Aeronautical Ad Hoc Networking for the Internet-Above-The-Clouds

The engineering vision of relying on the ``smart sky" for supporting air traffic and the ``Internet above the clouds" for in-flight entertainment has become imperative for the future aircraft industry. Aeronautical ad hoc Networking (AANET) constitutes a compelling concept for providing broadband communications above clouds by extending the coverage of Air-to-Ground (A2G) networks to oceanic and remote airspace via autonomous and self-configured wireless networking amongst commercial passenger airplanes. The AANET concept may be viewed as a new member of the family of Mobile ad hoc Networks (MANETs) in action above the clouds. However, AANETs have more dynamic topologies, larger and more variable geographical network size, stricter security requirements and more hostile transmission conditions. These specific characteristics lead to more grave challenges in aircraft mobility modeling, aeronautical channel modeling and interference mitigation as well as in network scheduling and routing. This paper provides an overview of AANET solutions by characterizing the associated scenarios, requirements and challenges. Explicitly, the research addressing the key techniques of AANETs, such as their mobility models, network scheduling and routing, security and interference are reviewed. Furthermore, we also identify the remaining challenges associated with developing AANETs and present their prospective solutions as well as open issues. The design framework of AANETs and the key technical issues are investigated along with some recent research results. Furthermore, a range of performance metrics optimized in designing AANETs and a number of representative multi-objective optimization algorithms are outlined

Optimization of Free Space Optical Wireless Network for Cellular Backhauling

With densification of nodes in cellular networks, free space optic (FSO) connections are becoming an appealing low cost and high rate alternative to copper and fiber as the backhaul solution for wireless communication systems. To ensure a reliable cellular backhaul, provisions for redundant, disjoint paths between the nodes must be made in the design phase. This paper aims at finding a cost-effective solution to upgrade the cellular backhaul with pre-deployed optical fibers using FSO links and mirror components. Since the quality of the FSO links depends on several factors, such as transmission distance, power, and weather conditions, we adopt an elaborate formulation to calculate link reliability. We present a novel integer linear programming model to approach optimal FSO backhaul design, guaranteeing $K$-disjoint paths connecting each node pair. Next, we derive a column generation method to a path-oriented mathematical formulation. Applying the method in a sequential manner enables high computational scalability. We use realistic scenarios to demonstrate our approaches efficiently provide optimal or near-optimal solutions, and thereby allow for accurately dealing with the trade-off between cost and reliability

An Edge Computing Empowered Radio Access Network With UAV-Mounted FSO Fronthaul and Backhaul: Key Challenges and Approaches

One promising approach to address the supply-demand mismatch between the terrestrial infrastructure and the temporary and/or unexpected traffic demands is to leverage the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technologies. Motivated by the recent advancement of UAV technologies and retromodulator based free space optical communication, we propose a novel edge-computing empowered radio access network architecture where the fronthaul and backhaul links are mounted on the UAVs for rapid event response and flexible deployment. The implementation of hardware and networking technologies for the proposed architecture are investigated. Due to the limited payload and endurance as well as the high mobility of UAVs, research challenges related to the communication resource management and recent research progress are reported.Comment: This work is accepted by IEEE Wireless Communications Magazin

