Hierarchical Content Caching in Fog Radio Access Networks:Ergodic Rate and Transmit Latency

In order to alleviate capacity constraints on the fronthaul and decrease the transmit latency, a hierarchical content caching paradigm is applied in the fog radio access networks(F-RANs). In particular, a specific cluster of remote radio heads is formed through a common centralized cloud at the baseband unit pool, while the local content is directly delivered at fog access points with edge cache and distributed radio signal processing capability. Focusing on a downlink F-RAN, the explicit expressions of ergodic rate for the hierarchical paradigm is derived. Meanwhile, both the waiting delay and latency ratio for users requiring a single content are exploited. According to the evaluation results of ergodic rate on waiting delay, the transmit latency can be effectively reduced through improving the capacity of both fronthaul and radio access links. Moreover, to fully explore the potential of hierarchical content caching, the transmit latency for users requiring multiple content objects is optimized as well in three content transmission cases with different radio access links. The simulation results verify the accuracy of the analysis, further show the latency decreases significantly due to the hierarchical paradigm.

The Interplay between Artificial Intelligence and Fog Radio Access Networks

The interplay between artificial intelligence(AI) and fog radio access networks(F-RANs) is investigated in this work from two perspectives: how F-RANs enable hierarchical AI to be deployed in wireless networks and how AI makes F-RANs smarter to better serve mobile devices. Due to the heterogeneity of processing capability, the cloud, fog, and device layers in F-RANs provide hierarchical intelligence via centralized, distributed, and federated learning. In addition, cross-layer learning is also introduced to further reduce the demand for the memory size of the mobile devices. On the other hand, AI provides F-RANs with technologies and methods to deal with massive data and make smarter decisions. Specifically, machine learning tools such as deep neural networks are introduced for data processing, while reinforcement learning(RL) algorithms are adopted for network optimization and decisions. Then, two examples of AI-based applications in F-RANs, i.e., health monitoring and intelligent transportation systems, are presented, followed by a case study of an RL-based caching application in the presence of spatio-temporal unknown content popularity to showcase the potential of applying AI to F-RANs.

Challenges for beyond 5G:ultra-densification of radio access network

Ultra-densification of radio access network(RAN)is a key to efficiently support the exponentially growing mobile data traffic in 5 G era.Furthermore,extremely high frequency band like mm Wave band was utilized to solve the bandwidth shortage problem.However,untra-dense reusing the same radio resource produced severe interference.And the mm Wave link was very harsh due to frequent blockage by obstacles.Therefore a new RAN architecture needed to be introduced to realize ultra-reliable communications in such a severe radio propagation environment.An architecture of distributed MIMO based RAN was presented.Then,enhanced interference coordination(e IC)was described.Finally,the effectiveness of distributed MIMO based RAN with e IC by computer simulation was showed.

Joint Resource Allocation and Admission Control in Sliced Fog Radio Access Networks

Network slicing based fog radio access network(F-RAN) has emerged as a promising architecture to support various novel applications in 5 G-and-beyond wireless networks. However, the co-existence of multiple network slices in F-RANs may lead to significant performance degradation due to the resource competitions among different network slices. In this paper, the downlink F-RANs with a hotspot slice and an Internet of Things(Io T) slice are considered, in which the user equipments(UEs) of different slices share the same spectrum. A novel joint resource allocation and admission control scheme is developed to maximize the number of UEs in the hotspot slice that can be supported with desired quality-of-service, while satisfying the interference constraint of the UEs in the Io T slice. Specifically, the admission control and beamforming vector optimization are performed in the hotspot slice to maximize the number of admitted UEs, while the joint sub-channel and power allocation is performed in the Io T slice to maximize the capability of the UEs in the Io T slice tolerating the interference from the hotspot slice. Numerical results show that our proposed scheme can effectively boost the number of UEs in the hotspot slice compared to the existing baselines.

