Energy-Efficient Resource Allocation in Wireless Networks: An Overview of Game-Theoretic Approaches

An overview of game-theoretic approaches to energy-efficient resource allocation in wireless networks is presented. Focusing on multiple-access networks, it is demonstrated that game theory can be used as an effective tool to study resource allocation in wireless networks with quality-of-service (QoS) constraints. A family of non-cooperative (distributed) games is presented in which each user seeks to choose a strategy that maximizes its own utility while satisfying its QoS requirements. The utility function considered here measures the number of reliable bits that are transmitted per joule of energy consumed and, hence, is particulary suitable for energy-constrained networks. The actions available to each user in trying to maximize its own utility are at least the choice of the transmit power and, depending on the situation, the user may also be able to choose its transmission rate, modulation, packet size, multiuser receiver, multi-antenna processing algorithm, or carrier allocation strategy. The best-response strategy and Nash equilibrium for each game is presented. Using this game-theoretic framework, the effects of power control, rate control, modulation, temporal and spatial signal processing, carrier allocation strategy and delay QoS constraints on energy efficiency and network capacity are quantified.Comment: To appear in the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine: Special Issue on Resource-Constrained Signal Processing, Communications and Networking, May 200

Application-Aware Cross-Layer Framework for Wireless Multihop Networks

Current and future mobile and social communications require a rethinking in the development of wireless communication. Optimizing the radio transmission method is not going to scale with the ever increasing user demands. The future internet requires a wireless communication network which can adapt seamlessly to changing environments and service requirements. Especially, service requirements driven by user demand and expanding user device diversity raise a key challenge with respect to content distribution. In this work, research is conducted to improve wireless communication by considering four main aspects: The first aspect is to build a multi layer solution, instead of a conventional single layer solution to achieve higher throughput gains. Here, the physical layer, the medium access layer and the network layer are studied together to utilize capabilities across all these three layers. Thus, a unified graph model is formulated to adapt available mechanisms on the lower three layers in a joint manner. The second aspect is to envision a wireless multihop network which can scale with the increasing number of mobile devices. On the one hand, the number of mobile devices is ever increasing and so is the density of mobile devices in any given network. On the other hand, the requirements and capabilities of mobile devices are becoming more diverse and hence the heterogeneity in a wireless network is growing. This leads to the conclusion that a wireless multihop network is more future proof compared to a wireless network composed only of several base stations. Therefore, the research is focused on wireless multihop scenarios where multiple wireless devices form the network and communication between them occurs over multiple hops. The third aspect is to incorporate different requirements of applications and capabilities of applications. The plethora of applications used in wireless networks come with different sets of requirements, e.g. bandwidth, and capabilities, e.g. adaption of the video quality. Taking into account these requirements and capabilities in addition to a multi layer solution can further increase the performance. In this work, the requirements and capabilities of adaptive video streaming are integrated into an application-aware cross-layer framework. More precisely, scalable video coding and dynamic adaptive streaming over HTTP are integrated into the aforementioned framework. The novel application-aware cross-layer framework adapts network support structures at the network layer, performs resource allocation at the medium access layer, switches between communication types at the physical layer and takes into account the capabilities and requirements of applications, e.g. adaptive video-streaming, at the application layer. The fourth aspect is to utilize aggregation of distributed content, where content is cached over the whole network and can than be aggregated to be consumed by users in the network. Recent research shows promising gains achievable when content is cached at mobile devices, but mostly for single hop wireless networks. Hence, the impact of mobile content caching where popular content is cached and aggregated over multiple devices in a network is investigated in this work. In more detail, a content delivery framework which jointly exploits content already cached at mobile devices as well as switching between mechanisms at the physical layer and the network layer in order to optimally deliver the content to all destinations under changing network conditions is proposed