Optical Communication in Space: Challenges and Mitigation Techniques

In recent years, free space optical communication has gained significant importance owing to its unique features: large bandwidth, license-free spectrum, high data rate, easy and quick deployability, less power and low mass requirements. FSO communication uses the optical carrier in the near infrared band to establish either terrestrial links within the Earth's atmosphere or inter-satellite or deep space links or ground-to-satellite or satellite-to-ground links. However, despite the great potential of FSO communication, its performance is limited by the adverse effects viz., absorption, scattering, and turbulence of the atmospheric channel. This paper presents a comprehensive survey on various challenges faced by FSO communication system for ground-to-satellite or satellite-to-ground and inter-satellite links. It also provides details of various performance mitigation techniques in order to have high link availability and reliability. The first part of the paper will focus on various types of impairments that pose a serious challenge to the performance of optical communication system for ground-to-satellite or satellite-to-ground and inter-satellite links. The latter part of the paper will provide the reader with an exhaustive review of various techniques both at physical layer as well as at the other layers i.e., link, network or transport layer to combat the adverse effects of the atmosphere. It also uniquely presents a recently developed technique using orbital angular momentum for utilizing the high capacity advantage of the optical carrier in case of space-based and near-Earth optical communication links. This survey provides the reader with comprehensive details on the use of space-based optical backhaul links in order to provide high-capacity and low-cost backhaul solutions.Comment: 41 pages, 13 Figures and 8 Tables. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1506.0483

Wireless Data Center Networks: Advances, Challenges, and Opportunities

Data center networks (DCNs) are essential infrastructures to embrace the era of highly diversified massive amount of data generated by emerging technological applications. In order to store and process such a data deluge, today's DCNs have to deploy enormous length of wires to interconnect a plethora of servers and switches. Unfortunately, wired DCNs with uniform and inflexible link capacities expose several drawbacks such as high cabling cost and complexity, low space utilization, and lack of bandwidth efficiency. Wireless DCNs (WDCNs) have emerged as a promising solution to reduce the time, effort, and cost spent on deploying and maintaining the wires. Thanks to its reconfigurability and flexibility, WDCNs can deliver higher throughputs by efficiently utilizing the bandwidth and mitigate the chronic DCN problems of oversubscription and hotspots. Moreover, wireless links enhance the fault-tolerance and energy efficiency by eliminating the need for error-prone power-hungry switches. Accordingly, this paper first compares virtues and drawbacks of millimeter wave (mmWave), terahertz (THz), and optical wireless communications as potential candidates. Thereafter, an in-depth discussion on advances and challenges in WDCNs is provided including physical and virtual topology design, quality of service (QoS) provisioning, flow classification, data grooming, and load balancing. Finally, exciting research opportunities are presented to promote the prospects of WDCNs.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Wireless Communications Magazine for a possible publicatio

Ultra-Dense 5G Small Cell Deployment for Fiber and Wireless Backhaul-Aware Infrastructures

In this paper, we study the cell planning problem for a two-tier cellular network containing two types of base stations (BSs)-- i.e. with fiber backhaul, referred to as wired BSs (W-BSs), and BSs with wireless backhaul, referred to as unwired-BSs (U-BSs). In-band full-duplex wireless communications is used to connect U-BSs and W-BSs. We propose an algorithm to determine the minimum number of W-BSs and U-BSs to satisfy given cell and capacity coverage constraints. Furthermore, we apply our proposed non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II) to solve both cell planning and joint cell and backhaul planning problem to minimize the cost of planning, while maximizing the coverage simultaneously. Additionally, the considered cell planning program is developed into an optimization by including the problem of minimizing the cost of fiber backhaul deployment. In order to analyze the performance of the proposed algorithm, we study three different deployment scenarios based on different spatial distributions of users and coverage areas. The results show the superiority of our proposed NSGA-II algorithm for both cell planning and joint cell and backhaul planning to other well-known optimization algorithms. The results also reveal that there is a trade-off between cell deployment costs and SINR/rate coverage, and W-BSs are placed in congested areas to consume less resources for wireless backhauls. Similarly, a trade-off between cell and fiber deployment costs and SINR/rate coverage is observed in planning. We show that for realistic scenarios desirable solutions can be selected from the Pareto front of the introduced multi-objective problem based on given cellular operator policies

Deep Learning Framework for Wireless Systems: Applications to Optical Wireless Communications