Semi-Blind Pilot-Aided Channel Estimation in Uplink Cloud Radio Access Networks

In this paper, a quasi-Newton method fbr semi-blind estimation is derived for channel estimation in uplink cloud radio access networks （C-RANs）. Different from traditional pilot-aided estimation, semiblind estimation utilizes the unknown data symbols in addition to the known pilot symbols to estimate the channel. An initial channel state information （CSI） obtained by least-squared （LS） estimation is needed in semi-blind estimation. BFGS （Brayben, Fletcher, Goldfarb and Shanno） algorithm, which employs data as well as pilot symbols, estimates the CSI though solving the problem provided by maximum-likelihood （ML） principle. In addition, mean-square-error （MSE） used to evaluate the estimation performance can be further minimized with an optimal pilot design. Simulation results show that the semi-blind estimation achieves a significant improvement in terms of MSE performance over the conventional LS estimation by utilizing data symbols instead of increasing the number of pilot symbols, which demonstrates the estimation accuracy and spectral efficiency are both improved by semiblind estimation for C-RANs.

Evaluate mobile video quality with LTE radio access network parameters

To evaluate the video quality, we tested sample videos delivered using HTTP adaptive streaming （HAS） in LTE network. In order to establish a correlation between radio access network （RAN） performance and quality of experience （ QoE）, we set up a testbed under different radio im- pairment conditions with three parameters： signal to interference and noise ratio （ SINR）, an amount of available network resource and a round trip latency. End users graded each video in a mobile equipment with their QoE Mearnwhile, we used a nonlinear model to simulate the comprehensive pre- dicted mean opinion score （pMOS）. Our results show that the nonlinear model can predict the enduser＇ s feedback. The pearson correlation coefficient （PCC） of the model is larger than 0. 9. This demonstrate that the output of the model has a high correlation with the end users＇ ratings and can reflect the QoE accurately. The method we developed will help mobile network operators evaluate the RAN performance of its QoE. It can also be used for HAS service to optimize LTE network and improve its QoE.

Joint Design of Coalition Formation and Semi-Blind Channel Estimation in Fog Radio Access Networks

Coordinated signal processing can obtain a huge transmission gain for Fog Radio Access Networks(F-RANs).However,integrating into large scale,it will lead to high computation complexity in channel estimation and spectral efficiency loss in transmission performance.Thus,a joint cluster formation and channel estimation scheme is proposed in this paper.Considering research remote radio heads(RRHs)centred serving scheme,a coalition game is formulated in order to maximize the spectral efficiency of cooperative RRHs under the conditions of balancing the data rate and the cost of channel estimation.As the cost influences to the necessary consumption of training length and estimation error.Particularly,an iterative semi-blind channel estimation and symbol detection approach is designed by expectation maximization algorithm,where the channel estimation process is initialized by subspace method with lower pilot length.Finally,the simulation results show that a stable cluster formation is established by our proposed coalition game method and it outperforms compared with full coordinated schemes.

Deep Learning Based Channel Estimation in Fog Radio Access Networks

As a promising paradigm of the fifth generation networks,fog radio access network(F-RAN)has attracted lots of attention nowadays.To fully utilize the promising gain of F-RANs,the acquisition of accurate channel state information is significant.However,conventional channel estimation approaches are not suitable in F-RANs due to the large training and feedback overhead.In this paper,we consider the channel estimation in F-RANs with fog access point(F-AP)equipped with massive antennas.Thanks to the computing ability of F-AP and the sparsity of channel matrices in angular domain,Gated Recurrent Unit(GRU),a data-driven based channel estimation is proposed at F-AP to reduce the training and feedback overhead.The GRU-based method can capture the hidden sparsity structure automatically through the network training.Moreover,to further improve the channel estimation,a bidirectional GRU based method is proposed,whose target channel structure is decided by previous and subsequent structures.We compare the performance of our proposed channel estimation with traditional methods(Orthogonal Matching Pursuit(OMP)and Simultaneous OMP(SOMP)).Simulation results show that the proposed approaches have better performance compared with the traditional OMP and SOMP methods.

