Efficient channel allocation and medium access organization algorithms for vehicular networking

Due to the limited bandwidth available for Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs), organizing the wireless channel access to efficiently use the bandwidth is one of the main challenges in VANET. In this dissertation, we focus on channel allocation and media access organization for Vehicle-to-Roadside Units (V2R) and Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communications. An efficient channel allocation algorithm for Roadside Unit (RSU) access is proposed. The goal of the algorithm is to increase system throughput by admitting more tasks (vehicles) and at the same time reduce the risk of the admitted tasks. The algorithm admits the new requests only when their requirements can be fulfilled and all in-session tasks\u27 requirements are also guaranteed. The algorithm calculates the expected task finish time for the tasks, but allocates a virtual transmission plan for the tasks as they progress toward the edges of the RSU range. For V2V mode, we propose an efficient medium access organization method based on VANETs\u27 clustering schemes. In order to make this method efficient in rapid topology change environment like VANET, it\u27s important to make the network topology less dynamic by forming local strongly connected clustering structure, which leads to a stable network topology on the global scale. We propose an efficient cluster formation algorithm that takes vehicles\u27 mobility into account for cluster formation. The results of the proposed methods show that the wireless channel utilization and the network stability are significantly improved compared to the existing methods

Achieving reliable and enhanced communication in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs)

A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of PhilosophyWith the envisioned age of Internet of Things (IoTs), different aspects of Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) will be linked so as to advance road transportation safety, ease congestion of road traffic, lessen air pollution, improve passenger transportation comfort and significantly reduce road accidents. In vehicular networks, regular exchange of current position, direction, speed, etc., enable mobile vehicle to foresee an imminent vehicle accident and notify the driver early enough in order to take appropriate action(s) or the vehicle on its own may take adequate preventive measures to avert the looming accident. Actualizing this concept requires use of shared media access protocol that is capable of guaranteeing reliable and timely broadcast of safety messages. This dissertation investigates the use of Network Coding (NC) techniques to enrich the content of each transmission and ensure improved high reliability of the broadcasted safety messages with less number of retransmissions. A Code Aided Retransmission-based Error Recovery (CARER) protocol is proposed. In order to avoid broadcast storm problem, a rebroadcasting vehicle selection metric η, is developed, which is used to select a vehicle that will rebroadcast the received encoded message. Although the proposed CARER protocol demonstrates an impressive performance, the level of incurred overhead is fairly high due to the use of complex rebroadcasting vehicle selection metric. To resolve this issue, a Random Network Coding (RNC) and vehicle clustering based vehicular communication scheme with low algorithmic complexity, named Reliable and Enhanced Cooperative Cross-layer MAC (RECMAC) scheme, is proposed. The use of this clustering technique enables RECMAC to subdivide the vehicular network into small manageable, coordinated clusters which further improve transmission reliability and minimise negative impact of network overhead. Similarly, a Cluster Head (CH) selection metric ℱ(\u1d457) is designed, which is used to determine and select the most suitably qualified candidate to become the CH of a particular cluster. Finally, in order to investigate the impact of available radio spectral resource, an in-depth study of the required amount of spectrum sufficient to support high transmission reliability and minimum latency requirements of critical road safety messages in vehicular networks was carried out. The performance of the proposed schemes was clearly shown with detailed theoretical analysis and was further validated with simulation experiments

Distributed scheduling algorithms for LoRa-based wide area cyber-physical systems

Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN) are a class of wireless communication protocols that work over long distances, consume low power and support low datarates. LPWANs have been designed for monitoring applications, with sparse communication from nodes to servers and sparser from servers to nodes. Inspite of their initial design, LPWANs have the potential to target applications with higher and stricter requirements like those of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). Due to their long-range capabilities, LPWANs can specifically target CPS applications distributed over a wide-area, which is referred to as Wide-Area CPS (WA-CPS). Augmenting WA-CPSs with wireless communication would allow for more flexible, low-cost and easily maintainable deployment. However, wireless communications come with problems like reduced reliability and unpredictable latencies, making them harder to use for CPSs. With this intention, this thesis explores the use of LPWANs, specifically LoRa, to meet the communication and control requirements of WA-CPSs. The thesis focuses on using LoRa due to its high resilience to noise, several communication parameters to choose from and a freely modifiable communication stack and servers making it ideal for research and deployment. However, LoRaWAN suffers from low reliability due to its ALOHA channel access method. The thesis posits that "Distributed algorithms would increase the protocol's reliability allowing it to meet the requirements of WA-CPSs". Three different application scenarios are explored in this thesis that leverage unexplored aspects of LoRa to meet their requirements. The application scenarios are delay-tolerant vehicular networks, multi-stakeholder WA-CPS deployments and water distribution networks. The systems use novel algorithms to facilitate communication between the nodes and gateways to ensure a highly reliable system. The results outperform state-of-art techniques to prove that LoRa is currently under-utilised and can be used for CPS applications.Open Acces

Resource allocation and congestion control in vehicular ad-hoc networks through optimization algorithms and artificial intelligence

[SPA] Esta tesis doctoral se presenta bajo la modalidad de compendio de publicaciones. En los últimos años la creciente demanda de la industria del transporte junto con requisitos de seguridad cada vez más estrictos han promovido el rápido desarrollo de las comunicaciones vehiculares. Tales comunicaciones se basan en el intercambio de mensajes periódicos (beacons) que contienen información crítica de los vehículos. Esta difusión de información da origen a lo que comúnmente se denomina conciencia cooperativa, que permite ampliar las capacidades de numerosos sistemas de asistencia en carretera y las diferentes aplicaciones de seguridad. Ciertamente, la difusión de información entre vehículos es la base de la conducción autónoma y reduce drásticamente el riesgo de colisión y otros eventos indeseados. Sin embargo, es importante tener en cuenta que la carga agregada de los beacons transmitidos puede congestionar rápidamente el canal, comprometiendo la recepción de paquetes y, por lo tanto, poniendo en peligro las ventajas que ofrecen tales comunicaciones. Para garantizar la disponibilidad del canal tanto para la recepción correcta de mensajes de emergencia y de las mínimas balizas necesarias para satisfacer los requisitos de las aplicaciones de seguridad, una determinada fracción del canal debe de ser reservada. En la literatura relacionada, el control de la congestión se ha abordado mediante el ajuste de varios parámetros de transmisión (tasa de mensaje, potencia y tasa de bit), pero todavía existen numerosos desafíos por abordar. Por ejemplo, aunque los parámetros de transmisión suelen ajustarse individualmente debido a la simplicidad del problema de optimización, aquí se muestran las ventajas de ajustar varios parámetros de forma simultánea. En esta tesis, se propone el uso de diferentes algoritmos distribuidos que alcancen el nivel de congestión deseado sin requerir infraestructura ninguna en carretera. La primera parte de esta tesis aborda la asignación de la tasa de balizamiento mediante la maximización de la utilidad de red (NUM) y diferentes métricas de riesgo como el tiempo de colisión y la velocidad de la carretera de aviso. En la segunda parte, no solo se estudian diferentes combinaciones consistentes de parámetros, sino que también nos sumergimos en el paradigma de los algoritmos no cooperativos, en los que no se requiere información de los vehículos vecinos. El problema de control de la congestión es formulado como un Proceso de Decisión de Markov (MDP) y resuelto mediante técnicas de inteligencia artificial, más concretamente, mediante aprendizaje por refuerzo (RL). Se proponen diferentes soluciones que van desde simples métodos tabulares, adecuados para entornos discretos, como Q-learning, hasta funciones de aproximación más complejas adecuadas para espacios continuos, como SARSA basado en semi-gradiente o redes neuronales artificiales.[ENG] This doctoral dissertation has been presented in the form of thesis by publication. The ever-increasing growth of the transportation industry demands combined with new safety requirements has triggered the development of vehicular communications. These communications among vehicles are based on the exchange of periodical messages or beacons containing valuable information about vehicle state. This gives rise to the socalled cooperative awareness, which allows extending the capabilities of numerous driver assistance systems and safety applications. Disseminating information among vehicles certainly lessens the risk of collision and other undesired events. Nevertheless, the aggregated beaconing load can rapidly jam the channel, compromising packet reception, and therefore endangering the advantages offered by such communications. To guarantee the availability of the channel for emergency messages and the minimum beacons receptions that satisfy safety application requirements, a given fraction of the channel capacity should be available. This congestion control has been addressed by adjusting several transmission parameters but some challenges are still unresolved. Although these parameters are usually optimized individually because of the convexity of the optimization problem, we show the advantages of combining them. In this thesis, we propose the use of different distributed algorithms that reach the desired congestion level without explicitly requiring any costly infrastructure. The first part of this thesis addresses beaconing rate allocation. We propose several distributed solutions based on Network Utility Maximization (NUM) and different risk metrics such as time-to-collision and advisory road speed. In the second part, we not only study different combinations of well-coupled parameters but also dive into the paradigm of noncooperative algorithms, in which no information from neighboring vehicles or centralized infrastructure are required. We formulate the congestion control problem as a Markov Decision Process and solve it by means of different reinforcement learning techniques. In particular, we propose different solutions ranging from tabular methods suitable for simple and discrete environments, like Q-learning, to more complex functions approximations for continuous action-state spaces, such as Semi-gradient SARSA or artificial neural networks.Esta tesis doctoral se presenta bajo la modalidad de compendio de publicaciones. Está formada por estos seis artículos: 1. (j1) Aznar-Poveda, J., Egea-Lopez, E., Garcia-Sanchez, A. J., and Pavon-Mariño, P. (2019, October). Time-to-Collision-Based Awareness and Congestion Control for Vehicular Communications. IEEE Access, 7, 154192-154208. DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2949131. 2. (c1) Aznar-Poveda, J., Egea-Lopez, E., and Garcia-Sanchez, A. J. (2020, May). Cooperative Awareness Message Dissemination in EN 302 637-2: An Adaptation for Winding Roads. IEEE 91st Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC2020-Spring) (pp. 1-5). IEEE. DOI: 10.1109/VTC2020-Spring48590.2020.9128815. 3. (c2) Aznar-Poveda, J., Egea-Lopez, E., Garcia-Sanchez, A. J., and Garcia-Haro, J. (2020, July). Advisory Speed Estimation for an Improved V2X Communications Awareness in Winding Roads. In 2020 22nd International Conference on Transparent Optical Networks (ICTON) (pp. 1-4). IEEE. DOI: 10.1109/ICTON51198.2020.9203478 4. (j2) Aznar-Poveda, J., Garcia-Sanchez, A. J., Egea-Lopez, E., and Garcia-Haro, J. (2021, January). MDPRP: A Q-Learning Approach for the Joint Control of Beaconing Rate and Transmission Power in VANETs. IEEE Access, 9, 10166-10178. DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3050625 5. (j3) Aznar-Poveda, J., Garcia-Sanchez, A. J., Egea-Lopez, E., and Garcia-Haro, J. (2021, August). Simultaneous Data Rate and Transmission Power Adaptation in V2V Communications: A Deep Reinforcement Learning Approach. IEEE Access 9, 122067-122081. DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3109422 6. (j4) Aznar-Poveda, J., Garcia-Sanchez, A. J., Egea-Lopez, E., and Garcia-Haro, J. (2021, December). Approximate Reinforcement Learning to Control Beaconing Congestion in Distributed Networks. Scientific Reports, 12, 142. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-04123-9Escuela Internacional de Doctorado de la Universidad Politécnica de CartagenaUniversidad Politécnica de CartagenaPrograma de Doctorado en Tecnologías de la Información y las Comunicacione

