Coordinated Multicasting with Opportunistic User Selection in Multicell Wireless Systems

Physical layer multicasting with opportunistic user selection (OUS) is examined for multicell multi-antenna wireless systems. By adopting a two-layer encoding scheme, a rate-adaptive channel code is applied in each fading block to enable successful decoding by a chosen subset of users (which varies over different blocks) and an application layer erasure code is employed across multiple blocks to ensure that every user is able to recover the message after decoding successfully in a sufficient number of blocks. The transmit signal and code-rate in each block determine opportunistically the subset of users that are able to successfully decode and can be chosen to maximize the long-term multicast efficiency. The employment of OUS not only helps avoid rate-limitations caused by the user with the worst channel, but also helps coordinate interference among different cells and multicast groups. In this work, efficient algorithms are proposed for the design of the transmit covariance matrices, the physical layer code-rates, and the target user subsets in each block. In the single group scenario, the system parameters are determined by maximizing the group-rate, defined as the physical layer code-rate times the fraction of users that can successfully decode in each block. In the multi-group scenario, the system parameters are determined by considering a group-rate balancing optimization problem, which is solved by a successive convex approximation (SCA) approach. To further reduce the feedback overhead, we also consider the case where only part of the users feed back their channel vectors in each block and propose a design based on the balancing of the expected group-rates. In addition to SCA, a sample average approximation technique is also introduced to handle the probabilistic terms arising in this problem. The effectiveness of the proposed schemes is demonstrated by computer simulations.Comment: Accepted by IEEE Transactions on Signal Processin

On maximizing the throughput of opportunistic multicast in wireless cellular networks with erasure codes

In this paper, we discuss the opportunistic multicast scheduling (OMS) in a wireless network using erasure codes. Originally proposed for channels with erasures such as internet, erasure codes are found useful in wireless multicast to achieve better tradeoff between multiuser diversity and the multicast gain. In this work we investigated how to design an opportunistic multicast scheduling scheme which can efficiently improve the per user throughput capacity in a wireless network using erasure codes. Aiming at maximize the throughput, we proposed a maximal OMS (M-OMS) scheme which is inspired by the unicast maximal opportunistic scheduling. We build a system model and provide theoretical analysis on proposed M-OMS scheme. The proposed scheme shows substantial improvement over existing fixed selection ratio opportunistic multicast scheduling schemes (F-OMS). © 2011 IEEE.published_or_final_versionThe 2011 IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC 2011), Kyoto, Japan, 5-9 June 2011. In Proceedings of the IEEE ICC, 2011, p. 1-

WIMAX Basics from PHY Layer to Scheduling and Multicasting Approaches

WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) is an emerging broadband wireless technology for providing Last mile solutions for supporting higher bandwidth and multiple service classes with various quality of service requirement. The unique architecture of the WiMAX MAC and PHY layers that uses OFDMA to allocate multiple channels with different modulation schema and multiple time slots for each channel allows better adaptation of heterogeneous user’s requirements. The main architecture in WiMAX uses PMP (Point to Multipoint), Mesh mode or the new MMR (Mobile Multi hop Mode) deployments where scheduling and multicasting have different approaches. In PMP SS (Subscriber Station) connects directly to BS (Base Station) in a single hop route so channel conditions adaptations and supporting QoS for classes of services is the key points in scheduling, admission control or multicasting, while in Mesh networks SS connects to other SS Stations or to the BS in a multi hop routes, the MMR mode extends the PMP mode in which the SS connects to either a relay station (RS) or to Bs. Both MMR and Mesh uses centralized or distributed scheduling with multicasting schemas based on scheduling trees for routing. In this paper a broad study is conducted About WiMAX technology PMP and Mesh deployments from main physical layers features with differentiation of MAC layer features to scheduling and multicasting approaches in both modes of operations

TOFEC: Achieving Optimal Throughput-Delay Trade-off of Cloud Storage Using Erasure Codes

Our paper presents solutions using erasure coding, parallel connections to storage cloud and limited chunking (i.e., dividing the object into a few smaller segments) together to significantly improve the delay performance of uploading and downloading data in and out of cloud storage. TOFEC is a strategy that helps front-end proxy adapt to level of workload by treating scalable cloud storage (e.g. Amazon S3) as a shared resource requiring admission control. Under light workloads, TOFEC creates more smaller chunks and uses more parallel connections per file, minimizing service delay. Under heavy workloads, TOFEC automatically reduces the level of chunking (fewer chunks with increased size) and uses fewer parallel connections to reduce overhead, resulting in higher throughput and preventing queueing delay. Our trace-driven simulation results show that TOFEC's adaptation mechanism converges to an appropriate code that provides the optimal delay-throughput trade-off without reducing system capacity. Compared to a non-adaptive strategy optimized for throughput, TOFEC delivers 2.5x lower latency under light workloads; compared to a non-adaptive strategy optimized for latency, TOFEC can scale to support over 3x as many requests

