Thirty Years of Machine Learning: The Road to Pareto-Optimal Wireless Networks

Future wireless networks have a substantial potential in terms of supporting a broad range of complex compelling applications both in military and civilian fields, where the users are able to enjoy high-rate, low-latency, low-cost and reliable information services. Achieving this ambitious goal requires new radio techniques for adaptive learning and intelligent decision making because of the complex heterogeneous nature of the network structures and wireless services. Machine learning (ML) algorithms have great success in supporting big data analytics, efficient parameter estimation and interactive decision making. Hence, in this article, we review the thirty-year history of ML by elaborating on supervised learning, unsupervised learning, reinforcement learning and deep learning. Furthermore, we investigate their employment in the compelling applications of wireless networks, including heterogeneous networks (HetNets), cognitive radios (CR), Internet of things (IoT), machine to machine networks (M2M), and so on. This article aims for assisting the readers in clarifying the motivation and methodology of the various ML algorithms, so as to invoke them for hitherto unexplored services as well as scenarios of future wireless networks.Comment: 46 pages, 22 fig

AoA-aware Probabilistic Indoor Location Fingerprinting using Channel State Information

With expeditious development of wireless communications, location fingerprinting (LF) has nurtured considerable indoor location based services (ILBSs) in the field of Internet of Things (IoT). For most pattern-matching based LF solutions, previous works either appeal to the simple received signal strength (RSS), which suffers from dramatic performance degradation due to sophisticated environmental dynamics, or rely on the fine-grained physical layer channel state information (CSI), whose intricate structure leads to an increased computational complexity. Meanwhile, the harsh indoor environment can also breed similar radio signatures among certain predefined reference points (RPs), which may be randomly distributed in the area of interest, thus mightily tampering the location mapping accuracy. To work out these dilemmas, during the offline site survey, we first adopt autoregressive (AR) modeling entropy of CSI amplitude as location fingerprint, which shares the structural simplicity of RSS while reserving the most location-specific statistical channel information. Moreover, an additional angle of arrival (AoA) fingerprint can be accurately retrieved from CSI phase through an enhanced subspace based algorithm, which serves to further eliminate the error-prone RP candidates. In the online phase, by exploiting both CSI amplitude and phase information, a novel bivariate kernel regression scheme is proposed to precisely infer the target's location. Results from extensive indoor experiments validate the superior localization performance of our proposed system over previous approaches

An Overview on Application of Machine Learning Techniques in Optical Networks

Today's telecommunication networks have become sources of enormous amounts of widely heterogeneous data. This information can be retrieved from network traffic traces, network alarms, signal quality indicators, users' behavioral data, etc. Advanced mathematical tools are required to extract meaningful information from these data and take decisions pertaining to the proper functioning of the networks from the network-generated data. Among these mathematical tools, Machine Learning (ML) is regarded as one of the most promising methodological approaches to perform network-data analysis and enable automated network self-configuration and fault management. The adoption of ML techniques in the field of optical communication networks is motivated by the unprecedented growth of network complexity faced by optical networks in the last few years. Such complexity increase is due to the introduction of a huge number of adjustable and interdependent system parameters (e.g., routing configurations, modulation format, symbol rate, coding schemes, etc.) that are enabled by the usage of coherent transmission/reception technologies, advanced digital signal processing and compensation of nonlinear effects in optical fiber propagation. In this paper we provide an overview of the application of ML to optical communications and networking. We classify and survey relevant literature dealing with the topic, and we also provide an introductory tutorial on ML for researchers and practitioners interested in this field. Although a good number of research papers have recently appeared, the application of ML to optical networks is still in its infancy: to stimulate further work in this area, we conclude the paper proposing new possible research directions

Spatial Parameter Identification for MIMO Systems in the Presence of Non-Gaussian Interference

Reliable identification of spatial parameters for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, such as the number of transmit antennas (NTA) and the direction of arrival (DOA), is a prerequisite for MIMO signal separation and detection. Most existing parameter estimation methods for MIMO systems only consider a single parameter in Gaussian noise. This paper develops a reliable identification scheme based on generalized multi-antenna time-frequency distribution (GMTFD) for MIMO systems with non-Gaussian interference and Gaussian noise. First, a new generalized correlation matrix is introduced to construct a generalized MTFD matrix. Then, the covariance matrix based on time-frequency distribution (CM-TF) is characterized by using the diagonal entries from the auto-source signal components and the non-diagonal entries from the cross-source signal components in the generalized MTFD matrix. Finally, by making use of the CM-TF, the Gerschgorin disk criterion is modified to estimate NTA, and the multiple signal classification (MUSIC) is exploited to estimate DOA for MIMO system. Simulation results indicate that the proposed scheme based on GMTFD has good robustness to non-Gaussian interference without prior information and that it can achieve high estimation accuracy and resolution at low and medium signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs)