Green Cellular Networks: A Survey, Some Research Issues and Challenges

Energy efficiency in cellular networks is a growing concern for cellular operators to not only maintain profitability, but also to reduce the overall environment effects. This emerging trend of achieving energy efficiency in cellular networks is motivating the standardization authorities and network operators to continuously explore future technologies in order to bring improvements in the entire network infrastructure. In this article, we present a brief survey of methods to improve the power efficiency of cellular networks, explore some research issues and challenges and suggest some techniques to enable an energy efficient or "green" cellular network. Since base stations consume a maximum portion of the total energy used in a cellular system, we will first provide a comprehensive survey on techniques to obtain energy savings in base stations. Next, we discuss how heterogeneous network deployment based on micro, pico and femto-cells can be used to achieve this goal. Since cognitive radio and cooperative relaying are undisputed future technologies in this regard, we propose a research vision to make these technologies more energy efficient. Lastly, we explore some broader perspectives in realizing a "green" cellular network technologyComment: 16 pages, 5 figures, 2 table

Clustering algorithm for D2D communication in next generation cellular networks : thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Engineering, Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand

Next generation cellular networks will support many complex services for smartphones, vehicles, and other devices. To accommodate such services, cellular networks need to go beyond the capabilities of their previous generations. Device-to-Device communication (D2D) is a key technology that can help fulfil some of the requirements of future networks. The telecommunication industry expects a significant increase in the density of mobile devices which puts more pressure on centralized schemes and poses risk in terms of outages, poor spectral efficiencies, and low data rates. Recent studies have shown that a large part of the cellular traffic pertains to sharing popular contents. This highlights the need for decentralized and distributive approaches to managing multimedia traffic. Content-sharing via D2D clustered networks has emerged as a popular approach for alleviating the burden on the cellular network. Different studies have established that D2D communication in clusters can improve spectral and energy efficiency, achieve low latency while increasing the capacity of the network. To achieve effective content-sharing among users, appropriate clustering strategies are required. Therefore, the aim is to design and compare clustering approaches for D2D communication targeting content-sharing applications. Currently, most of researched and implemented clustering schemes are centralized or predominantly dependent on Evolved Node B (eNB). This thesis proposes a distributed architecture that supports clustering approaches to incorporate multimedia traffic. A content-sharing network is presented where some D2D User Equipment (DUE) function as content distributors for nearby devices. Two promising techniques are utilized, namely, Content-Centric Networking and Network Virtualization, to propose a distributed architecture, that supports efficient content delivery. We propose to use clustering at the user level for content-distribution. A weighted multi-factor clustering algorithm is proposed for grouping the DUEs sharing a common interest. Various performance parameters such as energy consumption, area spectral efficiency, and throughput have been considered for evaluating the proposed algorithm. The effect of number of clusters on the performance parameters is also discussed. The proposed algorithm has been further modified to allow for a trade-off between fairness and other performance parameters. A comprehensive simulation study is presented that demonstrates that the proposed clustering algorithm is more flexible and outperforms several well-known and state-of-the-art algorithms. The clustering process is subsequently evaluated from an individual user’s perspective for further performance improvement. We believe that some users, sharing common interests, are better off with the eNB rather than being in the clusters. We utilize machine learning algorithms namely, Deep Neural Network, Random Forest, and Support Vector Machine, to identify the users that are better served by the eNB and form clusters for the rest of the users. This proposed user segregation scheme can be used in conjunction with most clustering algorithms including the proposed multi-factor scheme. A comprehensive simulation study demonstrates that with such novel user segregation, the performance of individual users, as well as the whole network, can be significantly improved for throughput, energy consumption, and fairness

Energy efficient cooperative coalition selection in cluster-based capillary networks for CMIMO IoT systems

The Cooperative Multiple-input-multiple-output (CMIMO) scheme has been suggested to extend the lifetime of cluster heads (CHs) in cluster-based capillary networks in Internet of Things (IoT) systems. However, the CMIMO scheme introduces extra energy overhead to cooperative devices and further reduces the lifetime of these devices. In this paper, we first articulate the problem of cooperative coalition’s selection for CMIMO scheme to extend the average battery capacity among the whole network, and then propose to apply the quantum-inspired particle swarm optimization (QPSO) to select the optimum cooperative coalitions of each hop in the routing path. Simulation results proved that the proposed QPSO-based cooperative coalition’s selection scheme could select the optimum cooperative sender and receiver devices in every hop dynamically and outperform the virtual MIMO scheme with a fixed number of cooperative devices