635 research outputs found
Massive MIMO for Internet of Things (IoT) Connectivity
Massive MIMO is considered to be one of the key technologies in the emerging
5G systems, but also a concept applicable to other wireless systems. Exploiting
the large number of degrees of freedom (DoFs) of massive MIMO essential for
achieving high spectral efficiency, high data rates and extreme spatial
multiplexing of densely distributed users. On the one hand, the benefits of
applying massive MIMO for broadband communication are well known and there has
been a large body of research on designing communication schemes to support
high rates. On the other hand, using massive MIMO for Internet-of-Things (IoT)
is still a developing topic, as IoT connectivity has requirements and
constraints that are significantly different from the broadband connections. In
this paper we investigate the applicability of massive MIMO to IoT
connectivity. Specifically, we treat the two generic types of IoT connections
envisioned in 5G: massive machine-type communication (mMTC) and ultra-reliable
low-latency communication (URLLC). This paper fills this important gap by
identifying the opportunities and challenges in exploiting massive MIMO for IoT
connectivity. We provide insights into the trade-offs that emerge when massive
MIMO is applied to mMTC or URLLC and present a number of suitable communication
schemes. The discussion continues to the questions of network slicing of the
wireless resources and the use of massive MIMO to simultaneously support IoT
connections with very heterogeneous requirements. The main conclusion is that
massive MIMO can bring benefits to the scenarios with IoT connectivity, but it
requires tight integration of the physical-layer techniques with the protocol
design.Comment: Submitted for publicatio
Compressive Sensing-Based Grant-Free Massive Access for 6G Massive Communication
The advent of the sixth-generation (6G) of wireless communications has given
rise to the necessity to connect vast quantities of heterogeneous wireless
devices, which requires advanced system capabilities far beyond existing
network architectures. In particular, such massive communication has been
recognized as a prime driver that can empower the 6G vision of future
ubiquitous connectivity, supporting Internet of Human-Machine-Things for which
massive access is critical. This paper surveys the most recent advances toward
massive access in both academic and industry communities, focusing primarily on
the promising compressive sensing-based grant-free massive access paradigm. We
first specify the limitations of existing random access schemes and reveal that
the practical implementation of massive communication relies on a dramatically
different random access paradigm from the current ones mainly designed for
human-centric communications. Then, a compressive sensing-based grant-free
massive access roadmap is presented, where the evolutions from single-antenna
to large-scale antenna array-based base stations, from single-station to
cooperative massive multiple-input multiple-output systems, and from unsourced
to sourced random access scenarios are detailed. Finally, we discuss the key
challenges and open issues to shed light on the potential future research
directions of grant-free massive access.Comment: Accepted by IEEE IoT Journa
Towards Massive Machine Type Communications in Ultra-Dense Cellular IoT Networks: Current Issues and Machine Learning-Assisted Solutions
The ever-increasing number of resource-constrained Machine-Type Communication
(MTC) devices is leading to the critical challenge of fulfilling diverse
communication requirements in dynamic and ultra-dense wireless environments.
Among different application scenarios that the upcoming 5G and beyond cellular
networks are expected to support, such as eMBB, mMTC and URLLC, mMTC brings the
unique technical challenge of supporting a huge number of MTC devices, which is
the main focus of this paper. The related challenges include QoS provisioning,
handling highly dynamic and sporadic MTC traffic, huge signalling overhead and
Radio Access Network (RAN) congestion. In this regard, this paper aims to
identify and analyze the involved technical issues, to review recent advances,
to highlight potential solutions and to propose new research directions. First,
starting with an overview of mMTC features and QoS provisioning issues, we
present the key enablers for mMTC in cellular networks. Along with the
highlights on the inefficiency of the legacy Random Access (RA) procedure in
the mMTC scenario, we then present the key features and channel access
mechanisms in the emerging cellular IoT standards, namely, LTE-M and NB-IoT.
Subsequently, we present a framework for the performance analysis of
transmission scheduling with the QoS support along with the issues involved in
short data packet transmission. Next, we provide a detailed overview of the
existing and emerging solutions towards addressing RAN congestion problem, and
then identify potential advantages, challenges and use cases for the
applications of emerging Machine Learning (ML) techniques in ultra-dense
cellular networks. Out of several ML techniques, we focus on the application of
low-complexity Q-learning approach in the mMTC scenarios. Finally, we discuss
some open research challenges and promising future research directions.Comment: 37 pages, 8 figures, 7 tables, submitted for a possible future
publication in IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorial
- …