Improving Energy Efficiency for IoT Communications in 5G Networks

Increase in number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices is quickly changing how mobile networks are being used by shifting more usage to uplink transmissions rather than downlink transmissions. Currently, mobile network uplinks utilize Single Carrier Frequency Division Multiple Access (SC-FDMA) schemes due to the low Peak to Average Power Ratio (PAPR) when compared to Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA). In an IoT perspective, power ratios are highly important in effective battery usage since devices are typically resource-constrained. Fifth Generation (5G) mobile networks are believed to be the future standard network that will handle the influx of IoT device uplinks while preserving the quality of service (QoS) that current Long Term Evolution Advanced (LTE-A) networks provide. In this paper, the Enhanced OEA algorithm was proposed and simulations showed a reduction in the device energy consumption and an increase in the power efficiency of uplink transmissions while preserving the QoS rate provided with SC-FDMA in 5G networks. Furthermore, the computational complexity was reduced through insertion of a sorting step prior to resource allocation

Deep reinforcement learning-based resource allocation strategy for energy harvesting-powered cognitive machine-to-machine networks

Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication is a promising technology that may realize the Internet of Things (IoTs) in future networks. However, due to the features of massive devices and concurrent access requirement, it will cause performance degradation and enormous energy consumption. Energy Harvesting-Powered Cognitive M2M Networks (EH-CMNs) as an attractive solution is capable of alleviating the escalating spectrum deficient to guarantee the Quality of Service (QoS) meanwhile decreasing the energy consumption to achieve Green Communication (GC) became an important research topic. In this paper, we investigate the resource allocation problem for EH-CMNs underlaying cellular uplinks. We aim to maximize the energy efficiency of EH-CMNs with consideration of the QoS of Human-to-Human (H2H) networks and the available energy in EH-devices. In view of the characteristic of EH-CMNs, we formulate the problem to be a decentralized Discrete-time and Finite-state Markov Decision Process (DFMDP), in which each device acts as agent and effectively learns from the environment to make allocation decision without the complete and global network information. Owing to the complexity of the problem, we propose a Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL)-based algorithm to solve the problem. Numerical results validate that the proposed scheme outperforms other schemes in terms of average energy efficiency with an acceptable convergence speed

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