Traffic Offloading/Onloading in Multi-RAT Cellular Networks

We analyze next generation cellular networks, offering connectivity to mobile users through multiple radio access technologies (RATs), namely LTE and WiFi. We develop a framework based on the Markovian agent formalism, which can model several aspects of the system, including user traffic dynamics and radio resource allocation. In particular, through a mean-field solution, we show the ability of our framework to capture the system behavior in flash-crowd scenarios, i.e., when a burst of traffic requests takes place in some parts of the network service area. We consider a distributed strategy for the user RAT selection, which aims at ensuring high user throughput, and investigate its performance under different resource allocation scheme

DyMo: Dynamic Monitoring of Large Scale LTE-Multicast Systems

LTE evolved Multimedia Broadcast/Multicast Service (eMBMS) is an attractive solution for video delivery to very large groups in crowded venues. However, deployment and management of eMBMS systems is challenging, due to the lack of realtime feedback from the User Equipment (UEs). Therefore, we present the Dynamic Monitoring (DyMo) system for low-overhead feedback collection. DyMo leverages eMBMS for broadcasting Stochastic Group Instructions to all UEs. These instructions indicate the reporting rates as a function of the observed Quality of Service (QoS). This simple feedback mechanism collects very limited QoS reports from the UEs. The reports are used for network optimization, thereby ensuring high QoS to the UEs. We present the design aspects of DyMo and evaluate its performance analytically and via extensive simulations. Specifically, we show that DyMo infers the optimal eMBMS settings with extremely low overhead, while meeting strict QoS requirements under different UE mobility patterns and presence of network component failures. For instance, DyMo can detect the eMBMS Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) experienced by the 0.1% percentile of the UEs with Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of 0.05% with only 5 to 10 reports per second regardless of the number of UEs

Energy efficiency in heterogeneous wireless access networks

In this article, we bring forward the important aspect of energy savings in wireless access networks. We specifically focus on the energy saving opportunities in the recently evolving heterogeneous networks (HetNets), both Single- RAT and Multi-RAT. Issues such as sleep/wakeup cycles and interference management are discussed for co-channel Single-RAT HetNets. In addition to that, a simulation based study for LTE macro-femto HetNets is presented, indicating the need for dynamic energy efficient resource management schemes. Multi-RAT HetNets also come with challenges such as network integration, combined resource management and network selection. Along with a discussion on these challenges, we also investigate the performance of the conventional WLAN-first network selection mechanism in terms of energy efficiency (EE) and suggest that EE can be improved by the application of intelligent call admission control policies

Goodbye, ALOHA!

©2016 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.The vision of the Internet of Things (IoT) to interconnect and Internet-connect everyday people, objects, and machines poses new challenges in the design of wireless communication networks. The design of medium access control (MAC) protocols has been traditionally an intense area of research due to their high impact on the overall performance of wireless communications. The majority of research activities in this field deal with different variations of protocols somehow based on ALOHA, either with or without listen before talk, i.e., carrier sensing multiple access. These protocols operate well under low traffic loads and low number of simultaneous devices. However, they suffer from congestion as the traffic load and the number of devices increase. For this reason, unless revisited, the MAC layer can become a bottleneck for the success of the IoT. In this paper, we provide an overview of the existing MAC solutions for the IoT, describing current limitations and envisioned challenges for the near future. Motivated by those, we identify a family of simple algorithms based on distributed queueing (DQ), which can operate for an infinite number of devices generating any traffic load and pattern. A description of the DQ mechanism is provided and most relevant existing studies of DQ applied in different scenarios are described in this paper. In addition, we provide a novel performance evaluation of DQ when applied for the IoT. Finally, a description of the very first demo of DQ for its use in the IoT is also included in this paper.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft