Control channels for the cooperation of cognitive management systems in opportunistic and composite wireless networks

Opportunistic Networks (ONs) are assumed to be temporary, localized extensions of the infrastructure network that are created under certain circumstances. According to that vision, ONs are coordinated by the radio access network (RAN) operator which governs the overal system behaviour (e.g. ON related policies), provides the neccessary resources (e.g. dedicated specturm bands) and supports users in decision making (e.g. additional knowledge and context information). ONs comprise both nodes of the infrastructure and infrastructure-less devices. For the management and control of operator-governed ONs the introduction of Cognitive Management Systems (CMSs), localized on the terminal and infrastructure side, is proposed. The cooperation of CMS entities will require existence of well-defined control channels. In order to enable the necessary signalling between the CMS entities, Control Channels for the Cooperation of the Cognitive Management Systems (C4 MS) are proposed.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Cognitive control channels for the cooperation of opportunistic and composite wireless networks

Opportunistic networks (ONs) are considered as coordinated extensions of a radio access network infrastructure, which are dynamically and temporarily created in an infrastructure-less manner in order to increase service reachability, improve resource utilization efficiency and facilitate localised service provisioning. The realization of the ON concept relies on the existence of control channels which will provide necessary signalling for the coordination of the ON nodes. Proposed control channels are conceived as an evolution of the already established cognitive pilot channel concept. As a result, new interfaces are discussed in order to convey information from the infrastructure to the terminals and vice versa or between terminals. Finally, the business benefits of the aforementioned approach are provided in order to strengthen the notion of the proposed control channels and consider future expansions.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Cognitive pilot channel: A radio enabler for spectrum awareness and optimized radio resource management

Today’s wireless communications landscape is characterized by the coexistence of a plethora of disparate radio access technologies (RATs), which exhibit varying features in terms of capacity and coverage capabilities, mobility support etc. and also offer a great number of applications and services to different types of devices. In such a miscellaneous environment, mobile terminals are provided with a great set of options while setting up the parameters of their operation including among others the RAT, carrier frequency, and must also take into account the latest trend towards a flexible spectrum framework in heterogeneous radio access networks (RANs). As a result, in order to implement the optimal action, a mobile terminal needs to be enabled to acquire knowledge of its environment and established policies. Apart from mobilizing a rather time- and power-consuming operation such as spectrum sensing, the Cognitive Pilot Channel (CPC) concept has been proposed as a solution for providing the terminal with the necessary radio awareness at a given time and place, in a possible flexible spectrum management context. Framed within the above, this paper, developed within the E3 project, aims at describing the CPC concept by showcasing its twofold role. First, as an enabler of the switch-on process for assisting the mobile terminal to camp onto the network side and second, as an enabler of an efficient decentralized and network-assisted radio resource management during the on-going communication phase.Postprint (published version

Digital Twins for Industry 4.0 in the 6G Era

Having the Fifth Generation (5G) mobile communication system recently rolled out in many countries, the wireless community is now setting its eyes on the next era of Sixth Generation (6G). Inheriting from 5G its focus on industrial use cases, 6G is envisaged to become the infrastructural backbone of future intelligent industry. Especially, a combination of 6G and the emerging technologies of Digital Twins (DT) will give impetus to the next evolution of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) systems. This article provides a survey in the research area of 6G-empowered industrial DT system. With a novel vision of 6G industrial DT ecosystem, this survey discusses the ambitions and potential applications of industrial DT in the 6G era, identifying the emerging challenges as well as the key enabling technologies. The introduced ecosystem is supposed to bridge the gaps between humans, machines, and the data infrastructure, and therewith enable numerous novel application scenarios.Comment: Accepted for publication in IEEE Open Journal of Vehicular Technolog

ETSI RRS - The Standardization Path to Next Generation Cognitive Radio Systems

This paper details the current work status of the ETSI Reconfigurable Radio Systems (RRS) Technical Committee (TC) and gives an outlook on the future evolution. While previous publications have presented an overview of ETSI RRS' main working axes related to i) Cognitive Radio System Aspects, ii) Radio Equipment Architecture (including a Cognitive Pilot Channel (CPC) proposal and a Functional Architecture (FA) for Management and Control of Reconfigurable Radio Systems), iii) Cognitive Management and Control and iv) Public Safety, this document focuses on latest progress related to UHF White Spaces work and the definition of an SDR Handset Architecture. In particular, it is outlined how Cognitive Radio principles can help to adapt existing and/or evolving Radio Standards, such as 3GPP Long Term Evolution, to a possible operation in UHF White Space bands

A unifying operating platform for 5G end-to-end and multi-layer orchestration

Heterogeneity of current software solutions for 5G is heading for complex and costly situations, with high fragmentation, which in turn creates uncertainty and the risk of delaying 5G innovations. This context motivated the definition of a novel Operating Platform for 5G (5G-OP), a unifying reference functional framework supporting end-to-end and multi-layer orchestration. 5G-OP aims at integrated management, control and orchestration of computing, storage, memory, networking core and edge resources up to the end-user devices and terminals (e.g., robots and smart vehicles). 5G-OP is an overarching architecture, with agnostic interfaces and well-defined abstractions, offering the seamless integration of current and future infrastructure control and orchestration solutions (e.g., OpenDaylight, ONOS, OpenStack, Apache Mesos, OpenSource MANO, Docker, LXC, etc.) The paper provides also the description of a prototype that can be seen as a simplified version of a 5G-OP, whose feasibility has been demonstrated in Focus Group IMT2020 of ITU-T

Towards Massive Connectivity Support for Scalable mMTC Communications in 5G networks

The fifth generation of cellular communication systems is foreseen to enable a multitude of new applications and use cases with very different requirements. A new 5G multiservice air interface needs to enhance broadband performance as well as provide new levels of reliability, latency and supported number of users. In this paper we focus on the massive Machine Type Communications (mMTC) service within a multi-service air interface. Specifically, we present an overview of different physical and medium access techniques to address the problem of a massive number of access attempts in mMTC and discuss the protocol performance of these solutions in a common evaluation framework