Channel Estimation for Full-Duplex Relay Transmission in Cloud Radio Access Networks

Relay in full-duplex(FD) mode can achieve higher spectrum efficiency than that in half-duplex mode,while it is crucial to suppress relay self-interference to ensure transmission quality which requires instantaneous channel state information(CSI). In this paper,the channel estimation issue in FD amplify-andforward relay networks is considered,where the training-based estimation technique is adopted. Firstly,the least square(LS) estimation is implemented to obtain composite channel coefficients of source-relay-destination(SRD) channel and relay loop-interference(LI) channel in order to assist destination in performing data detection. Secondly,both LS and maximum likelihood estimation methods are utilized to perform individual channel estimation aiming at supporting successive interference cancelation at destination. Finally,simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of both composite and individual channel estimation,and the presented ML method can achieve lower MSEs than LS solution.

A Dynamic Distributed Spectrum Allocation Mechanism Based on Game Model in Fog Radio Access Networks

With the explosive growth of highspeed wireless data demand and the number of mobile devices, fog radio access networks(F-RAN) with multi-layer network structure becomes a hot topic in recent research. Meanwhile, due to the rapid growth of mobile communication traffic, high cost and the scarcity of wireless resources, it is especially important to develop an efficient radio resource management mechanism. In this paper, we focus on the shortcomings of resource waste, and we consider the actual situation of base station dynamic coverage and user requirements. We propose a spectrum pricing and allocation scheme based on Stackelberg game model under F-RAN framework, realizing the allocation of resource on demand. This scheme studies the double game between the users and the operators, as well as between the traditional operators and the virtual operators, maximizing the profits of the operators. At the same time, spectrum reuse technology is adopted to improve the utilization of network resource. By analyzing the simulation results, it is verified that our proposed scheme can not only avoid resource waste, but also effectively improve the operator's revenue efficiency and overall network resource utilization.

Resource Allocation based on Shared Criterion in OFDMA Distributed Radio Access Network

Distributed radio access network (DRAN) is a novel wireless access architecture and can solve the problem of the available spectrum scarcity in wireless communications. In this paper, we investigate resource allocation for the downlink of OFDMA DRAN. Unlike previous exclusive criterion based algorithms that allocate each subcarrier to only one user in the system, the proposed algorithms are based on shared criterion that allow each subcarrier to be allocated to multiple users through different antennas and to only one user through same antenna. First, an adaptive resource allocation algorithm based on shared criterion is proposed to maximize total system rate under each user's minimal rate and each antenna's maximal power constraints. Then we improve the above algorithm by considering the influence of the resource allocation scheme on single user. The simulation results show that the shared criterion based algorithm provide much higher total system rate than that of the exclusive criterion based algorithm at the expense of the outage performance and the fairness, while the improved algorithm based on shared criterion can achieve a good tradeoff performance.

AI/ML Enabled Automation System for Software Defined Disaggregated Open Radio Access Networks:Transforming Telecommunication Business

Open Air Interface(OAI)alliance recently introduced a new disaggregated Open Radio Access Networks(O-RAN)framework for next generation telecommunications and networks.This disaggregated architecture is open,automated,software defined,virtual,and supports the latest advanced technologies like Artificial Intelligence(AI)Machine Learning(AI/ML).This novel intelligent architecture enables programmers to design and customize automated applications according to the business needs and to improve quality of service in fifth generation(5G)and Beyond 5G(B5G).Its disaggregated and multivendor nature gives the opportunity to new startups and small vendors to participate and provide cheap hardware software solutions to keep the market competitive.This paper presents the disaggregated and programmable O-RAN architecture focused on automation,AI/ML services,and applications with Flexible Radio access network Intelligent Controller(FRIC).We schematically demonstrate the reinforcement learning,external applications(xApps),and automation steps to implement this disaggregated O-RAN architecture.The idea of this research paper is to implement an AI/ML enabled automation system for software defined disaggregated O-RAN,which monitors,manages,and performs AI/ML-related services,including the model deployment,optimization,inference,and training.

