683 research outputs found
Improved User Tracking in 5G Millimeter Wave Mobile Networks via Refinement Operations
The millimeter wave (mmWave) frequencies offer the availability of huge
bandwidths to provide unprecedented data rates to next-generation cellular
mobile terminals. However, directional mmWave links are highly susceptible to
rapid channel variations and suffer from severe isotropic pathloss. To face
these impairments, this paper addresses the issue of tracking the channel
quality of a moving user, an essential procedure for rate prediction, efficient
handover and periodic monitoring and adaptation of the user's transmission
configuration. The performance of an innovative tracking scheme, in which
periodic refinements of the optimal steering direction are alternated to
sparser refresh events, are analyzed in terms of both achievable data rate and
energy consumption, and compared to those of a state-of-the-art approach. We
aim at understanding in which circumstances the proposed scheme is a valid
option to provide a robust and efficient mobility management solution. We show
that our procedure is particularly well suited to highly variant and unstable
mmWave environments.Comment: Accepted for publication to the 16th IEEE Annual Mediterranean Ad Hoc
Networking Workshop (MED-HOC-NET), Jun. 201
Initial Access in 5G mm-Wave Cellular Networks
The massive amounts of bandwidth available at millimeter-wave frequencies
(roughly above 10 GHz) have the potential to greatly increase the capacity of
fifth generation cellular wireless systems. However, to overcome the high
isotropic pathloss experienced at these frequencies, high directionality will
be required at both the base station and the mobile user equipment to establish
sufficient link budget in wide area networks. This reliance on directionality
has important implications for control layer procedures. Initial access in
particular can be significantly delayed due to the need for the base station
and the user to find the proper alignment for directional transmission and
reception. This paper provides a survey of several recently proposed techniques
for this purpose. A coverage and delay analysis is performed to compare various
techniques including exhaustive and iterative search, and Context Information
based algorithms. We show that the best strategy depends on the target SNR
regime, and provide guidelines to characterize the optimal choice as a function
of the system parameters.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, 3 tables, 15 references, submitted to IEEE COMMAG
201
An Efficient Uplink Multi-Connectivity Scheme for 5G mmWave Control Plane Applications
The millimeter wave (mmWave) frequencies offer the potential of orders of
magnitude increases in capacity for next-generation cellular systems. However,
links in mmWave networks are susceptible to blockage and may suffer from rapid
variations in quality. Connectivity to multiple cells - at mmWave and/or
traditional frequencies - is considered essential for robust communication. One
of the challenges in supporting multi-connectivity in mmWaves is the
requirement for the network to track the direction of each link in addition to
its power and timing. To address this challenge, we implement a novel uplink
measurement system that, with the joint help of a local coordinator operating
in the legacy band, guarantees continuous monitoring of the channel propagation
conditions and allows for the design of efficient control plane applications,
including handover, beam tracking and initial access. We show that an
uplink-based multi-connectivity approach enables less consuming, better
performing, faster and more stable cell selection and scheduling decisions with
respect to a traditional downlink-based standalone scheme. Moreover, we argue
that the presented framework guarantees (i) efficient tracking of the user in
the presence of the channel dynamics expected at mmWaves, and (ii) fast
reaction to situations in which the primary propagation path is blocked or not
available.Comment: Submitted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Wireless
Communications (TWC
Spatial and verbal routes to number comparison in young children
The ability to compare the numerical magnitude of symbolic numbers represents a milestone in the development of numerical skills. However, it remains unclear how basic numerical abilities contribute to the understanding of symbolic magnitude and whether the impact of these abilities may vary when symbolic numbers are presented as number words (e.g., \u201csix vs. eight\u201d) vs. Arabic numbers (e.g., 6 vs. 8). In the present study on preschool children, we show that comparison of number words is related to cardinality knowledge whereas the comparison of Arabic digits is related to both cardinality knowledge and the ability to spatially map numbers. We conclude that comparison of symbolic numbers in preschool children relies on multiple numerical skills and representations, which can be differentially weighted depending on the presentation format. In particular, the spatial arrangement of digits on the number line seems to scaffold the development of a \u201cspatial route\u201d to understanding the exact magnitude of numerals
Performance Comparison of Dual Connectivity and Hard Handover for LTE-5G Tight Integration
Communications at frequencies above 10 GHz (the mmWave band) are expected to
play a major role for the next generation of cellular networks (5G), because of
the potential multi-gigabit, ultra-low latency performance of this technology.
mmWave frequencies however suffer from very high isotropic pathloss, which may
result in cells with a much smaller coverage area than current LTE macrocells.
