Centralized and partial decentralized design for the Fog Radio Access Network

Fog Radio Access Network (F-RAN) has been shown to be a promising network architecture for the 5G network. With F-RAN, certain amount of signal processing functionalities are pushed from the Base Station (BS) on the network edge to the BaseBand Units (BBU) pool located remotely in the cloud. Hence, partially centralized network operation and management can be achieved, which can greatly improve the energy and spectral efficiency of the network, in order to meet the requirements of 5G. In this work, the optimal design for both uplink and downlink of F-RAN are intensively investigated

Clustering algorithm for D2D communication in next generation cellular networks : thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Engineering, Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand

Next generation cellular networks will support many complex services for smartphones, vehicles, and other devices. To accommodate such services, cellular networks need to go beyond the capabilities of their previous generations. Device-to-Device communication (D2D) is a key technology that can help fulfil some of the requirements of future networks. The telecommunication industry expects a significant increase in the density of mobile devices which puts more pressure on centralized schemes and poses risk in terms of outages, poor spectral efficiencies, and low data rates. Recent studies have shown that a large part of the cellular traffic pertains to sharing popular contents. This highlights the need for decentralized and distributive approaches to managing multimedia traffic. Content-sharing via D2D clustered networks has emerged as a popular approach for alleviating the burden on the cellular network. Different studies have established that D2D communication in clusters can improve spectral and energy efficiency, achieve low latency while increasing the capacity of the network. To achieve effective content-sharing among users, appropriate clustering strategies are required. Therefore, the aim is to design and compare clustering approaches for D2D communication targeting content-sharing applications. Currently, most of researched and implemented clustering schemes are centralized or predominantly dependent on Evolved Node B (eNB). This thesis proposes a distributed architecture that supports clustering approaches to incorporate multimedia traffic. A content-sharing network is presented where some D2D User Equipment (DUE) function as content distributors for nearby devices. Two promising techniques are utilized, namely, Content-Centric Networking and Network Virtualization, to propose a distributed architecture, that supports efficient content delivery. We propose to use clustering at the user level for content-distribution. A weighted multi-factor clustering algorithm is proposed for grouping the DUEs sharing a common interest. Various performance parameters such as energy consumption, area spectral efficiency, and throughput have been considered for evaluating the proposed algorithm. The effect of number of clusters on the performance parameters is also discussed. The proposed algorithm has been further modified to allow for a trade-off between fairness and other performance parameters. A comprehensive simulation study is presented that demonstrates that the proposed clustering algorithm is more flexible and outperforms several well-known and state-of-the-art algorithms. The clustering process is subsequently evaluated from an individual user’s perspective for further performance improvement. We believe that some users, sharing common interests, are better off with the eNB rather than being in the clusters. We utilize machine learning algorithms namely, Deep Neural Network, Random Forest, and Support Vector Machine, to identify the users that are better served by the eNB and form clusters for the rest of the users. This proposed user segregation scheme can be used in conjunction with most clustering algorithms including the proposed multi-factor scheme. A comprehensive simulation study demonstrates that with such novel user segregation, the performance of individual users, as well as the whole network, can be significantly improved for throughput, energy consumption, and fairness