Optical wireless communication (OWC) is a promising technology for future wireless communications owing to its potentials for cost-effective network deployment and high data rate. There are several implementation issues in the OWC which have not been encountered in radio frequency wireless communications. First, practical OWC transmitters need an illumination control on color, intensity, and luminance, etc., which poses complicated modulation design challenges. Furthermore, signal-dependent properties of optical channels raise non-trivial challenges both in modulation and demodulation of the optical signals. To tackle such difficulties, deep learning (DL) technologies can be applied for optical wireless transceiver design. This article addresses recent efforts on DL-based OWC system designs. A DL framework for emerging image sensor communication is proposed and its feasibility is verified by simulation. Finally, technical challenges and implementation issues for the DL-based optical wireless technology are discussed.Comment: To appear in IEEE Communications Magazine, Special Issue on Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Wireless Communication

A Computation Offloading Incentive Mechanism with Delay and Cost Constraints under 5G Satellite-ground IoV architecture

The 5G Internet of Vehicles has become a new paradigm alongside the growing popularity and variety of computation-intensive applications with high requirements for computational resources and analysis capabilities. Existing network architectures and resource management mechanisms may not sufficiently guarantee satisfactory Quality of Experience and network efficiency, mainly suffering from coverage limitation of Road Side Units, insufficient resources, and unsatisfactory computational capabilities of onboard equipment, frequently changing network topology, and ineffective resource management schemes. To meet the demands of such applications, in this article, we first propose a novel architecture by integrating the satellite network with 5G cloud-enabled Internet of Vehicles to efficiently support seamless coverage and global resource management. A incentive mechanism based joint optimization problem of opportunistic computation offloading under delay and cost constraints is established under the aforementioned framework, in which a vehicular user can either significantly reduce the application completion time by offloading workloads to several nearby vehicles through opportunistic vehicle-to-vehicle channels while effectively controlling the cost or protect its own profit by providing compensated computing service. As the optimization problem is non-convex and NP-hard, simulated annealing based on the Markov Chain Monte Carlo as well as the metropolis algorithm is applied to solve the optimization problem, which can efficaciously obtain both high-quality and cost-effective approximations of global optimal solutions. The effectiveness of the proposed mechanism is corroborated through simulation results

Cloud Computing - Architecture and Applications

In the era of Internet of Things and with the explosive worldwide growth of electronic data volume, and associated need of processing, analysis, and storage of such humongous volume of data, it has now become mandatory to exploit the power of massively parallel architecture for fast computation. Cloud computing provides a cheap source of such computing framework for large volume of data for real-time applications. It is, therefore, not surprising to see that cloud computing has become a buzzword in the computing fraternity over the last decade. This book presents some critical applications in cloud frameworks along with some innovation design of algorithms and architecture for deployment in cloud environment. It is a valuable source of knowledge for researchers, engineers, practitioners, and graduate and doctoral students working in the field of cloud computing. It will also be useful for faculty members of graduate schools and universities.Comment: Edited Volume published by Intech Publishers, Croatia, June 2017. 138 pages. ISBN 978-953-51-3244-8, Print ISBN 978-953-51-3243-1. Link: https://www.intechopen.com/books/cloud-computing-architecture-and-application

Towards a Distributed Quantum Computing Ecosystem

The Quantum Internet, by enabling quantum communications among remote quantum nodes, is a network capable of supporting functionalities with no direct counterpart in the classical world. Indeed, with the network and communications functionalities provided by the Quantum Internet, remote quantum devices can communicate and cooperate for solving challenging computational tasks by adopting a distributed computing approach. The aim of this paper is to provide the reader with an overview about the main challenges and open problems arising with the design of a Distributed Quantum Computing ecosystem. For this, we provide a survey, following a bottom-up approach, from a communications engineering perspective. We start by introducing the Quantum Internet as the fundamental underlying infrastructure of the Distributed Quantum Computing ecosystem. Then we go further, by elaborating on a high-level system abstraction of the Distributed Quantum Computing ecosystem. Such an abstraction is described through a set of logical layers. Thereby, we clarify dependencies among the aforementioned layers and, at the same time, a road-map emerges