Millimeter wave picocellular networks: capacity analysis and system design

The explosive growth in demand for wireless mobile data, driven by the proliferationof ever more sophisticated handhelds creating and consuming rich multimedia, calls fororders of magnitude increase in the capacity of cellular data networks. Millimeter wavecommunication from picocellular base stations to mobile devices is a particularly promisingapproach for meeting this challenge because of two reasons. First, there is a largeamount of available spectrum, enabling channel bandwidths of the order of Gigahertz(GHz) which are 1-2 orders of magnitude higher than those in existing WiFi and cellularsystems at lower carrier frequencies. Second, the small carrier wavelength enables therealization of highly directive steerable arrays with a large number of antenna elements,in compact form factors, thus significantly enhancing spatial reuse. Hence, we propose toemploy the 60 GHz unlicensed band for basestation to mobile communication in outdoorpicocells.We first investigate the basic feasibility of such networks, showing that 60GHz linksare indeed viable for outdoor applications. For this purpose, we provided link budgetcalculations along with preliminary simulations which show that despite the commonconcerns about higher oxygen absorption and sensitivity to movement and blockage,picocloud architecture provides availability rate of more than 99%.Next, we explore the idea of increasing spatial reuse by shrinking picocells hopingthat interference is no longer the bottleneck given the highly directive antenna arrays atthis band. Our goal is to estimate the achievable capacity for small picocells along an urban canyon. We consider basestations with multiple faces or sectors, each with one or more antenna arrays. Each such array, termed subarray can employ Radio Frequency(RF) beamforming to communicate with one mobile user at a time. We first focus oncharacterization and modeling the inter-cell interference for one subarray on each face.Our analysis provides a strong indication of very large capacity (in the order of Tbps/km)with a few GHz of bandwidth.Following this, we explore the impact of adding multiple subarrays per face. This leadsto intra-cell interference as well as additional inter-cell interference. While the effect ofadditional inter-cell interference can be quantified within our previous framework, intracellinterference has inherently different features that call for new approaches for analysisand design. We propose a cross-layer approach to suppress the intra-cell interference intwo stages: (a) Physical layer (PHY-layer) method which mitigates interference by jointprecoding and power adaptation and (b) Medium Access Control layer (MAC-layer)method which manages the residual interference by optimizing resource allocation. Wethen estimate the capacity gain over conventional LTE cellular networks and establishthat 1000-fold capacity increase is indeed feasible via mm-wave picocellular networks.Lastly, we examine fundamental signal processing challenges associated with channelestimation and tracking for large arrays, placed within the context of system designfor a mm-wave picocellular network. Maintainance of highly directive links in the faceof blockage and mobility requires accurate estimation of the spatial channels betweenbasestation and mobile users. Here we develop the analytical framework for compressivechannel estimation and tracking. We also address the system level design discussinglink budget, overhead, and inter-cell beacon interference. Simulation results demonstratethat our compressive scheme is able to resolve mm-wave spatial channels with a relativelysmall number of compressive measurements

Applications of Non-Orthogonal Waveforms and Artificial Neural Networks in Wireless Vehicular Communications

Ph. D. ThesisWe live in an ever increasing world of connectivity. The need for highly robust, highly efficient wireless communication has never been greater. As we seek to squeeze better and better performance from our systems, we must remember; even though our computing devices are increasing in power and efficiency, our wireless spectrum remains limited. Recently there has been an increasing trend towards the implementation of machine learning based systems in wireless communications. By taking advantage of a neural networks powerful non-linear computational capability, communication systems have been shown to achieve reliable error free transmission over even the most dispersive of channels. Furthermore, in an attempt to make better use of the available spectrum, more spectrally efficient physical layer waveforms are gathering attention that trade increased interference for lower bandwidth requirements. In this thesis, the performance of neural networks that utilise spectrally efficient waveforms within harsh transmission environments are assessed. Firstly, we investigate and generate a novel neural network for use within a standards compliant vehicular network for vehicle-to-vehicle communication, and assess its performance practically in several of the harshest recorded empirical channel models using a hardware-in-the-loop testing methodology. The results demonstrate the strength of the proposed receiver, achieving a bit-error rate below 10−3 at a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 6dB. Secondly, this is then further extended to utilise spectrally efficient frequency division multiplexing (SEFDM), where we note a break away from the 802.11p vehicular communication standard in exchange for a more efficient use of the available spectrum that can then be utilised to service more users or achieve a higher data throughput. It is demonstrated that the proposed neural network system is able to act as a joint channel equaliser and symbol receiver with bandwidth compression of up to 60% when compared to orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM). The effect of overfitting to the training environment is also tested, and the proposed system is shown to generalise well to unseen vehicular environments with no notable impact on the bit-error rate performance. Thirdly, methods for generating inputs and outputs of neural networks from complex constellation points are investigated, and it is reasoned that creating ‘split complex’ neural networks should not be preferred over ‘contatenated complex’ neural networks in most settings. A new and novel loss function, namely error vector magnitude (EVM) loss, is then created for the purposes of training neural networks in a communications setting that tightly couples the objective function of a neural network during training to the performance metrics of transmission when deployed practically. This loss function is used to train neural networks in complex environments and is then compared to popular methods from the literature where it is demonstrated that EVM loss translates better into practical applications. It achieved the lowest EVM error, thus bit-error rate, across all experiments by a margin of 3dB when compared to its closest achieving alternative. The results continue and show how in the experiment EVM loss was able to improve spectral efficiency by 67% over the baseline without affecting performance. Finally, neural networks combined with the new EVM loss function are further tested in wider communication settings such as visible light communication (VLC) to validate the efficacy and flexibility of the proposed system. The results show that neural networks are capable of overcoming significant challenges in wireless environments, and when paired with efficient physical layer waveforms like SEFDM and an appropriate loss function such as EVM loss are able to make good use of a congested spectrum. The authors demonstrated for the first time in practical experimentation with SEFDM that spectral efficiency gains of up to 50% are achievable, and that previous SEFDM limitations from the literature with regards to number of subcarriers and size of the transmit constellation are alleviated via the use of neural networksEPSRC, Newcastle Universit

