1 Prototype-based Feasibility Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 3.5.2 Contention Collision with LAA eNBs . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 3.5.3 Hidden Collision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 3.5.4 Bursty Hidden Collision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 3.5.5 Contention Collision with Wi-Fi Transmitters . . . . . . . . . 58 3.6 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 3.7 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 4 PETAL: Power and Energy Detection Threshold Adaptation for LAA 62 4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 4.2 Backgound and Related Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 4.2.1 Energy Detection Threshold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 4.2.2 Related Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 4.3 Baseline Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 4.3.1 Design of the Baseline Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 4.3.2 Performance of the Baseline Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 4.4 PETAL: Power and Energy Detection Threshold Adaptation . . . . . 68 4.4.1 CQI Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 4.4.2 Success Probability and Airtime Ratio Estimation . . . . . . . 69 4.4.3 CQI Clustering Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 4.4.4 SR Decision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 4.5 Performance Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 4.5.1 Two Cell Scenario . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 4.5.2 Coexistence with Standard LAA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 4.5.3 Four Cell Scenario . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 4.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 5 Concluding Remarks 79 5.1 Research Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 Abstract (In Korean) 88 감사의 글 92Docto

A Tractable Model of the LTE Access Reservation Procedure for Machine-Type Communications

A canonical scenario in Machine-Type Communications (MTC) is the one featuring a large number of devices, each of them with sporadic traffic. Hence, the number of served devices in a single LTE cell is not determined by the available aggregate rate, but rather by the limitations of the LTE access reservation protocol. Specifically, the limited number of contention preambles and the limited amount of uplink grants per random access response are crucial to consider when dimensioning LTE networks for MTC. We propose a low-complexity model of LTE's access reservation protocol that encompasses these two limitations and allows us to evaluate the outage probability at click-speed. The model is based chiefly on closed-form expressions, except for the part with the feedback impact of retransmissions, which is determined by solving a fixed point equation. Our model overcomes the incompleteness of the existing models that are focusing solely on the preamble collisions. A comparison with the simulated LTE access reservation procedure that follows the 3GPP specifications, confirms that our model provides an accurate estimation of the system outage event and the number of supported MTC devices.Comment: Submitted, Revised, to be presented in IEEE Globecom 2015; v3: fixed error in eq. (4