UAV-Assisted Data Offloading for Smart Container in Offshore Maritime Communications

Smart containers have been extensively applied in the maritime industry by embracing the Internet of Things to realize container status monitoring and data offloading without human intervention.However, the offloading rate and delay in the offshore region are limited by the coverage of the onshore base station(BS). In this paper, we investigate the unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV)-assisted data offloading for smart containers in offshore maritime communications where the UAV is as a relay node between smart containers and onshore BS. We first consider the mobility of container vessel in the offshore region and establish a UAV-assisted data offloading model. Based on this model, a data offloading algorithm is proposed to reduce the average offloading delay under data-size requirements and available energy constraints of smart containers. Specifically, the convex-concave procedure is used to update time-slot assignment,offloading approach selection, and power allocation in an iterative manner. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can efficiently reduce average offloading delay and increase offloading success ratio.Moreover, it is shown that the UAV relay cannot always bring the performance gain on offloading delay especially in the close-to-shore area, which could give an insight on the deployment of UAV relay in offshore communications.

Interface Engineering of NixSy@MnOxHy Nanorods to Efficiently Enhance Overall-Water-Splitting Activity and Stability

Exploring highly active and stable transition metal-based bifunctional electrocatalysts has recently attracted extensive research interests for achieving high inherent activity, abundant exposed active sites, rapid mass transfer, and strong structure stability for overall water splitting. Herein, an interface engineering coupled with shell-protection strategy was applied to construct three-dimensional(3D) core-shell NixSy@MnOxHy heterostructure nanorods grown on nickel foam(NixSy@MnOxHy/NF) as a bifunctional electrocatalyst. NixSy@MnOxHy/NF was synthesized via a facile hydrothermal reaction followed by an electrodeposition process. The X-ray absorption fine structure spectra reveal that abundant Mn-S bonds connect the heterostructure interfaces of N ixSy@MnOxHy, leading to a strong electronic interaction, which improves the intrinsic activities of hydrogen evolution reaction and oxygen evolution reaction(OER). Besides, as an efficient protective shell, the MnOxHy dramatically inhibits the electrochemical corrosion of the electrocatalyst at high current densities, which remarkably enhances the stability at high potentials. Furthermore, the 3D nanorod structure not only exposes enriched active sites, but also accelerates the electrolyte diffusion and bubble desorption. Therefore, NixSy@MnOxHy/NF exhibits exceptional bifunctional activity and stability for overall water splitting, with low overpotentials of 326 and 356 mV for OER at 100 and 500 mA cm^(–2), respectively, along with high stability of 150 h at 100 mA cm^(–2). Furthermore, for overall water splitting, it presents a low cell voltage of 1.529 V at 10 mA cm^(–2), accompanied by excellent stability at 100 mA cm^(–2) for 100 h. This work sheds a light on exploring highly active and stable bifunctional electrocatalysts by the interface engineering coupled with shell-protection strategy.

Joint Optimal Sensing Threshold and Subcarrier Power Allocation in Wideband Cognitive Radio for Minimising Interference to Primary User

Cognitive Radio （CR） can use the fre- quency band allocated to a Primary User （PU） on the premise that it will prevent significant of avoiding causing great interference to the PU. In this paper, we consider a wideband CR system where the Secondary User （SU） mini- raises its interference to the PU by jointly al- locating the optimal sensing threshold and sub- carrier power. A multi-parameter optimization problem is formulated to obtain the joint opt- imal allocation by alternating direction opti- mization, which minimises the total interfer- ence to the PU over all of the subcarriers sub- ject to the constraints on the throughput, Bit Error Rate （BER） and maximal total power of the SU, the subcarrier rate and interference power of the PU, and the false alarm and mis- detection probabilities of each subcarrier. The simulation results show that the proposed joint allocation algorithm can achieve the desired mitigation on the interference to the PU at the different subcarrier gains.

Energy-Efficient Target Channel Sequence Design for Spectrum Handoffs in Cognitive Radio Networks

Cognitive radio is considered as an efficient way to improve the spectrum efficiency. As one of its key technologies,spectrum handoff can guarantee the transmission continuity of secondary users(SUs). In this paper,we address a new and more generalized spectrum handoff problem in cognitive radio networks(CRNs),by considering simultaneously energy efficiency,multiple spectrum handoffs and multiple channels. Furthermore,effects of the primary users'(PUs')arrival and service rate on the target channel sequence selection are also considered. In order to obtain the energy-efficient target channel sequence,we firstly analyze the energy consumption and the number of delivered bits per hertz in the spectrum handoff process,and formulate a ratio-type energy efficiency optimization problem,which can be transformed into a parametric problem by utilizing fractional programming. Then,we propose an algorithm combining dynamic programming with bisection(DPB)algorithm to solve the energy efficiency optimization problem. Our simulation results verify that the designed target channel sequence has better performance than the existing algorithms in terms of energy efficiency.