A Distributed Service Delivery Platform for Automotive Environments: Enhancing Communication Capabilities of an M2M Service Platform for Automotive Application

Full version: Access restricted permanently due to 3rd party copyright restrictions. Restriction set on 11.04.2018 by SE, Doctoral CollegeThe automotive domain is changing. On the way to more convenient, safe, and efficient vehicles, the role of electronic controllers and particularly software has increased significantly for many years, and vehicles have become software-intensive systems. Furthermore, vehicles are connected to the Internet to enable Advanced Driver Assistance Systems and enhanced In-Vehicle Infotainment functionalities. This widens the automotive software and system landscape beyond the physical vehicle boundaries to presently include as well external backend servers in the cloud. Moreover, the connectivity facilitates new kinds of distributed functionalities, making the vehicle a part of an Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) and thus an important example for a future Internet of Things (IoT). Manufacturers, however, are confronted with the challenging task of integrating these ever-increasing range of functionalities with heterogeneous or even contradictory requirements into a homogenous overall system. This requires new software platforms and architectural approaches. In this regard, the connectivity to fixed side backend systems not only introduces additional challenges, but also enables new approaches for addressing them. The vehicle-to-backend approaches currently emerging are dominated by proprietary solutions, which is in clear contradiction to the requirements of ITS scenarios which call for interoperability within the broad scope of vehicles and manufacturers. Therefore, this research aims at the development and propagation of a new concept of a universal distributed Automotive Service Delivery Platform (ASDP), as enabler for future automotive functionalities, not limited to ITS applications. Since Machine-to-Machine communication (M2M) is considered as a primary building block for the IoT, emergent standards such as the oneM2M service platform are selected as the initial architectural hypothesis for the realisation of an ASDP. Accordingly, this project describes a oneM2M-based ASDP as a reference configuration of the oneM2M service platform for automotive environments. In the research, the general applicability of the oneM2M service platform for the proposed ASDP is shown. However, the research also identifies shortcomings of the current oneM2M platform with respect to the capabilities needed for efficient communication and data exchange policies. It is pointed out that, for example, distributed traffic efficiency or vehicle maintenance functionalities are not efficiently treated by the standard. This may also have negative privacy impacts. Following this analysis, this research proposes novel enhancements to the oneM2M service platform, such as application-data-dependent criteria for data exchange and policy aggregation. The feasibility and advancements of the newly proposed approach are evaluated by means of proof-of-concept implementation and experiments with selected automotive scenarios. The results show the benefits of the proposed enhancements for a oneM2M-based ASDP, without neglecting to indicate their advantages for other domains of the oneM2M landscape where they could be applied as well