High directionality techniques will be used to improve signal quality and
extend coverage area, along with a high density deployment of mmWave base
stations (BS). However, when propagation conditions are hard and it is
difficult to provide high quality coverage with mmWave BS, it is necessary to
rely on previous generation LTE base stations, which make use of lower
frequencies (900 MHz - 3.5 GHz), which are less sensitive to blockage and
experience lower pathloss. In order to provide ultra-reliable services to
mobile users there is a need for network architectures that tightly and
seamlessly integrate the LTE and mmWave Radio Access Technologies. In this
paper we will present two possible alternatives for this integration and show
how simulation tools can be used to assess and compare their performance.Comment: This paper was accepted for presentation at the ninth EAI SIMUtools
2016 conference, August 22 - 23, 2016, Prague, Czech Republi
Cognitive Interference Management in Retransmission-Based Wireless Networks
Cognitive radio methodologies have the potential to dramatically increase the
throughput of wireless systems. Herein, control strategies which enable the
superposition in time and frequency of primary and secondary user transmissions
are explored in contrast to more traditional sensing approaches which only
allow the secondary user to transmit when the primary user is idle. In this
work, the optimal transmission policy for the secondary user when the primary
user adopts a retransmission based error control scheme is investigated. The
policy aims to maximize the secondary users' throughput, with a constraint on
the throughput loss and failure probability of the primary user. Due to the
constraint, the optimal policy is randomized, and determines how often the
secondary user transmits according to the retransmission state of the packet
being served by the primary user. The resulting optimal strategy of the
secondary user is proven to have a unique structure. In particular, the optimal
throughput is achieved by the secondary user by concentrating its transmission,
and thus its interference to the primary user, in the first transmissions of a
primary user packet. The rather simple framework considered in this paper
highlights two fundamental aspects of cognitive networks that have not been
covered so far: (i) the networking mechanisms implemented by the primary users
(error control by means of retransmissions in the considered model) react to
secondary users' activity; (ii) if networking mechanisms are considered, then
their state must be taken into account when optimizing secondary users'
strategy, i.e., a strategy based on a binary active/idle perception of the
primary users' state is suboptimal.Comment: accepted for publication on Transactions on Information Theor
An Efficient Requirement-Aware Attachment Policy for Future Millimeter Wave Vehicular Networks
The automotive industry is rapidly evolving towards connected and autonomous
vehicles, whose ever more stringent data traffic requirements might exceed the
capacity of traditional technologies for vehicular networks. In this scenario,
densely deploying millimeter wave (mmWave) base stations is a promising
approach to provide very high transmission speeds to the vehicles. However,
mmWave signals suffer from high path and penetration losses which might render
the communication unreliable and discontinuous. Coexistence between mmWave and
Long Term Evolution (LTE) communication systems has therefore been considered
to guarantee increased capacity and robustness through heterogeneous
networking. Following this rationale, we face the challenge of designing fair
and efficient attachment policies in heterogeneous vehicular networks.
Traditional methods based on received signal quality criteria lack
consideration of the vehicle's individual requirements and traffic demands, and
lead to suboptimal resource allocation across the network. In this paper we
propose a Quality-of-Service (QoS) aware attachment scheme which biases the
cell selection as a function of the vehicular service requirements, preventing
the overload of transmission links. Our simulations demonstrate that the
proposed strategy significantly improves the percentage of vehicles satisfying
application requirements and delivers efficient and fair association compared
to state-of-the-art schemes.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables, accepted to the 30th IEEE Intelligent
Vehicles Symposiu
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