Sensing Time Optimization in Energy-Harvesting Cognitive Radio with Interference Rate Control

In this paper,an energy-harvesting cognitive radio(CR) is considered,which allows the transmitter of the secondary user(SU) to harvest the primary signal energy from the transmitter of the primary user(PU) when the presence of the PU is detected.Then the harvested energy is converted into the electrical power to supply the transmission of the SU at the detected absence of the PU.By adopting the periodic spectrum sensing,the average total transmission rate of the SU is maximized through optimizing the sensing time,subject to the constraints of the probabilities of false alarm and detection,the harvested energy and the interference rate control.The simulation results show that there deed exists an optimal sensing time that maximizes the transmission rate,and the maximum transmission rate of the energy-harvesting CR can better approach to that of the traditional CR with the increasing of the detection probability.

Multi-Resources Management in 6G-Oriented Terrestrial-Satellite Network

The six-generation(6G)wireless network is expected to satisfy the requirements of ubiquitous connectivity and intelligent endogenous.Terrestrialsatellite networks(TSN)enable seamless coverage for terrestrial users in a wide area,making it very promising in 6G.As data traffic in TSNs surges,the integrated management for caching,computing,and communication(3C)has attracted much research attention.In this paper,we investigate the multi-resource management in the uplink and downlink transmission of TSN,respectively.In particularly,we aim to guarantee both throughput fairness and data security in the uplink transmission of TSN.Considering the intermittent communication of the satellite,we introduce two kinds of relays,i.e.,terrestrial relays(TRs)and aerial relays(ARs)to improve the system throughput performance in the downlink transmission of TSN.Finally,we study a specific case of TSN with the uplink and downlink transmission,and the corresponding simulation results validate the effectiveness of our proposed schemes.

An Event-Triggered Energy-Efficient Clustering in Collaborative Beamforming for Wireless Sensor Networks

In this paper, we present a protocol, CEWEC （Collaborative, Event-Triggered, Weighted, Energy-Efficient Clustering） , based on collaborative beamfor^ning. It is designed for wireless sensor nodes to realize the long-distance transmission. In order to save the energy of sensor nodes, a node ＂wakes up ＂when it has data to be uploaded. In our protocol, multi-layer structure is adopted： trigger-node layers, clusterhead-node layers, child- node layers. The number of child nodes and clusterheads depends on the distance of transmission. Clusterheads are selected according to the node 5 s weight which is based on its residual energy and distance to the trigger node. The main characteristic of this protocol is that clusterheads can directly communication with each other without the large-scale base station and antennas. Thus, the data from the trigger node would be able to be shared within the multi-layer structure. Considering the clustering process, energy model, and success rate, the simulation results show that the CEWEC protocol can effectively manage a large number of sensor nodes to share and transmit data.

Multi-slots Wideband Cooperative Spectrum Sensing Based on Weighed Data Fusion in Cognitive Radio

In order to avoid the interference to the primary user(PU), in this paper Cognitive Radio (CR) periodically senses the presence of PU, and during one period, CR can sense all the sub-channels based on weighed data fusion and then use all the idle channels decided by the coordinator. The local sensing time of CR is divided into multi-slots in which CR can sense any sub-channel. Through reasonably allocating the sensing slots and users by mathematic optimization, the proposed algorithm can improve the total throughput of CR. The optimization problem of the proposed scheme which seeks to maximize the throughput subject to the constraint of the detected performance of each sub-channel is proposed in order to choose the optimum local sense time and the number of the cooperative CRs. The simulation results indicate that the proposed scheme can obtain higher throughput than the conventional single-channel sense, and there are the optimum local sense time and the number of cooperative CRs to make the throughput reach maximum.

A Simplified Improvement on the Design of QO-STBC Based on Hadamard Matrices

In this paper, a simplified approach for implementing QO-STBC is proposed and evaluated with improved performance. It is based on the Hadamard matrix, in which the scheme exploits the Hadamard matrix property to attain full diversity. Hadamard matrix has the characteristic that diagonalizes a quasi-cyclic matrix and consequently, a decoding matrix so that a diagonal matrix which permits linear decoding is achieved. Using quasicyclic matrices in designing QO-STBC systems requires that the codes should be rotated to reasonably separate one code from another such that error floor in the design can be minimized. It will be shown that, orthogonalizing the secondary codes and then imposing the Hadamard criteria of the scheme can be well diagonalized. The results of this simplified approach demonstrate full diversity and better performance than the interference-free QO-STBC. Results show about 4 dB gain with respect to the interference-free QO-STBC scheme and it performs alike with the earlier Hadamard based QO-STBC designed with rotation. These results achieve the consequent mathematical proposition of the Hadamard matrix and its property is also shown in this study.