Content Caching and Delivery in Heterogeneous Vehicular Networks

Connected and automated vehicles (CAVs), which enable information exchange and content delivery in real time, are expected to revolutionize current transportation systems for better driving safety, traffic efficiency, and environmental sustainability. However, the emerging CAV applications such as content delivery pose stringent requirements on latency, throughput, reliability, and global connectivity. The current wireless networks face significant challenges to satisfy the requirements due to scarce radio spectrum resources, inflexibility to dynamic traffic demands, and geographic-constrained fixed infrastructure deployment. To empower multifarious CAV content delivery, heterogeneous vehicular networks (HetVNets), which integrate the terrestrial networks with aerial networks formed by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and space networks constituting of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites, can guarantee reliable, flexible, cost-effective, and globally seamless service provisioning. In addition, edge caching is a promising solution to facilitate content delivery by caching popular files in the HetVNet access points (APs) to relieve the backhaul traffic with a lower delivery delay. The main technical issues are: 1) to fully reveal the potential of HetVNets for content delivery performance enhancement, content caching scheme design in HetVNets should jointly consider network characteristics, vehicle mobility patterns, content popularity, and APs’ caching capacities; 2) to fully exploit the controllable mobility and agility of UAVs to support dynamic vehicular content demands, the caching scheme and trajectory design for UAVs should be jointly optimized, which has not been well addressed due to their intricate inter-coupling relationships; and 3) for caching-based content delivery in HetVNets, a cooperative content delivery scheme should be designed to enable the cooperation among different network segments with ingenious utilization of heterogeneous network resources. In this thesis, we design the content caching and delivery schemes in the caching-enabled HetVNet to address the three technical issues. First, we study the content caching in HetVNets with fixed terrestrial APs including cellular base stations (CBSs), Wi-Fi roadside units (RSUs), and TV white space (TVWS) stations. To characterize the intermittent network connection caused by limited network coverage and high vehicle mobility, we establish an on-off model with service interruptions to describe the vehicular content delivery process. Content coding then is leveraged to resist the impact of unstable network connections and enhance caching efficiency. By jointly considering file characteristics and network conditions, the content placement is formulated as an integer linear programming (ILP) problem. Adopting the idea of the student admission model, the ILP problem is then transformed into a many-to-one matching problem between content files and HetVNet APs and solved by our proposed stable-matching-based caching scheme. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme can achieve near-optimal performances in terms of delivery delay and offloading ratio with a low complexity. Second, UAV-aided caching is considered to assist vehicular content delivery in aerial-ground vehicular networks (AGVN) and a joint caching and trajectory optimization (JCTO) problem is investigated to jointly optimize content caching, content delivery, and UAV trajectory. To enable real-time decision-making in highly dynamic vehicular networks, we propose a deep supervised learning scheme to solve the JCTO problem. Specifically, we first devise a clustering-based two-layered (CBTL) algorithm to solve the JCTO problem offline. With a given content caching policy, we design a time-based graph decomposition method to jointly optimize content delivery and UAV trajectory, with which we then leverage the particle swarm optimization algorithm to optimize the content caching. We then design a deep supervised learning architecture of the convolutional neural network (CNN) to make online decisions. With the CNN-based model, a function mapping the input network information to output decisions can be intelligently learnt to make timely inferences. Extensive trace-driven experiments are conducted to demonstrate the efficiency of CBTL in solving the JCTO problem and the superior learning performance with the CNN-based model. Third, we investigate caching-assisted cooperative content delivery in space-air-ground integrated vehicular networks (SAGVNs), where vehicular content requests can be cooperatively served by multiple APs in space, aerial, and terrestrial networks. In specific, a joint optimization problem of vehicle-to-AP association, bandwidth allocation, and content delivery ratio, referred to as the ABC problem, is formulated to minimize the overall content delivery delay while satisfying vehicular quality-of-service (QoS) requirements. To address the tightly-coupled optimization variables, we propose a load- and mobility-aware ABC (LMA-ABC) scheme to solve the joint optimization problem as follows. We first decompose the ABC problem to optimize the content delivery ratio. Then the impact of bandwidth allocation on the achievable delay performance is analyzed, and an effect of diminishing delay performance gain is revealed. Based on the analysis results, the LMA-ABC scheme is designed with the consideration of user fairness, load balancing, and vehicle mobility. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed LMA-ABC scheme can significantly reduce the cooperative content delivery delay compared to the benchmark schemes. In summary, we have investigated the content caching in terrestrial networks with fixed APs, joint caching and trajectory optimization in the AGVN, and caching-assisted cooperative content delivery in the SAGVN. The proposed schemes and theoretical results should provide useful guidelines for future research in the caching scheme design and efficient utilization of network resources in caching-enabled heterogeneous wireless networks

Internet of Things and Sensors Networks in 5G Wireless Communications

This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue Internet of Things and Sensors Networks in 5G Wireless Communications that was published in Sensors

Internet of Things and Sensors Networks in 5G Wireless Communications

This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue Internet of Things and Sensors Networks in 5G Wireless Communications that was published in Sensors

Internet of Things and Sensors Networks in 5G Wireless Communications

The Internet of Things (IoT) has attracted much attention from society, industry and academia as a promising technology that can enhance day to day activities, and the creation of new business models, products and services, and serve as a broad source of research topics and ideas. A future digital society is envisioned, composed of numerous wireless connected sensors and devices. Driven by huge demand, the massive IoT (mIoT) or massive machine type communication (mMTC) has been identified as one of the three main communication scenarios for 5G. In addition to connectivity, computing and storage and data management are also long-standing issues for low-cost devices and sensors. The book is a collection of outstanding technical research and industrial papers covering new research results, with a wide range of features within the 5G-and-beyond framework. It provides a range of discussions of the major research challenges and achievements within this topic

Recent Developments on Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks and Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks

This book presents collective works published in the recent Special Issue (SI) entitled "Recent Developments on Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks and Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks”. These works expose the readership to the latest solutions and techniques for MANETs and VANETs. They cover interesting topics such as power-aware optimization solutions for MANETs, data dissemination in VANETs, adaptive multi-hop broadcast schemes for VANETs, multi-metric routing protocols for VANETs, and incentive mechanisms to encourage the distribution of information in VANETs. The book demonstrates pioneering work in these fields, investigates novel solutions and methods, and discusses future trends in these field

Flexible Application-Layer Multicast in Heterogeneous Networks

This work develops a set of peer-to-peer-based protocols and extensions in order to provide Internet-wide group communication. The focus is put to the question how different access technologies can be integrated in order to face the growing traffic load problem. Thereby, protocols are developed that allow autonomous adaptation to the current network situation on the one hand and the integration of WiFi domains where applicable on the other hand