Algorithm design for scheduling and medium access control in heterogeneous mobile networks

Mención Internacional en el título de doctorThe rapid growth of wireless mobile devices has led to saturation and congestion of wireless channels – a well-known fact. In the recent years, this issue is further exacerbated by the ever-increasing demand for traffic intensed multimedia content applications, which include but are not limited to social media, news and video streaming applications. Therefore the development of highly efficient content distribution technologies is of utmost importance, specifically to cope with the scarcity and the high cost of wireless resources. To this aim, this thesis investigates the challenges and the considerations required to design efficient techniques to improve the performance of wireless networks. Since wireless signals are prone to fluctuations and mobile users are, with high likelihood, have difference channel qualities, we particularly focus on the scenarios with heterogeneous user distribution. Further, this dissertation considers two main techniques to cope with mobile users demand and the limitation of wireless resources. Firstly, we propose an opportunistic multicast scheduling to efficiently distribute or disseminate data to all users with low delay. Secondly, we exploit the Millimeter-Wave (mm-Wave) frequency band that has a high potential of meeting the high bandwidth demand. In particular, we propose a channel access mechanism and a scheduling algorithm that take into account the limitation of the high frequency band (i.e., high path loss). Multicast scheduling has emerged as one of the most promising techniques for multicast applications when multiple users require the same content from the base station. Unlike a unicast scheduler which sequentially serves the individual users, a multicast scheduler efficiently utilizes the wireless resources by simultaneously transmitting to multiple users. Precisely, it multiplies the gain in terms of the system throughput compared to unicast transmissions. In spite of the fact that multicast schedulers are more efficient than unicast schedulers, scheduling for multicast transmission is a challenging task. In particular, base station can only chose one rate to transmit to all users. While determining the rate for users with a similar instantaneous channel quality is straight forward, it is non-trivial when users have different instantaneous channel qualities, i.e., when the channel is heterogeneous. In such a scenario, on one hand, transmitting at a low rate results in low throughput. On the other hand, transmitting at a high rate causes some users to fail to receive the transmitted packet while others successfully receive it but with a rate lower than their maximum rate. The most common and simplest multicasting technique, i.e., broadcasting, transmits to all receivers using the maximum rate that is supported by the worst receiver. In recent years, opportunistic schedulers have been considered for multicasting. Opportunistic multicast schedulers maximize instantaneous throughput and transmit at a higher rate to serve only a subset of the multicast users. While broadcasting suffers from high delay for all users due to low transmission rate, the latter causes a long delay for the users with worse channel quality as they always favor users with better channel quality. To address these problems, we designed an opportunistic multicast scheduling mechanism that aims to achieve high throughput as well as low delay. Precisely, we are solving the finite horizon problem for multicasting. Our goal is that all multicast users receive the same amount of data within the shortest amount of time. Although our proposed opportunistic multicast scheduling mechanism improves the system throughput and reduces delay, a common problem in multicast scheduling is that its throughput performance is limited by the worst user in the system. To overcome this problem, transmit beamforming can be used to adjust antenna gains to the different receivers. This allows improving the SNR of the receiver with the worst channel SNR at the expense of worsening the SNR of the better channel receivers. In the first part of this thesis, two different versions of the finite horizon problem are considered: (i) opportunistic multicast scheduling and (ii) opportunistic multicast beamforming. In recent years, many researchers venture into the potential of communication over mm-Wave band as it potentially solves the existing network capacity problem. Since beamforming is capable to concentrate the transmit energy in the direction of interest, this technique is particularly beneficial to improve signal quality of the highly attenuated mm-Wave signal. Although directional beamforming in mm-Wave offers multi-gigabit-per-second data rates, directional communication severely deteriorates the channel sensing capability of a user. For instance, when a user is not within the transmission coverage or range of the communicating users, it is unable to identify the state of the channel (i.e., busy or free). As a result, this leads to a problem commonly known as the deafness problem. This calls for rethinking of the legacy medium access control and scheduling mechanisms for mm-Wave communication. Further, without omni-directional transmission, disseminating or broadcasting global information also becomes complex. To cope with these issues, we propose two techniques in the second part of this thesis. First, leveraging that recent mobile devices have multiple wireless interface, we present a dual-band solution. This solution exploits the omni-directional capable lower frequency bands (i.e., 2.4 and 5 GHz) to transmit control messages and the mm-Wave band for high speed data transmission. Second, we develop a decentralized scheduling technique which copes with the deafness problem in mm-Wave through a learning mechanism. In a nutshell, this thesis explores solutions which (i) improve the utilization of the network resources through multicasting and (ii) meet the mobile user demand with the abundant channel resources available at high frequency bands.This work has been supported by IMDEA Networks Institute.Programa Oficial de Doctorado en Ingeniería TelemáticaPresidente: Ralf Steinmetz.- Secretario: Carlos Jesús Bernardos Cano.- Vocal: Jordi Domingo Pascua