Improved Alamouti STBC Multi-Antenna System Using Hadamard Matrices

To achieve multiple input multiple output (MIMO) in wireless communication, the orthogonal space-time block coding (OSTBC) is evaluated next. At first, the OSTBC design is extended to include Hadamard matrix, referred to in this work, as traditional Hadamard OSTBC. Next, the Hadamard matrix is imposed on the conventional OSTBC, which is referred to, in this work as, Alamouti-Hadamard STBC. Both the traditional Hadamard OSTBC and the conventional STBC are compared with the Alamouti-Hadamard STBC. It will be shown that imposing the Hadamard conditions over the conventional OSTBC, the performance of the OSTBC 2-transmit antenna scheme can be significantly improved in terms of BER performance. All propositions are well supported with analytical derivations.

一种VHF战术网络位置服务方法

蓝军跟踪是战术网中需传输大量用户数据的服务之一。为跟踪网络节点而产生的业务量能够适当调整,但降低更新频率将降低存储信息的质量。在地基VHF战术网中,可用带宽极少,除最小规模网络外,基本无法支持位置信息的全局交换。基于分组聚合、泛路由、逐个节点优先的组合,本文提出了一种有效的跨层位置服务方法。在确保快速移动的节点优先更新情况下,每个节点的位置信息采用gossip协议在网络中反复重发。分析显示,与简单gossip方法相比,使用该方法不仅位置收敛更快而且全网的累积错误大大减少。

Power Allocation Optimization of Multibeam High-Throughput Satellite Communication Systems

The increasing demands in terms of high data rate and quality of services over the hybrid satellite-terrestrial relay networks(HSTRN)have pushed for the development of millimeter-wave(mmWave)band high-throughput satellites(HTS)with multibeams.The next generation of mmWave multibeam HTS communication systems(HTSCS)is viewed as the backbone network to enhance the throughput of the HSTRN.The article first investigates the basic backbone topology architecture of HTSCS,and an M-state Markov channel for the Ka/Q/V band mmWave systems is reviewed.Then,we propose a long-term optimal power allocation scheme over two in-dependent and identical spot beams based on the partially observable Markov decision process(POMDP),which can partly mitigate the negative effects of severe weather conditions.The key conditions for selecting the optimal power allocation action in the multibeam HTSCS are given.Simulation results show that our POMDP-based power allocation scheme can enhance the long-term throughput of the HTSCS.

Theory and techniques for“intellicise”wireless networks

With the acceleration of a new round of global scientific,technological,and industrial revolution,the next generation of information and communication technology,i.e.,6G,will inject new momentum into industry transformation and upgrading,as well as into economic innovation and development.This will subsequently promote a global industrial integration.Wireless communication will be ubiquitous in all areas of future society,supporting novel applications with various performance requirements.

Simultaneous heterostructure engineering and Mn doping modulation of Ni_(2)P nanosheet arrays for enhanced electrocatalytic water splitting

Efficient,low-cost,and stable electrocatalysts for water splitting are highly desirable.Herein,three-dimensional(3D)Ni_(2)P nanosheet arrays were fabricated and simultaneously modulated by heterostructure engineering and Mn doping(Mn-doped Ni_(2)O_(3)/Ni_(2)P and Mn-doped Ni_(x)S_(y)/Ni_(2)P)via a facile hydrothermal reaction and subsequent phosphorization and sulfurization.Due to the Mn doping,synergistic effect in the heterostructures,and abundantly exposed active sites from the 3D-nanosheet arrays,Mn-doped Ni_(2)O_(3)/Ni_(2)P and Mn-doped Ni_(x)S_(y)/Ni_(2)P exhibit excellent properties for the hydrogen evolution reaction(HER)and oxygen evolution reaction(OER),respectively.The former achieves an excellent current density of-10 mA cm^(-2) at a low overpotential of 104 mV for HER,while the latter attains 100 mA cm^(-2) for OER at an ultralow overpotential of 290 mV and exhibits superior stability at 50 mA cm^(-2) for 160 h.Impressively,the Mndoped Ni_(2)O_(3)/Ni_(2)P//Mn-doped Ni_(x)S_(y)/Ni_(2)P couple show high overall-water-splitting activity with a cell voltage of 1.65 V at 10 mA cm^(-2) and outstanding durability at 50 mA cm^(-2) for 120 h in an alkaline electrolyzer.This work presents an effective strategy to design and synthesize low-cost and highly active non-noble metal electrocatalysts for overall water splitting through the simultaneous application of heterostructure engineering,foreign-metal-atom doping,and a 3Dnanoarray structure.The strategy brings a paradigm shift toward the mass production of low-cost non-noble metal electrocatalysts for renewable energy devices.