Domain Generalization in Machine Learning Models for Wireless Communications: Concepts, State-of-the-Art, and Open Issues

Data-driven machine learning (ML) is promoted as one potential technology to be used in next-generations wireless systems. This led to a large body of research work that applies ML techniques to solve problems in different layers of the wireless transmission link. However, most of these applications rely on supervised learning which assumes that the source (training) and target (test) data are independent and identically distributed (i.i.d). This assumption is often violated in the real world due to domain or distribution shifts between the source and the target data. Thus, it is important to ensure that these algorithms generalize to out-of-distribution (OOD) data. In this context, domain generalization (DG) tackles the OOD-related issues by learning models on different and distinct source domains/datasets with generalization capabilities to unseen new domains without additional finetuning. Motivated by the importance of DG requirements for wireless applications, we present a comprehensive overview of the recent developments in DG and the different sources of domain shift. We also summarize the existing DG methods and review their applications in selected wireless communication problems, and conclude with insights and open questions

AntiSense: Standard-compliant CSI obfuscation against unauthorized Wi-Fi sensing

Channel State Information (CSI)-based localization with 802.11 has been proven feasible in multiple scenarios and is becoming a serious threat to people's privacy in workplaces, at home, and maybe even outdoors. Countering unauthorized localization without hampering communications is a non-trivial task, although some very recent works suggest that it is feasible with marginal modification of the 802.11 transmission chain, but this requires modifying 802.11 devices. Furthermore, if the attacker controls two devices and not just a receiver, transmission side signal manipulation cannot help. This work explores the possibility of countering CSI based localization with an active device that, instead of jamming signals to avoid that a malicious receiver exploits CSI information to locate a person, superimpose on frames a copy of the same frame signal whose goal is not destroying reception as in jamming, but only obfuscate the location-relevant information carried by the CSI. A prototype implementation and early results look promising; they show the feasibility of location obfuscation with high efficiency and excellent preservation of communication performance, and indicate that the technique works both against passive attacks, where the attacker controls only a receiver, and active ones, where he/she controls both a transmitter and a receiver. These results pave the road for further research on smart spaces that preserve users’ privacy with a technical solution and not only via legal prescriptions

Neural-network-aided automatic modulation classification

Automatic modulation classification (AMC) is a pattern matching problem which significantly impacts divers telecommunication systems, with significant applications in military and civilian contexts alike. Although its appearance in the literature is far from novel, recent developments in machine learning technologies have triggered an increased interest in this area of research. In the first part of this thesis, an AMC system is studied where, in addition to the typical point-to-point setup of one receiver and one transmitter, a second transmitter is also present, which is considered an interfering device. A convolutional neural network (CNN) is used for classification. In addition to studying the effect of interference strength, we propose a modification attempting to leverage some of the debilitating results of interference, and also study the effect of signal quantisation upon classification performance. Consequently, we assess a cooperative setting of AMC, namely one where the receiver features multiple antennas, and receives different versions of the same signal from the single-antenna transmitter. Through the combination of data from different antennas, it is evidenced that this cooperative approach leads to notable performance improvements over the established baseline. Finally, the cooperative scenario is expanded to a more complicated setting, where a realistic geographic distribution of four receiving nodes is modelled, and furthermore, the decision-making mechanism with regard to the identity of a signal resides in a fusion centre independent of the receivers, connected to them over finite-bandwidth backhaul links. In addition to the common concerns over classification accuracy and inference time, data reduction methods of various types (including “trained” lossy compression) are implemented with the objective of minimising the data load placed upon the backhaul links.Open Acces

Cognitive Radio Systems

Cognitive radio is a hot research area for future wireless communications in the recent years. In order to increase the spectrum utilization, cognitive radio makes it possible for unlicensed users to access the spectrum unoccupied by licensed users. Cognitive radio let the equipments more intelligent to communicate with each other in a spectrum-aware manner and provide a new approach for the co-existence of multiple wireless systems. The goal of this book is to provide highlights of the current research topics in the field of cognitive radio systems. The book consists of 17 chapters, addressing various problems in cognitive radio systems