An Efficient Scheduling Scheme for Fronthaul Load Reduction in Fog Radio Access Networks

Fog radio access network(F-RAN) is one of the key technology that brings cloud computing benefit to the future of wireless communications for handling massive access and high volume of data traffic. The high fronthaul burden of a typical cellular system can be partially diminished by utilizing the storage and signal processing capabilities of the F-RANs, which is still not desirable as user throughput requirement is in the increasing trend with the increment of the internet of things(IoT) devices. This paper proposes an efficient scheduling scheme that minimizes the fronthaul load of F-RAN system optimally to improve user experience, and minimize latency. The scheduling scheme is modeled in a way that the scheduler which provides the lower fronthaul load while fulfilling the minimum user throughput requirement is selected for the data transmission process. Simulation results in terms of user selection fairness, outage probability, and fronthaul load for a different portion of user equipments(UEs) contents in fog access point(F-AP) are shown and compared with the most common scheduling scheme such as round robin(RR) scheme to validate the proposed method.

Performance Analysis in Cloud Radio Access Networks:User-Centralized Coordination Approach

The cloud radio access network(C-RAN) has recently been proposed as an important component of the next generation wireless networks providing opportunities for improving both spectral and energy effi ciencies. The performance of this network structure is however constrained by severe inter-cell interference due to the limited capacity of fronthaul between the radio remote heads(RRH) and the base band unit(BBU) pool. To achieve performance improvement taking full advantage of centralized processing capabilities of C-RANs,a set of RRHs can jointly transmit data to the same UE for improved spectral effi ciency. In this paper,a user centralized joint coordinated transmission(UC-JCT) scheme is put forth to investigate the downlink performance of C-RANs. The most important benefit the proposed strategy is the ability to translate what would have been the most dominant interfering sources to usable signal leading to a signifi cantly improved performance. Stochastic geometry is utilized to model the randomness of RRH location and provides a reliable performance analysis. We derive an analytical expression for the closed integral form of the coverage probability of a typical UE. Simulation results confirm the accuracy of our analysis and demonstrate that significant performance gain can be achieved from the proposed coordination schemes.

Beamforming and fronthaul compression design for intelligent reflecting surface aided cloud radio access networks

Owing to the inherent central information processing and resource management ability,the cloud radio access network(C-RAN)is a promising network structure for an intelligent and simplified sixth-generation(6G)wireless network.Nevertheless,to further enhance the capacity and coverage,more radio remote heads(RRHs)as well as high-fidelity and low-latency fronthaul links are required,which may lead to high implementation cost.To address this issue,we propose to exploit the intelligent reflecting surface(IRS)as an alternative way to enhance the C-RAN,which is a low-cost and energy-efficient option.Specifically,we consider the uplink transmission where multi-antenna users communicate with the baseband unit(BBU)pool through multi-antenna RRHs and multiple IRSs are deployed between the users and RRHs.RRHs can conduct either point-to-point(P2P)compression or Wyner-Ziv coding to compress the received signals,which are then forwarded to the BBU pool through fronthaul links.We investigate the joint design and optimization of user transmit beamformers,IRS passive beamformers,and fronthaul compression noise covariance matrices to maximize the uplink sum rate subject to fronthaul capacity constraints under P2P compression and Wyner-Ziv coding.By exploiting the Arimoto-Blahut algorithm and semi-definite relaxation(SDR),we propose a successive convex approximation approach to solve non-convex problems,and two iterative algorithms corresponding to P2P compression and Wyner-Ziv coding are provided.Numerical results verify the performance gain brought about by deploying IRS in C-RAN and the superiority of the proposed joint design.

