Sensing-Based Grant-Free Scheduling for Ultra Reliable Low Latency and Deterministic Beyond 5G Networks

5G and beyond networks should efficiently support services with stringent and diverse QoS requirements. This includes services for verticals that demand Ultra Reliable and Low Latency Communications (URLLC). Scheduling strongly impacts the communication latency, and 5G NR introduces grant-free scheduling to reduce the latency at the radio level. Grant-free scheduling can use shared resources and the transmission of K replicas per packet to increase the packet delivery ratio and efficiently utilize the spectrum. Previous studies have shown that existing 5G NR grant-free scheduling has limitations to sustain URLLC requirements for aperiodic (or uncertain) and deterministic traffic that is characteristic of verticals such as Industry 4.0 or manufacturing. In this context, this paper proposes and evaluates a novel grant-free scheduling scheme that can efficiently support deterministic and aperiodic uplink traffic. The scheme avoids packet collisions among UEs sharing resources using a priority-based contention resolution process that relies on the transmission of announcement messages in minislots and a local channel sensing process. This study demonstrates that the proposed sensing-based grant-free scheduling scheme outperforms current 5G NR grant-free scheduling implementations, and can support a higher number of UEs with URLLC and deterministic requirements with a considerably lower number of radio resources.This work has been funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/ 501100011033 through the project PID2020-115576RB-I00and FSE funds through the grant PRE2018-084743,the Generalitat Valenciana through the project CIGE/2021/096,by a research grant awarded by the Vicerrectorado de Investigación of the UMH (2022)

Mode Selection for 5G Heterogeneous and Opportunistic Networks

5G and beyond networks will offer multiple communication modes including device-to-device and multi-hop cellular (or UE-to-network relay) communications. Several studies have shown that these modes can signi_cantly improve the Quality of Service (QoS), the spectrum and energy ef_ciency, and the network capacity. Recent studies have demonstrated that further gains can be achieved when integrating demand-driven opportunistic networking into Multi-Hop Cellular Networks (MCN). In opportunistic MCN connections, devices can exploit the delay tolerance of many mobile data services to search for the most ef_cient connections between nodes. The availability of multiple communication modes requires mode selection schemes capable to decide the optimum mode for each transmission. Mode selection schemes have been previously proposed to account for the introduction of D2D and MCN. However, existing mode selection schemes cannot integrate opportunistic MCN connections into the selection process. This paper advances the state of the art by proposing the _rst mode selection scheme capable to integrate opportunistic MCN communications within 5G and beyond networks. The conducted analysis demonstrates the potential of opportunistic MCN communications, and the capability of the proposed mode selection scheme to select the most adequate communication mode.This work was supported in part by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry, and Competitiveness, AEI, and FEDER funds under Grant TEC2017-88612-RGrant TEC2014-57146-Rand in part by the Generalitat Valenciana under Grant GV/2016/049

Neighbor discovery for industrial wireless sensor networks with mobile nodes

Industrial wireless sensor networks can facilitate the deployment of a wide range of novel industrial applications, including mobile applications that connect mobile robots, vehicles, goods and workers to industrial networks. Current industrial wireless sensor standards have been mainly designed for static deployments, and their performance significantly degrades when introducing mobile devices. One of the major reasons for such degradation is the neighbor discovery process. This paper presents and evaluates two novel neighbor discovery protocols that improve the capability of mobile devices to remain connected to the industrial wireless sensor networks as they move. The proposed protocols exploit topology information and the nature of devices (static or mobile) to reliably and rapidly discover neighbor devices. This is achieved in some cases at the expense of increasing the number of radio resources utilized and the energy consumed in the discovery process. The proposed solutions have been designed and evaluated considering the WirelessHART standard given its widespread industrial adoption. However, they can also be adapted for the ISA100.11a and IEEE 802.15.4e standards.This work was supported in part by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and FEDER funds under the project TEC2014-57146-Rby the Local Government of Valencia with reference ACIF/2013/060 and by the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No 723909 (AUTOWARE project)

Latency-Sensitive 5G RAN Slicing for Industry 4.0

Network slicing is a novel 5G paradigm that exploits the virtualization and softwarization of networks to create different logical network instances over a common network infrastructure. Each instance is tailored for specific Quality of Service (QoS) profiles so that network slicing can simultaneously support several services with diverse requirements. Network slicing can be applied at the Core Network or at the Radio Access Network (RAN). RAN slicing is particularly relevant to support latency-sensitive or timecritical applications since the RAN accounts for a significant part of the end-to-end transmission latency. In this context, this study proposes a novel latency-sensitive 5G RAN slicing solution. The proposal includes schemes to design slices and partition (or allocate) radio resources among slices. These schemes are designed with the objective to satisfy both the rate and latency demands of diverse applications. In particular, this study considers applications with deterministic aperiodic, deterministic periodic and nondeterministic traffic. The latency-sensitive 5G RAN slicing proposal is evaluated in Industry 4.0 scenarios where stringent and/or deterministic latency requirements are common. However, it can be evolved to support other verticals with latency-sensitive or time-critical applicationsThis work has been funded by the European Commission through the FoF-RIA Project AUTOWARE: Wireless Autonomous, Reliable and Resilient Production Operation Architecture for Cognitive Manufacturing (No. 723909),and the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry, and Competitiveness, AEI, and FEDER funds (TEC2017-88612-R)

Bankruptcy-based Radio Resource Management for Multimedia Mobile Networks

The transmission of bandwidth demanding multimedia applications in capacity constrained mobile radio networks requires optimizing the usage and assignment of radio resources following the varying Quality of Service (QoS) requirements characteristics of multimedia traffic environments. Considering the capacity of bankruptcy theory to deal with situations where the demand for resources is higher than its availability, this work proposes the application of bankruptcy theories to design efficient radio resource management policies that provide the highest possible QoS levels while guaranteeing user fairnes

Communication and Data Management in Industry 4.0

This work was funded by the European Commission through the FoF-RIA Project AUTOWARE: Wireless Autonomous, Reliable and Resilient Production Operation Architecture for Cognitive Manufacturing (No. 723909)

5G NR Configured Grant in ns-3 Network Simulator for Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communications

5th Generation (5G) and Beyond networks are being designed to support Ultra-Reliable and Low Latency Communications (URLLC). To this end, 5G defines a new radio (NR) interface with a new mechanism at the Physical (PHY) and Medium Access Control (MAC) layers that allow reducing the latency communication. One key mechanism to reduce the latency is the scheduling scheme. Mainly, 5G defines the use of the configured grant (CG) scheduling for uplink (UL) transmissions that eliminates the need to request and assign resources for each packet transmission by pre-allocating resources to the UE. The availability of simulation tools that accurately model the new mechanisms and technologies incorporated in 5G New Radio (NR) is key to research and evaluate new proposals and enhancements to meet the communication requirements of emerging services. In this context, this paper presents the implementation of the configured grant scheduling in the ns-3 network simulator. Remarkably, the configured grant has been implemented within the 5G-LTE-EPC Network simulAtor (5G-LENA) module that simulates the fundamental PHY-MAC NR features in line with the NR specifications. In addition, this paper validates the configured grant implementation through system-level simulations considering a typical Industry 4.0 scenario characterized by applications demanding URLLC