Deep reinforcement learning based computation offloading and resource allocation for low-latency fog radio access networks

Fog Radio Access Networks(F-RANs)have been considered a groundbreaking technique to support the services of Internet of Things by leveraging edge caching and edge computing.However,the current contributions in computation offloading and resource allocation are inefficient;moreover,they merely consider the static communication mode,and the increasing demand for low latency services and high throughput poses tremendous challenges in F-RANs.A joint problem of mode selection,resource allocation,and power allocation is formulated to minimize latency under various constraints.We propose a Deep Reinforcement Learning(DRL)based joint computation offloading and resource allocation scheme that achieves a suboptimal solution in F-RANs.The core idea of the proposal is that the DRL controller intelligently decides whether to process the generated computation task locally at the device level or offload the task to a fog access point or cloud server and allocates an optimal amount of computation and power resources on the basis of the serving tier.Simulation results show that the proposed approach significantly minimizes latency and increases throughput in the system.

Joint uplink and downlink resource allocation for low-latency mobile virtual reality delivery in fog radio access networks

Fog radio access networks(F-RANs),in which the fog access points are equipped with communication,caching,and computing functionalities,have been anticipated as a promising architecture for enabling virtual reality(VR)applications in wireless networks.Although extensive research efforts have been devoted to designing efficient resource allocation strategies for realizing successful mobile VR delivery in downlink,the equally important resource allocation problem of mobile VR delivery in uplink has so far drawn little attention.In this work,we investigate a mobile VR F-RAN delivery framework,where both the uplink and downlink transmissions are considered.We first characterize the round-trip latency of the system,which reveals its dependence on the communication,caching,and computation resource allocations.Based on this information,we propose a simple yet efficient algorithm to minimize the round-trip latency,while satisfying the practical constraints on caching,computation capability,and transmission capacity in the uplink and downlink.Numerical results show that our proposed algorithm can effectively reduce the round-trip latency compared with various baselines,and the impacts of communication,caching,and computing resources on latency performance are illustrated.

Pricing-based edge caching resource allocaƟon in fog radio access networks

The edge caching resource allocation problem in Fog Radio Access Networks(F-RANs)is investigated.An incentive mechanism is introduced to motivate Content Providers(CPs)to participate in the resource allocation procedure.We formulate the interaction between the cloud server and the CPs as a Stackelberg game,where the cloud server sets nonuniform prices for the Fog Access Points(F-APs)while the CPs lease the F-APs for caching their most popular contents.Then,by exploiting the multiplier penalty function method,we transform the constrained optimization problem of the cloud server into an equivalent non-constrained one,which is further solved by using the simplex search method.Moreover,the existence and uniqueness of the Nash Equilibrium(NE)of the Stackelberg game are analyzed theoretically.Furthermore,we propose a uniform pricing based resource allocation strategy by eliminating the competition among the CPs,and we also theoretically analyze the factors that affect the uniform pricing strategy of the cloud server.We also propose a global optimization-based resource allocation strategy by further eliminating the competition between the cloud server and the CPs.Simulation results are provided for quantifying the proposed strategies by showing their efficiency in pricing and resource allocation.

Multi-Strategy Dynamic Spectrum Access in Cognitive Radio Networks: Modeling, Analysis and Optimization

Dynamic spectrum access(DSA) based on cognitive radios(CR) technique is an effective approach to address the "spectrum scarcity" issue. However, traditional CR-enabled DSA system employs only single DSA strategy, which might not be suited to the dynamic network environment. In this paper, we propose a multi-strategy DSA(MS-DSA) system, where the primary and the secondary system share spectrum resources with multiple DSA strategies simultaneously. To analyze the performance of the proposed MS-DSA system, we model it as a continuous-time Markov chain(CTMC) and derive the expressions to compute the corresponding performance metrics. Based on this, we define a utility function involving the concerns of effective throughput, interference quantity on primary users, and spectrum leasing cost. Two optimization schemes, named as spectrum allocation and false alarm probability selection, are proposed to maximize the utility function. Finally, numerical simulations are provided to validate our analysis and demonstrate that the performance can be significantly improved caused by virtues of the proposed MS-DSA system.